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Abstract
The ‘right’ to use drugs is often seen as a question of freedom and debates about ‘drugs and freedom’ frequently take place on the terrain of moral and political philosophy. In this article, it is argued that there is a different, and more critically significant, link between drugs and freedom that can be made. It is suggested that the two exist in a constitutive relation, so that drugs and the drug question cannot be fully understood or grasped outside the integral ties that connect them with freedom. The argument is illustrated by two examples–the emergence of the disease model of addiction at the turn of the 20th century and the present-day ‘Tough Choices’ project a century later. Some theoretical and research implications of this argument are considered in conclusion.
Notes
Notes
[1] Key works in this literature include: Levine (Citation1978), Peele (Citation1985, Citation1990), Davies (Citation1992), Cohen (Citation2000), Reinarman (Citation2005).
[2] Levine (Citation1978) argues that in relation to alcohol the disease model was initially developed somewhat earlier in the context of the temperance movement in the early to mid-nineteenth century. This was then extended to other substances such as opium in the latter part of the century as described here.
[3] Although beyond the scope of this short article, it is worth noting that historians have also charted the more general rise of the role of experts and of expertise in government during the late Victorian period (e.g. MacLeod Citation2003).