On the Moral Right to Get High

"Lovering presents a sophisticated but readable defense of the moral permissibility of recreational drug use. Many authors have argued that laws against drug use are unjust. But Lovering offers persuasive reasons to reject the more basic claim that drug use is wrongful. Academics and laypersons will benefit greatly from his comprehensive and careful analysis." —Douglas Husak, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus), Rutgers University, USA “In On the Moral Right to Get High, Rob Lovering provides an extraordinarily comprehensive and detailed defense of the claim that recreational drug use is morally permissible. After reading this book, few will be able to disagree.” —Peter de Marneffe, Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State University, USA Is getting high immoral? In this book, Rob Lovering defends the claim that it is not. More specifically, he argues that recreational drug use (of which getting high is a token) is neither intrinsically, nor generally extrinsically, immoral. In other words, he contends that recreational drug use is neither immoral in and of itself nor generally immoral due to an immoral-making factor with which it may be contingently linked [e.g., harm]. Lovering does so by offering two arguments for recreational drug use’s ultima facie (all things considered) moral permissibility and critiquing twenty-four arguments for its immorality. Meant to be a companion to Lovering's A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), which was written for a general audience, this book is written for an academic—specifically, philosophical—audience and explores recreational drug use in a deeper, more philosophically and empirically rigorous way. Rob Lovering is Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York, USA. His books include God and Evidence: Problems for Theistic Philosophers (2013), A Moral Defense of Recreational Drug Use (2015), A Moral Defense of Prostitution (2021), and The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoactive Drug Use (2024).