Should we legalise (part 1)... Recreational Drugs

Episode 30 of the Morality of Everyday Things is now live (and part 1 of our 'Should we legalize?' series)

Episode 30 is now live. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts and more.

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Should we legalise (part 1)... Recreational Drugs

In this episode, we begin a series (of 3 episodes) exploring the intersection of morality and public policy; generally of the form 'should X be made legal?'. We'll be exploring both the ethical arguments and some of the high level data around key policy decisions surrounding commonly banned substances and activities. A core introductory theme (and one that's consistently touched on through the series) is when and how a governing power should behave independent of morality, i.e. with a greater focus and interest in outcomes and evidence, and when the banning or legalizing of substances are perhaps more important as value statements than as policy approaches whose outcomes we should study. Ultimately, this a spectrum and we will all have different views on this, even from issue to issue.

We begin by assessing the legality of recreational drugs (recreational vs performance enhancing or medical use cases). Recreational drugs are widely available legally, such as alcohol, but a large number of substances are actually prohibited (particularly many discovered/popularized within the last century or so). Why? If I can drink myself to death and our society can widely celebrate drinking culture, is it so bad if some people dabble in the use of other substances? Maybe some of these have a particular ability to cloud our judgement and limit our freedom. All of this, and more, discussed this week.

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Until next time!

Jake & Ant