from "Socio-political theses on drugs", Brussels 1988

ABSTRACT: According to Savater, the "persecution against drugs is an offspring of religious persecution": "what is nothing but consumption and satisfaction is judged to be unacceptable socially because it is perceived as a gratuitous waste"...

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 4 November 1993)

The persecution against drugs is an offspring of religious persecution: today physical health is the lay substitute for spiritual salvation. Drugs have always been used for religious reasons, but in the past they were accused because of the orgiastic effects - i.e. the effects they produced on the soul and on customs, and not on the effects on the body - infirmity, cost for remedies, unproductiveness, death - and on working activities. This spurs a fear of the spirit (what do we have inside which drugs can unleash?) and a fear of a lapse of productivity (this is generally referred to as "public health").

Obviously there are drugs that can be dangerous (such as rock climbing, car racing or working in a mine) or harmful (such as sexual excesses, dancing or political credulity, or, even more, wars).

People have died, are dying and will continue to die because of drugs. But we should bear in mind a few things:

a) that the life they lose belongs to them, not to the state or to the community;

b) that their death can be attributed not to the substance itself which they intend to take but to the contamination of the same, to lack of information on its composition and dosage, to the crime that surrounds drug traffic because of prohibition, etc. Drug users who want to kick their mania (we all have our manias, until we perceive them as harmful or we feel the desire to quit them) obviously have the right to be helped by society; much in the same way people might want to divorce, change religion, change their sex or renounce terrorism. Society exists to help, within its possibilities, individuals realize their aspirations and rectify their mistakes, not to sacrifice them punitively to the idols of the tribe.

Rehabilitation costs money, but sometime society requires efforts from each of its members, and we all provide it with money thinking that this money can have the purpose precisely of subduing the effects of the inconveniences - natural or caused by misuse - which occur in our quest for personal satisfaction.

There are labour accidents at times, but as far as I know no one has ever suggested banning work or road traffic because of road accidents. Because what is produced is deemed necessary, any losses are justified; vice versa, what is considered to be mere consumption and gratification is judged unjustified socially because it is perceived as a gratuitous dissipation. No thesis is more totalitarian and antidemocratic. This is the way in which public hostility to the individual intimacy that should justify the collective one is expressed.