Aristotle's View On Drugs?

Hummanity today is struck with the undeniable truth of drugs being an epidemic seen across the country. The question that is left with our society is the dawning debate if drugs should be legal or illegal. There are many differencing opinions on this topic by many notable people but one that will be focused on in this essay is the wise and educated Aristotle and what his view point on drugs would be like in today's society based on his beliefs. Aristotle would be against the legalization of drugs because of virtue and the Golden Mean.

To begin, Aristotle had a particular view about a person achieving happiness which was by being virtuous. Aristotle presented two different types of being virtuous according to Doing Ethics by Lewis Vaughn
What Aristotle is explaining here is that in order to be virtuous you have to be intellectually and morally virtuous. Both of which would include intellectual as having wisdom, rationality, and prudence while moral would include loyalty and honesty. With this being the evidence presented by Aristotle, he would argue that drugs should be illegal due to that taking drugs does not make a person intellectually or morally prosperous. Drugs inhibit the brain from functioning and deform the way we think and process information which inhibits us from having wisdom and being rational. Referencing to the Doing Ethics book James Q. Wilson described in his essay Against the Legalization of Drugs, "'bingeing' on cocaine...users become uninhibited, impulsive, hypersexual, compulsive, irritable, and hyperactive. Their moods vacillate dramatically, leading at times to violence and homicide" (371-372). This neither describes a morally virtuous person or an intellectually virtuous person. When a person is under the influence of any drug they are their brain functionality is inhibited which doesn't make you rational or
The Golden Mean is basically two extremes that are between excess and deficiency. According to Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics it states, "This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, danger and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstance" (148). How this relates to the topic of drugs is that if we do not legalize drugs as a whole and there are no exceptions of use of it would be a deficiency. Then, it is not legalized but some people still use drugs would be moderate. Finally, legalizing drugs and making them all readily available would then be an excess which doesn't follow the Golden Mean. Aristotle believes in the middle of the deficiency and the excess of something. An excess of drugs in other words would be going against Aristotle's belief of the Golden Mean which would again, support Aristotle's argue of making drugs