Jeremy Bentham on Drugs

Contemporary arguments for drug policy reform, in support of legalising or decriminalising drugs, commonly implicitly (or explicitly) invoke the ideas of well-known thinkers and philosophers including Aristotle, Kant, and J.S. Mill. Mill’s famous liberal doctrine and ‘harm principle’, developed in his best-known work On Liberty, has been particularly influential and widely cited for its relevance. Jeremy Bentham, in comparison, has been largely overlooked for his contribution to developing Mill’s thinking about the need for state protection of individual rights. In fact, as we shall argue, Bentham went further than his student in articulating a utilitarian perspective allowing for ‘self-regarding’ offences to go unpunished by the state. As ‘pleasures of the table’, consuming alcohol and other drugs could be classified as self-regarding conduct deserving of protection, and hence punishing the consumption of these substances would be unnecessary, ineffective, and avoidable. For Bentham, ‘waging war’ on relatively harmless pleasures is a source of disutility. Anticipating the failed legacy of the war on drugs, in his view, such interference would ultimately be proven to be groundless, costly, and doing more harm than good. Bentham’s early recognition of the need to foreground arguments for maximising pleasure while reducing pain and suffering is a firm foundation for extending the more limited public health approach to drug reform. His anticipation of contemporary discourse, espousing harm reduction and respect for legal rights, holds up just as well as Mill’s important contribution. Moreover, Bentham’s view improves upon Mill’s by properly acknowledging the need for recognising pleasure as a benefit of drug use that requires protection by and from the state.