The war on drugs is widely criticized as unjust. The idea that the lawsprohibiting drugs are unjust can easily lead to the conclusion that thoselaws do not deserve our respect, so that our only moral reason to obey themflows from a general moral obligation to obey the law, rather than fromanything morally troubling about drug use itself.In this paper, I argue that this line of thinking is mistaken. I begin byarguing that the drug laws are indeed unjust. However, so long as theyremain prohibited, I argue that we have strong moral reasons to avoid druguse. First, drug users are partly responsible for the violent and exploitativeconditions in which many drugs are produced and distributed. Second,the unequal ways in which drug laws are enforced make drug use by manyan unethical exercise of privilege. These reasons do not depend on theexistence of a general moral obligation to obey the law; we ought to refrainfrom illegal drug use even if prohibition is unjust and even if we have nogeneral obligation to obey the law. In fact, drug laws turn out to representan interesting exception case within the broader debate about thisobligation, and I argue that it is the very injustice of the law that generatesthe reasons not to violate it.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra