Illegal Drug Usage and the Role of the State - Essay Example

Section/# Illegal Drug Usage and the Role of the (3) Under what conditions is it permissible to for the to prevent people from consuming what they want to consume? Explain and defend your answer to this question, and then explain what implications it has for drug legalization. For purposes of this brief response, this student has chosen to review prompt three with regards to the legality and permissibility of the state to regulate what substances an individual can consume within its borders. As such, this brief analysis will argue that the state has no rights or moral privileges granted by law that it should have the ability to mandate the way in which its citizens engage in recreational drug usage as long as such a practice does not develop into any activities that in themselves break other laws that the State is sworn to uphold and defend. The logical question that one might ask with relation to the drug laws relates to two primary premises. The first of which is concentric up on the question of what document or law allows the state to determine what substances should and should not be termed legal. The second premise is concentric upon the level of freedom and personal responsibility should be championed over the ability of the state to restrict certain substances. This brief essay will discuss these premises and attempt to draw an overall level of inference from them as a means of adequately answering prompt 3 that has been enumerated on above. The first premise of such an argument necessarily is concentric upon the fact that there is no legal basis for the government/state to restrict an individual with regards to the substance that he or she chooses to engage. The fact of the matter is that the state/government or municipality does not have any directive or legal obligation to infringe upon such an area of personal responsibility as to what substance a given individual can and cannot be in possession of for strictly personal consumption. The second premise has to do with the level of freedom and responsibility that a democratic society purports to espouse. As such, if a democratic society encourages personal responsibility at the expense of promoting a litany of laws defining what actions can and cannot be engaged upon, it is the ultimate responsibility of the user to ensure that their actions do not break any other laws nor endanger the lives of any of their fellow citizens. As a causal mechanism to help understand this premise one need only to consider the current litany of rules that help to define the use of alcohol within our current society. Alcohol itself is heavily licensed, restricted for sale to minors and probationers, and further governed by a stringent level of laws that seek to define the way in which individuals within society can imbibe of it and in so doing revoke their rights to operate machinery or engage in other forms of nominally responsible activities which could endanger the lives of their fellow citizens. Those that do not agree with such a premise would argue that due to the fact that drugs are inherently destructive to the person’s overall health, it is the responsibility of the state to regulate such substances and outlaw them as a means to protect the health of society. Unfortunately, such an argument is a very slippery slope as it encourages a form of judicial activism with very few constraints. As a wider and wider swath of society becomes active in encouraging key food groups to be outlawed, soda sizes to be decreased, and a litany of other actions, it is easy to see that the level to which personal responsibility I championed is steadily decreasing; whereas the level to which the law is relied upon to enforce a sense of morality upon the populace is seemingly ever increasing. The slippery slope argument that has been referenced with relation to unhealthful food is more than just a means to illicit a response from the reader. Municipalities and governments around the world are beginning to mandate what foods their citizenry can and cannot eat. Although this is done out of a desire to improve the overall health of the populace, it is performed at the great expense of personal liberty and freedom. In this way, With regards to drug legalization, the previous arguments come out in strong favor of legalizing any and all substances and placing the burden of the consequences squarely on the shoulders of those that use such substances. In much the same way that alcohol is mandated, drugs themselves can be mandated so as to create a level of personal responsibility within society while at the same time seeking to enforce any and all tangential laws that might be broken. Moreover, seeking to outlaw or prohibit certain substances is patently counter-productive as the fruits of what prohibition effects are evidenced throughout our own history within the United States (Barnett 14). As a means of answering the prompt, it is the firm belief of this student, from the premises that have been weighed, that it is never within the rights of the state to restrict a substance to the citizen. One need only look at the fact that such a restriction only serves to create a type of prohibition that has been proven not to work throughout the course of human history. In this way, rather than merely relying on the state to enforce the substances that it deems best for the overall health of society, health itself should be championed and citizens should be made aware of the implications that face their own health with regards to the substances they imbibe. Rather than legislating such an action with verifiably little success, it should be up to the personal responsibility of the individual citizen to determine how they will handle their own health and work to ensure that the choices they make will be responsible ones for both the individual as well as those within society that might be affected in some way by the choices that are made. Work Cited Barnett, Randy E. "The Harmful Side Effects Of Drug Prohibition." Utah Law Review 2009.1 (2009): 11-34. Academic Search Complete. 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