From Harm to Robustness: A Principled Approach to Vice Regulation

John Stuart Mill’s harm principle maintains that adult behavior cannot justifiably be subject to social coercion unless the behavior involves harm or a significant risk of harm to non-consenting others. The absence of harms to others, however, is one of the distinguishing features of many manifestations of “vices” such as the consumption of alcohol, nicotine, recreational drugs, prostitution, pornography, and gambling. It is with respect to vice policy, then, that the harm principle tends to be most constraining, and some current vice controls, such as prohibitions on drug possession and prostitution, violate Mill’s precept. In the vice arena, we seem to be willing to accept social interference with what Mill termed “self-regarding” behavior. But does that willingness then imply that any social intervention into private affairs is justifiable, that the government has just as much right to outlaw Protestantism, or shag carpets, or spicy foods, as it does to outlaw drugs? In this paper I argue that advances in neuroscience and behavioral economics offer strong evidence that vices and other potentially addictive goods or activities frequently involve less-than-rational choices, and hence are exempt from the full force of the harm principle. As an alternative guide to vice policy, and following some guidance from Mill, I propose the “robustness principle”: public policy towards addictive or vicious activities engaged in by adults should be robust with respect to departures from full rationality. That is, policies should work pretty well if everyone is completely rational, and policies should work pretty well even if many people are occasionally (or frequently) irrational in their vice-related choices. The harm and robustness principles cohere in many ways, but the robustness principle offers more scope for policies that try to direct people “for their own good,” without opening the door to tyrannical inroads upon self-regarding behavior

Drug control in a free society

Virtually all known human groups have devised and regularly used techniques for altering consciousness, among which alcohol and drugs are prominent. James B. Bakalar and Lester Grinspoon offer a provocative analysis of the philosophical and historical foundations for efforts to control these techniques in industrial societies. What are the rights of individuals to diversity and enrich their experience? What, conversely, are the obligations of governments to protect their citizens? The authors explore the relevance to drug control of traditional doctrines of political liberty. They discuss the ideas of addiction, dependence, and compulsive drug use, central in both medical and legal definitions of drug abuse. They consider the history and sociology of modern drug control, and go on to present a useful typology of the forms of drug control. After assessing each point, they examine alternative ways of looking at what is usually called the drug problem. The book will be of interest to all those concerned with drugs and social control, in a wide range of fields