Bodily Autonomy - Recreational Drugs
If I am not old enough to be drinking or smoking at age 18, 19, or 20, then I am not old enough to take responsibility for my actions and face legal consequences for doing so at age 18, 19, and 20.
If you are old enough to fight and die for your country you should be able to drink or smoke if you choose to.
If it was health we were concerned about, it would be tobacco that was illegal, not marijuana. If it were behavior and violence we were concerned about, it would be alcohol that was illegal, not marijuana. Marijuana does less damage to health and behavior than tobacco or alcohol, so why is it still mostly illegal?
Recreational drugs should not be illegal, any drug. Drugs should be decriminalized and legalized. If someone decides to do something to their own body that doesn’t affect anyone else, that should be their right. The government should have no business telling someone what they can and cannot do to their own body.
Not only does the government have no moral right to dictate that people cannot do drugs if they want to, there are also plenty of reasons why legalizing drugs would be beneficial.
There are FDA and other drug and health agencies in place to help keep people safe and create consumer guidelines. If drugs were legalized, there would be health guidelines to protect users. The government would be able to regulate drugs to make them safer.
There are business and consumer protection agencies in place that could help consumers while buying legal drugs.
If drugs were legalized, people would be more likely to seek medical help when they need it or go to rehab without the fear of being arrested, paying heavy fines, and going to jail. People would seek medical help when they need it instead of refusing help to avoid jail time. Legalizing drugs would save lives.
If drugs were legalized, gangs, cartels, traffickers and dealers really wouldn’t exist anymore. It’s like prohibition: when alcohol was illegal, there was organized crime and gangs. Not only did organized crime create violence and killing, gangs also became politically powerful due to the amount of money being made through the monopoly of illegal sale of alcohol. Once alcohol was legalized, the organized crime dissolved. But there are still gangs selling drugs, and drug traffickers creating drug violence. Legalize drugs and the gangs and traffickers lose the monopoly and all their money and power. There wouldn’t be any more violence and deaths over drugs because people could buy drugs legally. Legalizing drugs will save lives.
If drugs were legalized, people would be able to buy clean needles. People wouldn’t re-use or share needles. They could just go to a drug store and buy some needles. This would eliminate the spread of HIV and other diseases through drug use and needle sharing. If drugs were legalized, it would help protect police. If drugs were legalized, people wouldn’t try to hide needles or lie about having them, eliminating the risk of police officers getting stuck by needles.
If drugs were legalized, police could spend their time focusing on things that actually matter. The prison system would be improved and jails would become much less crowded. If drugs were legalized, you’d have a lot less people running from the police or getting into car chases that endanger the lives of others. Legalizing drugs would keep people safe.
If drugs were legalized, restrictions could be set to protect people. An age limit of 18 years old/age of legal adulthood would be set. Drug usage would be included in driving under the influence laws as well as alcohol to protect people from harmful or deadly crashes.
If drugs were legalized, there’d be a lot less teens doing drugs. For example, if a particular drug was illegal, there’d be no reason to wait until a certain age to start doing it - in reality, you’d be more likely to do it while you’re under 18 when you wouldn’t be charged as an adult if you got caught. But if that drug were legal, and simply had an age restriction, there would be a lot more people who would wait until they turned the legal age and avoid getting into legal trouble at all. Legalizing drugs and setting an age restriction of 18 will protect more teens from doing drugs than criminalizing drugs does.
If drugs were legalized, schools would be held more responsible to teach the actual health hazards and negative effects of drug use, instead of just saying “don’t do drugs because they’re illegal” and leaving it at that. When you have an open dialogue about health, it protects people better than just telling them what they can and cannot do.
If drugs were legalized, the economy would benefit. Legal businesses would profit from legalizing drugs. Legal sale of drugs would help small businesses and empower struggling communities. Instead of money going to gangs or traffickers, the money would go into the pockets of the people. It would stimulate the economy and take the money away from criminals, and give it to the communities and the people who live in them.
Along with all the undeniable benefits of legalizing drugs, there is also the obvious fact that current drug laws don’t work. People still use drugs, buy drugs, and sell drugs, despite drug laws being in place. Drug laws do not make people not do drugs, it just makes people get hurt when they do, or get stuck in a cycle of arrests and economic instability. By looking at the benefits of legalizing drugs, you could argue that drug laws are actually harmful to society.
The bottom line is bodily autonomy. No one should be able to tell another adult human being what they can and cannot do with their own body. The only real reason drugs are illegal is because they are unhealthy. Pizza is unhealthy. Ice cream is unhealthy. Chips are unhealthy. Soda is unhealthy. But those things are not illegal. People can choose to damage their health because they have the right to buy and eat what they please. Recreational drugs should be no different. The government has no right to tell people what they can and cannot do just because something may be harmful to their health. The government, yes, has the responsibility to disclose information about products and substances that can be damaging to a person’s health, but the government should act only as a warning label and a source of reliable information, and not an authoritative ruler that decides what a person can and cannot do.
