Abstract
Drug policy in the United States, as in most other countries, takes a criminal justice approach, using punishment to achieve its goals. So, in this chapter we consider whether drug users or drug traffickers should be punished. To answer these questions, we first need to determine why, and under what conditions, the state is justified in punishing lawbreakers. The two most popular theories of punishment are the retributive theory and the consequentialist theory. According to the retributive theory, we are justified in punishing wrongdoers because they deserve to suffer. By contrast, the consequentialist theory justifies punishment because punishing lawbreakers promotes the public good, in particular by deterring other would-be criminals. Both theories have their weaknesses. Principles of punishment laid out by Jeremy Bentham cast doubt on the claim that deterrence justifies punishing drug use. It is less clear whether this argument applies to drug trafficking. As for the retributive argument, it would justify punishing users and traffickers only under the questionable assumption that selling or using drugs is morally wrong per se.
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Notes
- 1.
For a more thorough argument, see [1, pp. 52–53].
- 2.
This is a theory about the nature of laws and legal statues, not to be confused with the “natural law” moral theory discussed in Chap. 3.
- 3.
This might be a bit of an overstatement. There are a few scholars who argue that we should abolish punishment—for example, Deirdre Golash [3].
- 4.
See also Richard Joyce [7].
- 5.
Stephen Nathanson makes a similar point [9].
- 6.
His reasoning was that we are at war with the drug trade, and so even casual use constitutes treason. I suppose that means that if we were at war with Italy, he would support the extrajudicial killing of Fiat drivers.
- 7.
For the record, critics of Singapore’s draconian criminal system argue that the reason for the low crime rate has little to do with harsh criminal penalties and more to do with the country’s low poverty rate and its top-notch education and healthcare systems.
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Meyers, C. (2023). Crime and Punishment. In: Drug Legalization . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17005-8_9
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