Phil 100 Paper - Critique

Editor, the News,

In response to the letter "Morally reprehensible" from Allan Randell, I would like to point out that his comparisons of drug problems to race and religious persecution are faulty. To state that to be put in jail for drug use is the same as being put in jail for the colour of your skin is bizarre. For one thing, no one can choose the colour their skin will be, and what race you are is not bodily harmful to yourself or others, for another. It is a choice to take drugs; you can't play the race card in comparison.

The comparison to religious persecution is equally without grounds. Although one can choose which religion they belong to, it is just like race in the fact that being of a religion is not harmful to oneself or others. (And those groups that are about harming others you better believe that is illegal as well, and the police are just as involved as with the drug trade, so much as they know about the happenings.) Also, any time any religious group or race has been subject to persecution they end up being imprisoned, tortured and/or killed, or at the very least, forced to live in abhorrent conditions. A lot of drug addicts themselves live in abhorrent conditions of their own free will, and it is these laws that are not trying to make their lives worse, but better by making it undesirable to be on these drugs. The drug prohibition laws are not persecuting people; they are trying to stop people from becoming drug addicts. To those that are already addicted, these laws are meant to deter them from continuing, and sending people to jail for breaking the laws is helping them to dry out. Those who enforce these laws and the people behind them are not harming the users in the way one thinks when one thinks of persecution. They want to get these people off the streets and into drug rehab, so they can clean their lives up and get them back on track so they are no longer a drain on society. Compare that to the treatment of the Jews in concentration camps, or the Japanese in the containment camps. The drug prohibition laws are meant to be helpful not harmful.

Of course the idea of free will and being able to choose what to ingest into our own bodies is the main argument against drug prohibition, but it is only prohibited so much as it is harmful to ourselves and others. Drugs like cocaine and heroin are so harmful, and yet so addicting, that those on them will