Marshall ~
Thanks for that answer.
The reason I asked you earlier if
you personally would become a drug addict if meth were legalized is simply that I do not particularly believe that most human beings are that stupid and that suicidal. You looked into the abyss, and turned back. Most people don't even need to do that much, and are not physically or emotionally wired for addictive behavior in any case. -- and you yourself rightly rejected someone else's argument that you are stronger than the average person. You're just a human being, no better and no worse than the average. Why then assume that the majority of people are worse or weaker than you are yourself?
I am not discounting the tale you told about your friend. There will
always be self-destructive types among us, people who feel compelled to sample this garbage even when it is completely illegal and even when they know they are flirting with jail time, loss of civil rights, and death in order to do it. But there are far, far, far more people who refuse to sample, or who, having sampled, turn away, than there are who become full blown addicts.
Is the only thing that prevents you from shooting yourself in the head the fact that there is a
law against suicide? I honestly doubt it ...
To be utterly clear, I do not think the purpose of law is to restrain self-destructive behavior. I think the only proper use of governmental force is to protect human rights by restraining those who would harm
others. I am hardly alone in this -- see my sig line for an example. This was the type of thinking that founded America, and the type of thinking that underlies America's very foundations. Those foundations are slowly and surely washing away, and I fear the structure itself will not be far behind; but that's a subject for another thread.
Meanwhile, a personal note about the WoD. I won't bother telling you about 92-year-old ladies. Instead I'm going to tell you a somewhat pointless tale about my own family. I live in a country house, miles from town, with my husband and our five children. We have a renter who lives upstairs as well, bringing the household total to eight people. As in most households, whenever one of my children catches cold, the rest of us are not far behind.
This is how ridiculous the WoD has become:
It is literally against the law for us to own enough cold medicine to supply everyone in my household for a single week when we are all sick.
For us, a trip to purchase cold medicine means a 25-minute drive to town, and another 25 minutes to get home again, expending both gasoline and time. When we want to purchase cold medicine, it must be during the day while the pharmacy is open, never at the 24-hour grocery store after the pharmacy windows are closed (when do
your kids get sick?). And, of course, I must show my driver's license to the pharmacist whenever I buy this over-the-counter medicine. The medicine costs roughly six times as much as it did just a few short years ago. It is against the law for me to stock up on the medicine, and it never goes on sale.
There is talk in my state's capital about placing this perfectly safe and effective medicine back onto the prescription-only list. That would increase its cost by a hundred-fold, since it would then require a trip to the doctor's office as well -- for
each sick person, if we did it legally.
Does my family's empty medicine cabinet prevent the spread of meth in my community? It does
not. I still see tweakers with rotted teeth, disgusting skin, and spaced-out smiles wandering around when I go into town. I still read about drug busts in the paper and still hear about contaminated houses costing the landlord a fortune to clean up. Limiting my family's supply of decongestants does not seem to be any more effective than any other measure used to "prevent" these people's access to the means of killing themselves slowly.
Meanwhile, I wonder how many low-income families allow their children simply to suffer needlessly with perpetual congestion, risking sinus infections, permanent hearing damage, pneumonia, or worse, simply because they cannot afford the increased cost of a medicine that
should cost only pennies, and that
did cost only pennies just a few short years ago. I wonder how many do not allow their children to use decongestant because the parents do not want to show their driver's licenses, or fear putting their names on the pharmacists' lists. I hope I am not igniting the whole pro-LEO/anti-LEO debate when I comment that too many people truly fear
any entanglement with our legal system whatsoever, and that placing even a low barrier between these people and this basic, effective medicine which can prevent more complicated diseases seems like a bad idea.
So there we have it. You're convinced that the purpose of law is to restrain people from harming themselves, and to give people some sort of moral guidance about what is good and what is bad. I do not accept that view,
cannot accept that view, and I do not expect to change your mind. But that view has had some unintended ill effects on both our legal system and on individual human beings.
When the next anti-drug campaign urges you all to think of the children and pass a feel-good law even further restricting people's access to an inexpensive modern medicine, I would urge you to think of the children -- that is, of the even higher number of children who are going to end up in the hospital with ruptured eardrums, chronic sinus infections, or pneumonia as a direct result of that law. They won't be counted as casualties in the WoD, but they should be.
pax
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. -– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
