Drug Prohibition

Drug prohibition refers to laws and policies that criminalize the production, distribution, sale, possession, or use of specified psychoactive substances. The term is most commonly applied to the prohibition of substances such as cannabis, cocaine, opioids, and hallucinogens, though it is sometimes used more narrowly to refer to specific historical episodes, such as the prohibition of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933 under the Eighteenth Amendment. The scope and justification of drug prohibition - which substances should be prohibited, to what degree, and on what grounds - is contested; see Viewpoints below.

Most countries maintain some form of drug prohibition, typically administered through a combination of criminal law, scheduling or classification systems, and international treaty obligations. The United Nations' Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971), and Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) establish a framework that most member states have implemented domestically, though enforcement intensity, scheduling decisions, and penalties vary widely by jurisdiction.

Since the late twentieth century, a number of jurisdictions have moved away from full prohibition for specific substances, particularly cannabis. Portugal decriminalized personal possession of all drugs in 2001, treating low-level possession as an administrative rather than criminal matter. Several U.S. states have legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use despite continued federal prohibition, and Canada, Uruguay, Germany, and other countries have legalized or substantially liberalized cannabis policy. Other jurisdictions, particularly in parts of Asia and the Middle East, maintain strict prohibition with severe penalties, including capital punishment in some cases for trafficking offenses.

The historical development of drug prohibition - including the temperance movement, early twentieth-century U.S. narcotics laws, and the global expansion of prohibition through international treaty - is treated in drug-prohibition-history.

• Prohibitionist Viewpoint: Holds that criminalizing production, sale, and use of specified drugs is justified by the harms these substances cause to users, families, and communities, and that legal prohibition reduces availability and consumption relative to legalization.
• Libertarian/Individualist Viewpoint: Holds that competent adults have a right to govern their own bodies, including the choice to use psychoactive substances, and that the state has no legitimate authority to criminalize self-regarding conduct that does not directly harm others.
• Harm Reduction Viewpoint: Holds that drug use is an enduring feature of human societies and that policy should focus on minimizing the health and social harms of use (e.g., needle exchanges, supervised consumption sites, decriminalization) rather than on elimination through criminal enforcement.
• Public Health Viewpoint: Holds that drug use is primarily a medical and public health issue rather than a criminal one, favoring treatment, regulation, and taxation models (comparable to alcohol or tobacco regulation) over criminal penalties.
• Traditionalist/Social Order Viewpoint: Holds that prohibition serves a function beyond direct harm reduction by reinforcing social norms and communal standards of conduct, and that removing legal prohibition erodes those norms regardless of individual-level harm calculations.
• Racial and Social Justice Viewpoint: Holds that drug prohibition has been enforced disproportionately against minority and low-income populations and that this disparate enforcement is itself a central reason to reform or end prohibition.

• The "War on Drugs" Controversy: Dispute over the origins, conduct, costs, and effectiveness of U.S.-led drug enforcement policy since the 1970s, including its domestic and international consequences.
• Opioid Crisis and Prescription Regulation Controversy: Dispute over the role of prohibition, prescription regulation, and pharmaceutical marketing practices in the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic.
• Cannabis Scheduling Controversy: Dispute over the classification of cannabis under U.S. federal law (and analogous schedules elsewhere) given state-level legalization and evolving scientific evidence on its risks and uses.

• History of Drug Prohibition
• Debate: Does Legalization Reduce or Increase Net Harm?
• Viewpoint Debate: Prohibitionist vs. Libertarian
• Consensus: Health Outcomes of Decriminalization Models
• Alcohol Prohibition in the United States
• Harm Reduction

1. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, *Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the 1972 Protocol* (New York: United Nations, 1972).
2. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, *Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971* (Vienna: United Nations, 1971).
3. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, *United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988* (Vienna: United Nations, 1988).
4. Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens, “What Can We Learn from the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?,” *British Journal of Criminology* 50, no. 6 (2010): 999-1022.
5. David T. Courtwright, *Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).