THE PROSECUTION RESTS

I am a former federal prosecutor who has investigated and prosecuted
narcotics traffickers. A few of my friends smoke marijuana and use
other recreational drugs, and I have no problem tolerating that. But
would it be unethical of me to use such drugs myself, having helped
imprison drug offenders? I find it difficult to articulate what I find
unethical here, apart from the illegality and feelings of hypocrisy.

Anonymous, California

A chain-smoking family doctor is a hypocrite: she advises patients to
act one way while she acts another. An ethics columnist who preaches
moderation but acts licentiously is a hypocrite, too. But the failure
to practice what you preach doesn't necessarily reveal a lack of
ethics, just a lack of character. Both the hypothetical doctor and the
entirely imaginary columnist know that their advice is good; they
simply lack the strength to follow it themselves.

If you still support the drug laws but can't resist the siren song of
drug use, hypocrisy (and illegality) might account for your
discomfort. But what I infer from your tolerating drug use in friends
and your contemplating it yourself now is that you have come to
believe that those laws are, at best, unwise. If that is so, you are
guilty of worse than hypocrisy. You did not merely give advice - you
helped send people to prison.

A major part of ethics is considering the effects of our actions on
others. Yours did real harm to those you prosecuted. If you acted in
service of policies you now consider unwarranted, you have an ethical
obligation to undo that harm, perhaps by working to free those
currently in jail as a consequence of your efforts, perhaps by helping
to reform the laws that put them there. When you've done harm in the
past - and your query suggests that you now believe you have - your
duty isn't merely to lament, but to make amends.

There is a third possibility. If the laws you enforced regulated
different drugs from those you now regard as benign, no problem. You
might reasonably oppose the use of heroin, for example, while smoking
a little pot on the weekend.