Summary of Chapter 1

In the chapter1 of the book The Legalization of Drugs, the authors Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe stated three things that need to be clarified before talking about the main topic of the book, including decriminalization, the definition of drugs and the recreational use of drugs.
In the decriminalization part, the authors discussed the relationship between punishment and criminalization, they stated that “if we are uncertain about whether any of these state responses is a kind of punishment, we will be uncertain about whether drug ues has been criminalized or decriminalized.”(Husak and Marneffe, 2005, page5) They also mentioned the undergo treatment for drug users, and they believe treatment is simply a different kind of punishment. In addition, they believed that the decriminalization of drugs doesn’t imply that we approve of drug use. Another important point in this part is that “decriminalization itself says nothing about producers or sellers of drugs, we should not regard decriminalization as a comprehensive drug policy.”(Husak and Marneffe, 2005, page9) Finally, Husak and Marneffe presented that “we can be selective about decriminalization”,(Husak and Marneffe, 2005, page13) and we must divide drugs into two categories: those we will criminalize and those we will decriminalize.
In the part about drugs, they talked about the definition of drugs. They believed that the there is no entirely definition of a drug exists; the most frequently seen definition of a drug has a serious problem which is “the definition makes no mention of the law at all”(Husak and Marneffe, 2005, page15). They gave us an example, according to the definition, water and salt could be drugs too. So they thought “we do not have a good idea of what a drug is.”(Husak and Marneffe, 2005, page16)
In the last part of Chapter 1 of the book, Husak and Marneffe recommended the purpose for the drug is used. Firstly, they stated that the purpose of a drug use is important, people may be punished when they use the same drug for a nonmedical purpose. Moreover, they talked about the distinction between medical and recreational drug use and they believed it’s becoming more difficult to draw everyday.