Editing Thomas Szasz (section)

===Right to drugs===

According to Szasz, [[drug addiction]] is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs but a social habit. Szasz also argued in favor of a free market for drugs. He criticized the [[war on drugs]], arguing that using drugs is in fact a [[victimless crime]]. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He argued that the war on drugs leads states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants, e.g. [[coca eradication]] plans, or the campaigns against [[opium]]; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world. Although Szasz was skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favored the repeal of [[drug prohibition]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Klein|first=Daniel B.|date=1993|title=[Book Review] Our Right to Drugs: A Case for a Free Market|url=http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/bookreviewofSzasz.pdf|journal=Southern Economic Journal|volume=59|issue=3|pages=552–553|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161225040053/http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/bookreviewofSzasz.pdf|archive-date=December 25, 2016|doi=10.2307/1060304|jstor=1060304}}</ref>

Szasz also drew analogies between the persecution of the drug-using minority and the persecution of Jewish and homosexual minorities.

{{Blockquote |text=The Nazis spoke of having a "Jewish problem". We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, "Jewish problem" was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; "drug-abuse problem" is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs. |author=Szasz in ''The Second Sin'' (1973)<ref name="Szasz1973">{{cite book |last=Szasz |first=Thomas Stephen |title=The Second Sin |year=1973 |ol=24219110M |publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul |isbn=0710077572}}</ref>{{rp|64}} }}

Szasz cites former U.S. Representative [[James M. Hanley]]'s reference to drug users as "vermin", using "the same metaphor for condemning persons who use or sell illegal drugs that the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews by poisoned gas—namely, that the persecuted persons are not human beings, but "vermin."{{Sfn|Ceremonial Chemistry (2003)|p=15}}