Szasz on Drugs & Drug Addiction  (in James E. White text) 

Thesis: A free trade in drugs, including addictive and dangerous ones, is morally defended by appeal to Mill's "simple principle" of personal liberty.

Mill's principle: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection" or, reworded, "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." The principle is a second order rule for rejecting paternalistic prohibitions on adult behavior.

From this, it follows that "current drug laws" are immoral, and so "we have a right to be intoxicated" and a "right to self-medication." It is just as important as our right to free speech, and it is our right for the same reason (i.e., not a an inalienable human right, but as a right conferred on utilitarian grounds).

THE ARGUMENT of the essay is to challenge various proposals of why society has either a right or a moral obligation to prohibit addictive drugs.

RESPONSE TO TRADITIONAL FEARS: We assume that drug use ruins lives (that it "poisons" users) and causes crime. But a great deal of drug use is a symptom, not a cause, of ruined lives (ruined primarily by social pressure that everyone conform to Puritan religious standards). Taking drugs away from social "drop outs" will do nothing to make those people "buy in" to society. And the expense of drug addiction, and its connection to violent crime, is due to lack of free trade in what would otherwise be cheap drugs.

ARGUMENT THAT THE PROHIBITION IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE: The governmental cost of fighting drug addiction is more expensive than the social damages caused by drug use, were drug use available on the free trade model. The "war on drugs" has never made progress, and never will, so why pursue it?

RESPONSE TO ADDICTION & DANGER OBJECTIONS: Addiction and level of harm are irrelevant to the issue. We ban free trade in many non-addictive drugs (e.g., insulin), and we permit sale and use of many things that are more dangerous than narcotics (e.g., guns). If it is legal to own a shotgun, it should be legal to buy narcotics.

On utilitarian grounds, we should only prohibit the unwanted consequences of drug use. As with alcohol, we should enforce bans on harm to others, e.g., public intoxication (the harm of being a public nuisance), driving while under the influence, etc.

CONSISTENCY ARGUMENT: As long as alcohol is allowed, narcotics should be allowed. There are no significant differences between them.