Should we legalize all drugs?

Legalizing drugs would escalate addiction epidemics

Question: Should we legalize all drugs?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, we should not legalize all drugs
Argument‹2 of 3›: Legalizing drugs would escalate addiction epidemics

Existing addiction crises are bad enough without giving people easier access to highly addictive drugs.

The argument

The legalization of all drugs would expose our society to unprecedented risks of epidemics of drug addiction. In fact, this exact situation has already played out on a smaller scale. The opioid epidemic has resulted in numerous deaths due to overdose and a high rate of drug abuse. Lax regulations on opioid distribution and aggressive marketing of opioid drugs by pharmaceutical companies in the 1990s led to many Americans being prescribed opioid painkillers unnecessarily by their physicians. The addictive properties of opioids were not initially well-understood, so many patients became addicted to these drugs, and by 2017 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency. On average, it was estimated over 130 Americans died each day from opioid overdoses in 2018. If the opioid epidemic could begin, persist for decades, and reach the level of a public health emergency even within the highly regulated systems of doctors prescribing legal pharmaceuticals, then there is little reason to believe that even more addictive and harmful illicit drugs would have more benign effects on society if they were legalized. The lesson of the opioid epidemic is that the intrinsic risks of highly addictive drugs are too great to rely on legal regulation to prevent them from causing addiction crises. Some drugs are simply too dangerous and addictive to be legalized.

Premises

[P1]The opioid epidemic shows that even within a highly regulated legal system, addictive drugs can cause widespread addiction, overdose deaths, and a public health emergency. [P2] Illicit drugs that would be newly legalized are often even more addictive and harmful than prescription opioids. [P3] If legal regulation could not contain the harms of opioids, it cannot be relied upon to prevent addiction crises from more dangerous drugs. [C] Therefore, we should not legalize all drugs, because some are too addictive and dangerous to be safely legalized.

Counter-arguments

The opioid epidemic illustrates the harm of a poorly regulated legal market driven by aggressive profit-seeking, not of legalisation as a controlled-supply policy. Proponents of legalisation propose the opposite of what fuelled the opioid crisis: strict regulation, no marketing, plain packaging and funded treatment — the toolkit that has steadily driven down tobacco use. Decriminalisation and regulated-access models abroad, such as Portugal's, have not produced the runaway addiction the argument predicts. Extrapolating from opioids assumes every drug and every legal regime would behave the same way, which the varied real-world evidence does not support.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Legal regulation failed for opioids because it permitted aggressive marketing and lax oversight; a strictly regulated, non-commercial model is a different regime that need not repeat that failure.

Proponents cited

Thomas J. Gorman
“Legalizing drugs would increase the number of users and addicts. [...] In the 1970s, advocates of drug legalization touted Great Britain's system of giving free heroin to addicts as a successful health model that we should adopt. They were wrong, and most of the advocates today don't cite Great Britain anymore. What that country experienced was a failure in that its addict population and related problems skyrocketed.”
German Lopez
“After witnessing the opioid epidemic firsthand, [...] I am genuinely scared of how America would pay for full legalization.”
David Mineta
“Criminal sanctions against drugs are not a purely punitive tool. Penalties, or even the threat of them, frequently spur individuals struggling with addiction or substance abuse to get the treatment they might never seek or receive on their own. [...] The U.S. does not need another vice industry dedicated to promoting and supporting addiction.”