First of all, let us first find out what I imply with the “common good”:

Every community has a common good: a good that perfects that community as a community, giving its members reasons to cooperate in a variety of ways, a good that all of the members participate in and benefit from as common, not private. You can think of the common good of a family, those ends that make the family flourish not as a mere collection of individuals but precisely as a family and as members of a family. Likewise there’s a common good of a school, a sports team, a religious community, a book club, a business, and every other human community. Human beings form communities in order to pursue certain common ends—the common good of that particular community. We form families to pursue domestic bliss, the generativity of spousal love, and generations of interpersonal connections. We form schools to pursue knowledge, businesses to serve customers while earning profits, churches to worship God and attain holiness. Every single community possesses a common good. A common good to make that community flourish.

Democratic politics should serve the common good, which we understand as the goal of “maintaining conditions and achieving objectives” that benefit all members of society. The individual components of the common good – such as a robust economy or universal health care – are not necessarily shared by everyone. But the goal is to secure these goods for all, and to maintain a democratic process that is valued by all.

All citizens want a better life for themselves and their children; all want security, decent health care, and a good education. By seeking consensus on these common ground desires, politicians believe they can serve the common good without giving up anything valuable to their political opponents.

So, let’s say, that the majority of society demands the legalization of meth. A very controversial and in fact dangerous demand, which logically when having the common sense in mind, would never gain any traction among its citizens. But let’s ignore common sense, ignore anything that comes along with it and let’s take a look at how politics would react to a widespread demand to legalize meth.

By the way, this also does not fall into the aspect of *common good*. The common good implies what is best for its people, no matter what citizens think. You may even view the most recent *intrusion* into our very freedom as an act for the common good by the politicians. Once Covid-19 had broken out here in Europe, the public consensus was clear: “We agree to whatever the government is doing, as long as we contain the virus with it.” In order to preserve the common good, politicians needed to damage both the economy and the freedom of their citizens. Through curfews, general lockdowns and even shutdowns of branches, they tried to combat the virus. That is the prime example you can make to anyone stating politicians only care about money. If they did, they would not have risked their economy stagnating with their decisions. Going back to what I was saying: Society at first favoured the laws to combat Covid. But as time went on, more and more people started to speak out negatively about the government’s decisions. Even when most likely most of society agreed the laws should be pulled back, the government insisted on the regulations. Even after vaccines were widely available, there were still enough regulations that restricted people’s freedom. Why? For the common good, for the citizens. There is no doubt politicians could have handled certain regulations differently but nobody can tell me they were acting out of self-interest or for monetary gain. In fact, the government that was in place here in Germany which had forced these laws on us was ousted. Now a new government is in place. They could have easily avoided that if they had not made any regulations, couldn’t they?

Anyway, let’s dive deeper into a scenario in which society would demand meth legalization. First and foremost, I have already described what the common good implies; In order to prevail and nourish the community, politicians create laws based on the common good. Legalization of something as controversial as meth would have multiple dangerous implications, that WOULD NOT nourish the community of society. Methamphetamine and amphetamine are powerful central nervous system stimulants that can be consumed through a variety of routes. Meth consumption has high risk of addiction. Immediately after consumption, the user experiences a “high”. The “high” declines as time progress and is followed by “crashing,” a period marked by fatigue, hunger, thirst, cravings and some mental confusion. Without taking another dose, the user may show a continued lack of energy, anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure), depression, anxiety, and insomnia. These unpleasant feelings encourage taking repeated doses over extended periods of time. -> Addiction. Long-term effects are changes in the brain that produce damaged memory, mood changes and impaired motor coordination, even months after the user has stopped. A dopamine reduction is also identified. Plenty of methamphetamine users were found with high levels of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and violent or assaultive behaviors. When inhaled, meth can cause serious injury to lung tissue. So all in all a very nasty and dangerous drug. Whilst most currently available “drugs” show less signs to promote addiction, meth on the other hand is extremely aggressive with its stimulation and increase of dopamine levels during consumption. Basically, the brain gets tricked to believe it needs meth to survive. Methamphetamine is a drug somewhat different from others in the drug culture. It has a large domestic production component; its abuse is particularly resistant to treatment interventions because of the protracted impact it has on the user’s brain, even after abstinence is achieved. All of these elements have challenged law enforcement interventions and treatment approaches in their efforts to stop or contain its spread. With that knowledge, politicians would never want to legalize such a dangerous drug. Users would become paralyzed by its effect, which first of all would not make them valuable assets in the community (lack of workers in the economy), families would be ruined, lives destroyed and also not to mention a hell for the healthcare system due to massive psychological and physiological problems.

Even if society deems a change like that to be for *the common good*, scientifically, economically and sociologically it would not be. These factors are all taken into account when politicians create decisions. Let’s say, the government does not bend to the request of society even after massive protests. Now, would that damage the politicians as much as that change would -damage the common good-? No it would not. The government might lose support, and other parties would abuse the opportunity to take that change into their own party program. Who would vote for a party only because they represent one thing that society demands? There are a dozen parties with different views. Here in Germany, we have a party that wanted to legalize weed for ages, and society was indeed rooting towards legalization, however, it could not achieve much traction. Why? Politics are extremely complicated. No matter what one politician decides, one person might be not satisfied with that decision. That is how it goes. Losing one or a ton of voters does not matter as long as the common good is preserved through a controversial change or no change whatsoever.

Had the politicians indeed made the change to legalize meth they would have had more trouble than they would had if they did not legalize it. Had our politicians not cared for the common good during the covid outbreak, then we would have been in trouble. They decided for us, the same way they decide what could be best for us.