'Why Are Drugs, Prostitution, Gambling and Suicide Illegal?'

[Keith Maitland]

Commentary by Sarah Perry

Why are drugs, prostitution, gambling and suicide illegal, when they clearly give so much relief to suffering people? I think it is because, at a societal level, we are deluded into thinking that happiness is possible, maybe even easy or likely, without these things. I have called this “cheery social policy.”

The fundamental problem with this sort of cheeriness is the assumption that a good life—a pleasant life—is relatively easy to achieve. Cheery people are able to hold such a belief because they are able to ignore—and perhaps can’t even conceive of—the suffering of a significant minority of the population. A good life is not easily achieved for many of us.

There is a majority belief that we need not use extraordinary means to achieve a happy and meaningful life. Behaviors that deviants engage in, perhaps in pursuit of a tolerable life—weird sex with lots of people, say, or using steroids or marijuana or LSD or benzodiazepines—strike cheery people as perplexing and frightening. For a cheery person, these behaviors are wholly unnecessary. Life is per- fectly tolerable without them. And they increase the risk of harm! Who wants harm?

What the cheery cannot imagine is the importance, the function of these behaviors, and others like them—the pur- suit of the interesting, and the temporary suspension of the intolerability of existence, which intolerability (for many) the cheery do not even perceive, and therefore do not properly weight as a problem.

In a blog post titled “Explanations for Drug War" Jason Roy makes this point with respect to the drug prohibition. He quotes John Gray’s Straw Dogs:

"Drug use is a tacit admission of a forbidden truth. For most people happiness is beyond reach. Fulfillment is found not in daily life but escaping from it. Since happi- ness is unavailable, the mass of mankind seeks pleasure. Religious cultures could admit that earthly life was hard, for they promised another in which all tears would be wiped away. Their humanist successors affirm some- thing still more incredible—that in future, even the near future, everyone can be happy. Societies founded on a faith in progress cannot admit the normal unhappiness of human life. As a result, they are bound to wage war on those who seek an artificial happiness in drugs"

But it is not necessarily the case that prohibitionists think that life is great. It’s that they think it is meaningful—that we are in a story, and it’s worth participating in, win or lose.

The idea that life is inherently worthwhile, and happiness easy to achieve, underlies many social policies, including prohibitions (legal or moral) on suicide, abortion, nonmarital sex, drugs, gambling, and even eating fatty food.

On the other hand, if life were not inherently worthwhile, suicide would be understandable, and bringing a new life into the world would not be an unqualified good, but an uneasy question mark. Sex, drugs, and fun would be appropriate ways to treat oneself for the unwanted condition of life.

[Brownie]

Prostitution (except public soliciting), gambling and suicide are not illegal.  Not all drugs are illegal.

[Leonard James]

"The fundamental problem with this sort of cheeriness is the assumption that a good life—a pleasant life—is relatively easy to achieve. Cheery people are able to hold such a belief because they are able to ignore—and perhaps can’t even conceive of—the suffering of a significant minority of the population. A good life is not easily achieved for many of us."

Bullshit! We can easily live a pleasant life, not asking for too much, and helping those that are less fortunate as much as we can.

It is the hogs that cling to their wealth and flaunt it to the rest of us that are at fault. They have either made their fortunes by taking more than their fair share of profits, or they have inherited their wealth from somebody who did just that.