Diatribe over at his blog Personal Responsibility posts an article about the city of San Francisco setting up facilities to enable drug usage. An anonymous poster writes:

Interesting to observe the newly ignited uproar about the safe drug injection center: interesting, puzzling, and in case of diatribe’s heightened upsetness even amusing. I didn’t expect you to reflect on this issue in a way other than you reflected, thereby ignoring that those places have PROVEN to significantly reduce the death counts among drug addicts, to improve the reachability of the drug addicts for treatment programs, to reduce addiction-related infections, ETC. The list of benefits of this program is definitely longer than its disadvantages (and, as it seems, the only disadvantage you think of is the potential danger that those centers have on YOU and your safety - so purely personal objections). I’m not pulling these facts out of my head - the sucessful practice of drug injection centers is widelely known in Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

If you ask me the problem here is that the state is condoning drug usage. A Rather contradictory position given it has explicitly forbidden drug usage through laws forbidding trafficking and possession. Oddly, this serves as a good example of the problem of localizing power to the city level. Here we have a city blatantly violating the spirit of the federal laws primarily because the local population has naïve views about drug users and quixotic view about intrinsic human dignity. Personally I find no problem with a local city using power this way, but someone like Darwin could use this example to show how federal entities are necessary to insure federal laws are not violated by local governments.

One of the disincentives of drug usage is the profound ostracization one receives when doing hard core drugs. These facilitates begin the process of removing the extreme stigma associated with drug usage. It sends the message that the state is willing to tolerate heavy drug usage. I prefer no institute be it private or public to reduce this cost simply for the sake of ‘saving lives’. Particularly, the lives of those happily willing to throw them away on drugs. Besides reduction in cost will likely lead to increased drug users.

There is another problem with this kind of attitude. By creating facilitates to enable drug usage the state is taking the position that drug usage is something that must be managed and not something to be eliminated. While I would agree that drug usage can never be eliminated, I’m not so sure I want the state to behave in this fashion. If the state is going to address the drug problem, which I would prefer it refrain from, then I would want it to work towards eliminating it instead of managing it. I would much rather have tax money spent on reducing drug usage than maintaining an acceptable amount of drug users that partly on my dime, indulge in drug usage in perpetuity.

Furthermore, by having the state manage drug usage the rhetoric about drug usage changes from being about a choice to being about determination. One manages things they have no control over while they attempt to overcome those things they think they can control. By treating the drug usage as something that should be managed you take away one’s choice in doing drugs. However, I want the responsibility of doing drugs to be placed squarely on the user. In private conversation I would happily accept the notion that some drugs are so addictive that choice is unrealistic, but when dealing with actual drug users the issue should always be framed as a matter of choice. State managing chronic drug usage implies that the responsibility of drug usage is no longer in the hands of the user.

At the end of the day, I don’t find attenuating the extreme ostracization society brings down on users is justified by ‘saving the lives’ of some drug users. One of the costs to doing drugs is an increased chance of death. Its one of the reasons I don’t do drugs. I’m not really into reducing this cost simply for the sake of saving lives of those that choose to throw their life away on drugs. If you want to reduce death by drug usage use state resources to reduce drug usage rather than manage it.