Blog assignment No 4, Should we legalize illegal drugs for medical purposes?

Should we legalize illegal drugs for medical purposes?

First I want to stress upon that there is a profound difference between “liberalize” the use of now illegal drugs and to “legalize” it.

To liberalize the use is to let it free, which means to let a drug addicted person take the full responsibility for his/her use, abuse or addiction and of the consequences. The state is no longer responsible for what happens to the drug addicted or can act against e.g. smuggling, while all trade with a legal drug then is free. No limits of production, trade or import is desired by the “liberals”, who want to let the individual freely choose kind of drug and also thus make the individual fully responsible for the extent, way or place of consuming this drug. The liberals also want to abolish all limits against free trade and purchase of alcohol.

To legalize an illegal drug, is to decriminalize the use of it, but not necessarily to let it completely free. Many legalizers can accept some kind of control regarding where the drug can possibly be sold, like in a drugstore. Some want to legalize the use of so called 'soft' drugs but not necessarily ‘hard’ drugs. Others want to focus on sellers and only decriminalize the use of the drug.

Today many drugs are illegal, while they are regarded being harmful to human being. Still some of them are refined and used for various medical purposes, like opium: The drug in its raw form is prohibited, although some cultivation is allowed for medical use. Codeine and morphine are examples of opium derivatives, used in health- and medical care.

Heroine, once introduced as a non-harmful replacement for morphine in order to cure addiction to morphine, is a half synthetic derivative from opium with no medical use and is therefore forbidden. Methadone is a 100 % synthetic substitute for heroine against heroine addiction. Methadone is also prescribed to cancer patients as an analgesic.

Cultivation of the cannabis plant is allowed only for medical research or horticultural or fibre purposes, according to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs from 1961. In the preamble of the convention, medical use of narcotic drugs in general terms is being mentioned:


"PREAMBLE
The Parties,
Concerned with the health and welfare of mankind,
Recognizing that the medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering and that adequate provision must be made to ensure the availability of narcotic drugs for such purposes,"


The convention thus recognizes the use of a drug or its derivative for medical purposes. That, however, means that a strict legal framework must surround the production, utterly in order to prevent self-medication, abuse and addiction, which is considered to be risky and harmful to the individual. The initiative to the convention was taken by an Egyptian, while the patients in Egyptian mental hospitals to a great extent were treated for illnesses related to cannabis-abuse.

I think that the intentions that underlie the Single Convention are good. I think we need a framework that regulates production of illicit drugs. Legalizing illicit drugs is also associated with problems such as how to declare the efficacious substances. Cannabis, for instance, consists by more than sixty psychotropic substances, of which THC is one and also the most important for the euphoric effect, however the others have effect as well and also interact with each other and with THC in an unpredictable way. Alcoholic drinks only have one intoxicating substance, namely alcohol, which is easy to indicate the percentage of.

Although alcoholic drinks are intoxicating liquors, they have a long tradition in our northern countries - from heating the body in the cold winter and making a child fall asleep to cure a beginning cold. People also know how to produce an alcoholic drink, like wine, in the home. Still alcohol is not "liberalized", i.e. free, but instead "legalized", i.e. surrounded by several laws, which regulate everything from where to sell it, age limit both for consumption and purchase, import limits and so on.

My opinion is that psychotropic drugs with unpredictable effects and drugs where use convey a brisk risk for sudden deaths or have proved to convey high mortality also in small amounts, also in the future shall be prohibited. Use for medical purposes should thus be in a controlled way, in order to avoid undesired side effects, where medically active substances either have been derived or, where use of the original drug is allowed, prescribed on medical indication by a doctor, but as an exception and not as a matter of routine.