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253
John Stuart Mill
and the Liberty
of Inebriation
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R
ICHARD
G
LEN
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OIRE
A
s an important nineteenth or twentieth century work on political and social
theory, John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty (
͓1859͔ 1975) is considered to be
second only to the Communist Manifesto. Written in the midst of the grow-
ing political power of Christian temperance groups pushing for alcohol prohibition
and speaking directly to the issue of the rights of individuals and the limits of author-
itarian control, On Liberty is a seminal antiprohibition text, which assumes ever
greater importance and relevance when considered in the context of today’s $19 bil-
lion “war on drugs.”
Drafted in the tumult of the first societal debates over alcohol prohibition, Mill’s
essay examines “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised
by society over the individual” (3) and is one of the earliest political statements against
drug prohibition as well as a vindication of cognitive liberty. On Liberty was published
in 1859 but was penned in 1855, only four years after the state of Maine enacted the
first law in the United States prohibiting the sale of alcohol, an action that kicked off
a wave of prohibition laws in the country. By 1855, thirteen states had passed alcohol
prohibition laws, and the American Temperance Society had long since shifted from a
call for “temperance” to a demand for wholesale prohibition. In England, where Mill
wrote, the United Kingdom Alliance of Legislative Suppression of the Sale of Intoxi-
cating Liquors sprang up in 1853, and it used the Maine law as a model in pushing for
alcohol prohibition in England. Thus, it is not surprising that Mill’s consideration of
The Independent Review, v.VII, n.2, Fall 2002, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2002, pp. 253– 258.
Richard Glen Boire
is the executive director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in Davis, Cal-
ifornia.
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the rights of individuals vis-à-vis society and the government, forged in the midst of
such heated social controversy, would confront directly the important question of
cognitive liberty.
“The object of this Essay,” wrote Mill, “ is to assert one very simple principle . . .
that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in
interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection . . .
͓that
is
͔ to prevent harm to others” (10–11). Government interference, wrote Mill, is
appropriate only when a person engages in conduct that threatens the interests of oth-
ers. What happens inside a person’s body or mind is that person’s private business, not
the business of society and certainly not the business of the government. He expressed
this point unambiguously: “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individ-
ual is sovereign” (11).
So long as a person’s decision and subsequent conduct did not threaten others
with harm, Mill considered the person’s action to lie within a protected “region of
human liberty” (13). Encompassed within this domain of liberty is:
the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of thought and
feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practi-
cal or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological . . . liberty of tastes and
pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing
as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impedi-
ment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm
them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or
wrong. (13)
For Mill, a society that refuses to recognize and respect this sphere of liberty is
not a free society, and laws that invade this province are unjustifiable; freedom
demands this protected domain. “The only freedom which deserves the name,” writes
Mill, “is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt
to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it” (14).
Mill was quick to emphasize that these principles apply only to adults. Children,
while they are still under the care of an adult, “must be protected against their own
actions as well as against external injury” (12), and it is therefore appropriate for soci-
ety or the government to act paternalistically toward them. Mill also acknowledges
and repeatedly underscores that when a person’s behavior does directly affect other
people, it is, by its very nature, social conduct and thus becomes an appropriate object
for social and government control.
The roots of alcohol prohibition grew out of Protestant Christianity. In 1832,
James Teare, founder of the Preston General Temperance Society in England, was
speaking for many temperance advocates of the time when he took the floor at a tem-
perance meeting in Manchester and declared all intoxicating liquor anathema to reli-
gious people: “the sooner it is put out of this world, the better” (qtd. in Inglis 1975,
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137). Not surprisingly, therefore, woven throughout On Liberty are subtle and not so
subtle jabs at both the timidity (“essentially a doctrine of passive obedience”
͓48͔) and
the coerciveness of Christianity. Religion, says Mill, is an “engine of moral repression”
(14), seeking “control over every department of human conduct” (14). In some of
his harshest words, Mill admonishes:
Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in
great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than pos-
itive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Absti-
nence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as
has been well said) “thou shalt not” predominates unduly over “thou
shalt.” In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has
been gradually compromised away into one of legality. (47–48)
Mill’s objection to the Christianity of the mid–nineteenth century fundamentally was
to its complete capitulation to authority, coupled with its all-encompassing dogma-
tism and a singular way of conceiving of the world. These latter traits, Mill believed,
often led its followers to suppress eccentricity, individuality, original thought, and
simple pleasures.
On Liberty champions responsible alcohol inebriation as a private pleasure,
which the government has no authority to interfere with as long as the drinker is not
harming another person. Provided that a person’s conduct does not affect the inter-
ests of other people, writes Mill, that person should have “perfect freedom, legal and
social, to do the action and stand the consequences” (70).
Mill rejects challenges that assert that a person’s actions inherently have some
effect on society or that an act that harms the individual also harms society. Mill
responds to these challenges on two levels. First, he acknowledges that if a person’s
“self-regarding” conduct disables him from performing some public duty or produces
identifiable harm to another person, then that conduct properly cannot be considered
“self-regarding,” and society may control or punish the person. Using alcohol intox-
ication as an example, Mill explains: “No person ought to be punished simply for
being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on
duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage,
either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty,
and placed in that of morality or law” (76). To the extent that the “harm” to others
from drinking alcohol is amorphous or that the drinker violates no specific duty, Mill
views the ancillary “harm” from the drinker’s action as an “inconvenience . . . which
society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom” (76).
In essence, Mill views the temperance challenge as embodying a Puritanical per-
spective that considers innumerable self-regarding actions to be morally wrong and
thus inherently injurious to the society. He rejects this position as religious moraliz-
ing cloaked in claims for social policy. As an example, he quotes the secretary of the
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United Kingdom Alliance for the Legislative Suppression of the Sale of Intoxicating
Liquors, who wrote:
If anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink
does. It destroys my primary right of security, by constantly creating and
stimulating social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a
profit from the creation of a misery I am taxed to support. It impedes my
right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path
with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing society, from which I
have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse. (83)
Mill calls the secretary’s definition of social rights a “monstrous principle” (83) that,
if accepted, would vitiate the meaning of liberty entirely: “there is no violation of lib-
erty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever. . . .
The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellec-
tual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his
own standard” (84).
Although Mill is perfectly capable of presenting his argument in theoretical
terms, he turns his attention to what he calls “gross usurpations upon the liberty of
private life actually practiced” (82) and without equivocation responds to efforts
under way at that time to prohibit the drinking of alcohol:
Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English
colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law
from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical pur-
poses: for prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibi-
tion of their use. And though the impracticability of executing the law has
caused its repeal in several of the States which had adopted it . . . an attempt
has notwithstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable
zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in
this country. (82–83)
Mill acknowledges that selling alcohol is a social act because it inherently involves a
buyer and a seller, but, as he notes, the underlying aim of the laws that prohibit sales
of alcohol is to squelch the use of alcohol. “
͓T͔he infringement complained of is not
on the liberty of the seller,” notes Mill, “but on that of the buyer and consumer; since
the state might just as well forbid him to drink wine as purposely make it impossible
for him to obtain it” (83). Mill remarks that when a “trade law” has the effect of pro-
hibiting a commodity, it is really a prohibition law in disguise.
Similarly, Mill is skeptical of so-called sin taxes, which artificially inflate the price
of a product in order to discourage its use. Such a tax, he explains, “is a prohibition,
to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price; and to those who do,
it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying a particular taste” (93). A person’s “choice
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of pleasures,” writes Mill, ought to be each person’s “own concern, and must rest
with
͓his͔ own judgment” (93). Ultimately, however, Mill would permit a special tax
on products such as alcohol, but only to the extent that the tax increased revenue for
the government. A “sin tax” would be inappropriate if set so high that it actually dis-
suaded a sufficient number of buyers so as to result in a decrease in total tax revenues
from sales of the product.
With respect to items that can be abused, such as “poisons,” Mill notes that
“there is hardly any part of the legitimate form of action of a human being which
would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for
some form or other of delinquency” (89). Thus, if a person desires to purchase a poi-
son, it is inappropriate for the government to enjoin the purchase merely because the
person might abuse the poison or use it to commit a crime. Instead, the laws should
stop after requiring that drugs and poisons be labeled with cautionary statements.
Mill does not believe that doctors should be the gatekeepers to drugs, noting that
“
͓t͔o require in all cases the certificate of a medical practitioner would make it some-
times impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article for legitimate uses” (90). At
most, any adults who wish to purchase such an item may be required to register their
name, address, and an explanation of why they are purchasing a particular item.
Although Mill firmly believes it would be an illegitimate use of power for the
government to prohibit inebriation based on a inchoate concern that an inebriated
person might cause harm to others, he reasonably concedes that if an inebriated per-
son does harm another person, then the government rightfully may prohibit that per-
son from becoming inebriated in the future. “Drunkenness,” Mill explains, “in ordi-
nary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I should deem it perfectly
legitimate that a person, who had once been convicted of any act of violence to oth-
ers under the influence of drink, should be placed under a special legal restriction, per-
sonal to himself; that if he were afterwards found drunk, he should be liable to a
penalty. . . . The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do
harm to others, is a crime against others” (90).
On Liberty even considers whether the government properly may regulate pubs
where alcohol is served. In this regard, Mill concludes that because such places are
necessarily social and because public harms associated with drunkenness are more
likely to occur in or near such establishments (at least relative to other public places),
the government may regulate them, setting closing times and restricting operating
licenses to “persons of known or vouched-for respectability” (94). Any other restric-
tions, however, including setting a limit on how many pubs may exist in any given
area, would be overreaching. Such a limit “for the express purpose of rendering them
more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only
exposes all to an inconvenience . . . but is suited only to a state of society in which the
labouring classes are avowedly treated as children or savages” (94).
On Liberty stands as a classic document in defense of individual freedom, as rel-
evant and persuasive today as it was in 1859. All elected officials, jurists, and public-
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policy makers should read On Liberty, along with the Bill of Rights. Whereas modern-
day politicians, entranced by the “war on drugs,” rapaciously violate “the inward
domain of consciousness” (13) by imposing ever more drug prohibitions and placing
hundreds of thousands of citizens behind bars for drug offenses, On Liberty power-
fully avows that a government grossly exceeds its legitimate power when it interferes
with matters of the mind and the interior condition of its citizenry.
References
Inglis, Brian. 1975. The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons.
Mill, John Stuart.
͓1859͔ 1975. On Liberty. Edited by David Spitz. Toronto: W. W. Norton.
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