Predicting the Future: A Bad Reason to Criminalize Drug Use

If there is a good reason to criminalize illicit drug use, we have yet to find it. We need a better reason to criminalize something than conjectures about how its frequency would increase if punishments were not imposed. These predictions are dubious both normatively and (in this case) empirically. Despite my uncertainty about the future, there is one prediction about which we can be absolutely confident: After decriminalization, persons who use illicit drugs will not face arrest and prosecution.

The lives of drug users would not be devastated by a state that is committed to waging a war against them. Punishment, we must always be reminded, is the worst thing a state can do to us. The single prediction we can safely make about decriminalization is that it will not undermine the quality of life of the hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise would be punished for the crime of drug use.