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Comment by qbit | Hacker News Reader

> And as long as we live in a democracy, they're entitled to structure their society as they see fit.

I strongly disagree. There are certain human rights that should not be able to be voted away in a democracy. I believe that the right to modulate our own minds as we see fit belongs in this category.

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People aren't "modulating their minds" in isolation. Drug use has an external impact on the families, friends, employers, and coworkers of those using drugs. Drug use affects the ability of drug users to abide by social norms imposed upon everyone. In a developed nation with a safety net, drug use might even implicate society's need to rescue those who can't work or fall ill from drug use.

> Drug use has an external impact on the families, friends, employers, and coworkers of those using drugs.

It's not illegal for me to be a sober (or drunk) asshole. Nor is it illegal for me to be sober (or drunk) and just decide not to go to work, consequences be damned. People are allowed to get drunk legally, despite the statistically increased propensity for violence, douchebaggery, etc. What makes alcohol "good" and drugs "bad"? Nothing more than tradition, as far as I can tell.

You're not making a great argument for why drug use should continue to be illegal.

I'm not making any argument why drug use should be illegal. I'm making an argument for why the public should be entitled to decide whether drug use is legal or illegal. I also think, given your examples, the public should also be entitled to decide whether alcohol should be illegal.

Such an argument should mention the likelihood of a ban actually being enforced in a functional and just way.

"The public" may wish to eliminate all mind-altering substances, but the allure of altering the mind is strong, and the enormous contingent of people who desire to consume is going to have to be repressed.

The argument about family and relations, for example, is not so straightforward. What's preferrable, a dad who smokes cannabis or a dad who's in prison?

I know some people who would have been better off if their dad smoking cannibis wans't there. Not saying prison, but they were a terrible influence.

That some people are bad parents doesn't seem to justify making cannabis consumption criminal.

The failure to obtain a college education has an external impact on the families, friends, employers, and coworkers of those failing to be college graduates. Failure to be a college graduate affects the ability to abide by social norms imposed upon everyone. In a developed nation with a safety net, failure to be a college graduate might even implicate society's need to rescue those who can't work or injure themselves during uneducated activities.

You're making an argument for which anything could be illegal. The public could develop an irrational prejudice against people wearing purple. Then you could make all of those statements about that. Is it the public's right to ban purple clothing? Do we still have freedom simply because there is more than one other color? This may seem facetious but it's not that far from tattoos and piercings. You're almost suggesting that there shouldn't be inalienable rights. I understand that in "reality" there ultimately aren't but I hadn't realized our society was so ready to abandon the ideal.

We require people to get a high school education for precisely the reasons you state.

Why stop there, though? Why not college, and a PhD? I mean, we mandate that everyone in the US buy health insurance because if you're not paying into the system you're part of the problem. What limit is there to this power?

Can we force women to be on birth control until they're married and/or have "enough" money and/or fulfill some other arbitrary criteria for having kids? Society -- statistically speaking -- has to pick up the tab for kids born to lower income single moms through WIC, food stamps, etc. That's clearly something that society has an interest in and thus a right to control/regulate right?

If you disagree with the above statement please address it as a matter of far-reaching prinicple rather than as a matter of pragmatics. Our society is ostensibly, largely built on principle; it's illegal to murder because nobody wants to be murdered. This is very straightforward. If we concede that society has an interest in how people interact, truly what is off limits?

Principle bends to pragmatism. It's illegal to kill other humans, except when it isn't (accidents, self-defense, military action, abortion). There's nothing straightforward about the lines we draw between when it's okay versus not okay to kill people. People are entitled to trade their labor freely, except when they aren't (minimum wage, child labor).

Humans are social creatures; they are interdependent cogs in a machine. So as an overarching principle, society is entitled to regulate to interactions between people. To make that bearable, we recognize certain "fundamental rights" that society cannot infringe. Procreation is a deeply-held one, which is why society cannot force women to be on birth control. Taking drugs is not one of those rights.

The argument other people in the thread are giving though is that taking drugs SHOULD be one of those rights.

Society has infringed upon the "fundamental right" of procreation numerous times. Forced Sterilizations have been used many times for a variety of reasons throughout the history of Western Civilization including the modern US, and "voluntary sterilizations" happen more often than they are discussed still to this day.

Just want to point out that here in the US we don't require anyone to graduate high school. In most cases minors are required to attend school. My point is that, in the past, minors weren't able to chose for themselves. Instead the guardian often chose to make the child work thus continuing a cycle of poverty.

any individual person is, de facto, allowed to decide whether or not they use drugs regardless of the legal status of the drug in question.

drug prohibition laws represent something else. they represent the power of the state, and all the inherent violence that goes along with that, bearing down on those that choose to use legally proscribed drugs.

I hope you have a full understanding of what you're saying. legal prohibition implies state sanctioned violence.

Your argument easily applies to alcohol, prescription medications, and hell, even obesity. There's nothing here unique to drugs that are causing the problems you're decrying.

If we ban drugs, I think it should also apply to jackasse or daredevils. People (including children) should not climb tall trees or scale the Brooklyn Bridge with no reason. Why should anyone get subsidized medical care (and it is subsidized even if they pay for it) for falling off a tree that they had no business climbing? In the same train of thought, maybe we ought to close down all amusement parks and only allow people to drive to work or to go buy groceries. People driving or riding the bus puts them at risk of accidents and society suffers from these accidents.

Not to mention healthy diets should be strictly enforced, along with mandatory exercise regimes to reduce the public burden of obesity and poor health.

Just because we have not found an airtight reason to draw a line at a particular spot, does not mean that there should be no line.

Sure, I can grant that. Now we just need to define the line itself—its expressed purposes and guiding principles. Once we agree on the principles of the line, we can start working on the contours of where the line is drawn. Unfortunately, we keep jumping into drawing [and erasing] lines without enough discourse regarding the principles of those lines. The drug war is only one such example.

Great, then I'm glad for all the exemptions that exist for drug use that is carefully controlled and monitored to prevent and isolate these kinds of effects, and it's not some heavy handed categorical ban.

You must be confusing "natural rights" with the perverse definition we currently have of "rights", which are "positive" rather than "negative". Something as simple as freedom from forced labour is still not fully adhered to even in the US.

Have a look at the Wikipedia page for some more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

But most people would pick the will of the majority making some bad decisions than the absolute dictatorship that would be needed to enforce a highly subjective list of human rights.

You understand that this is the very reason the US is a Republic not a Democracy, and has safe guards to prevent the tyranny of the majority.

Maybe maybe not. Democracy must mean that society has some right to shape how people will behave within it, and sometimes that imposes an affirmative burden on people to behave a certain way (e.g. mandatory schooling). That's not all tyranny.

I understand the argument you are attempting to make, but you presuppose the masses are informed and always capable of making logical decisions which will not infringe upon the rights of the minority. Thankfully the Founders of Our Nation had the Foresight to protect its citizens from themselves they established a Republic.

>“ It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.” -James Madison Federalist Papers No 51

The Politicians of Our Nation Throw Around the Word Democracy to make the low information plebs feel as though the power rests with them, it is a charade. I don't mind the down votes if it means some of the users on the site have a better understanding of US civics.

Edit: By the way your example of Mandatory Schooling could not be further from an example of a Democracy. Did you or the rest of the citizens of the US ever have a vote on that?

FWIW mandatory schooling is seen as tyrannical by a not insignificant section of [UK] society. Some even see schooling as primarily a way to establish the populous within an authority structure to allow the ruling classes to maintain control more easily.

An 'affirmative burden' and a 'tyrannical edict' seem like they could differ only in perspective.

Technically I believe we are a Democratic Republic, as we directly vote on laws within our states. Legal Marijuana, for instance, was chosen by the Citizens of my state, Oregon; not by elected politicians.

We're really a Federal Republic, a collection of states where the citizens vote on their Representatives, who are then supposed to legislate under the guidelines of a Constitution which delegates power to various branches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic

The citizens of Oregon do get to vote on Initiatives and Referendums, that is something which is relatively new to the state 1908, and not the way states outside of the Western part of the country operate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy_in_Oregon ^^ This page has a nice map showing other states as well.

In many of the blue states on the map constitutional amendments for the state can be proposed and voted on but the majority of laws are simply written by the legislature.

... the legislature being comprised of democratically elected representatives, no?

A federal republic of democracies at least?

Not really, most of the states in the US are not Direct Democracies.

> as we directly vote on laws within our states.

that varies from state to state. California, for example, does have direct ballot initiatives at the state level. New York State (where I live) generally does not, though they aren't excluded by the state constitution, there is just not a very strong tradition of direct ballot measures here.

every state in the U.S. implements representative democracy in a slightly different way.

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