John Stuart Mill and the liberty of inebriation.

• Author: Boire, Richard Glen

As an important nineteenth or twentieth century work on political and social theory, John Smart Mill's essay On Liberty ([1859] 1975) is considered to be second only to the Communist Manifesto. Written in the midst of the growing 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 authoritarian control, On Liberty is a seminal antiprohibition text, which assumes ever greater importance and relevance when considered in the context of today's $19 billion "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 Intoxicating 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 rights of individuals vis-a-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 others. 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 individual 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, practical 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...