In Our Right to Drugs , Thomas Szasz shows that the present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the American government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I, however, the free market in drugs was but a dim memory, if that. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality or unfairness of drug law, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws which place people under lifelong medical tutelage. The result is that most Americans today prefer a coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in drugs. Throughout the book, Szasz stresses the consequences of the fateful transformation of the central aim of American drug prohibitions from protecting the people from being fooled by misbranded drugs to protecting them from harming themselves by self-medication - defined as drug abuse . And he argues that the choice between self-control and state coercion applies to all areas of life, drugs being but one of the theatres in which this perennial play may be staged. A free society, Szasz emphasizes, cannot endure if its citizens reject the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility and if the state treats adults as if they were naughty children. In an examination of the implementation of the war on drugs, Szasz shows that under the guise of protecting the vulnerable members of society - especially children, blacks, and the sick - the government has persecuted and injured them. Leading politicians persuade parents to denounce their children, and encourage children to betray their parents and friends - behaviour that subverts family loyalties and destroys basic human decency. And instead of protecting blacks and Hispanics from dangerous drugs, this holy war has allowed them to be persecuted, not as racists but as therapists - working selflessly to bring about a drug-free America. Last but not least, to millions of sick Americans, the war on drugs has meant being deprived of the medicines they want - because the drugs are illegal, unapproved here though approved abroad, or require a prescription a physician may be afraid to provide. The bizarre upshot of drug policy is that many Americans now believe they have a right to drugs, even though that does not mean they have to take any.
