What right has another to determine what a person morally can and cannot do to their own body? How can one impose paternalistic laws upon personal choices that affect no one save those who make them? Drugs can sometimes be horrible things that result in terrible pain and human suffering, but how can one logically justify our saying that anyone cannot take them; that they do not have the right to take them? Furthermore what right have we to punish a drug addict for acting in a manner that affects no one but themselves? Drug laws have one end alone: to protect us, not from others, but from ourselves; from our own ignorance, our own stupididty, and our inabil

Law results only in an inflation of both the monetary price of drugs and the social dangers resulting from their affects. Because drugs are illegal their cost is inflated to a level far beyond what their supply would normally dictate. Should drugs be legalized the prices would plummet and so all crimes related to drugs (i.e., crimes to obtain the money to buy them) would not have to be committed. The benefits from selling drugs would disappear with the extremely lower cost. In this case the law actually encourages crime by labeling something as illegal that should logically not be.

f its proponents to admit that they are wrong; personal pride is held in higher regard than human life. Isn't human life though, according to those who take such drastically invasive methods to "protect" it through such reprehensible violence, worth so much more than pride? Isn't human life, even a single human life, worth more than any percieved national dishonor which might result from an end to the "war?"

Why is drug abuse wrong, one may ask? Well, because it is illegal, one might say. Well then, why is it illegal? Many laws, at least as far as we are told, are created to protect people, and not so much individuals, but society in general. Many tend to oppose laws that, at least openly, restrict personal choice and individual liberty. They would be far more inclined to teach, in order to prevent the action, rather than to restrict personal freedoms. The law seeks not to teach but, rather, to restrict, and from this restriction arises an almost primal human trait; the need to rebel against anything that controls us. One cannot shackle a human being and expect them to be content, and neither can one expect them to understand. We have to teach people if we want to help them. Why is drug abuse wrong? If we continue to tell people that it will land them in prison we will never solve the problem; drug abuse is not dangerous because one can be punished, and severely at that, for it; s!

Some topics in this essay:
, human life, people hurt, taking drugs, drugs illegal, drug abuse, sick people, drug addicts, punish drug, terrible pain, isn't human life, drug abuse wrong, war drugs,