Why Should a Drug be Illegal or Legal? Part One: Self-Harm

Why should a particular drug be illegal? The reasons can be split into three categories: the harm to oneself, the harm to others, and the ability of a government ban to reduce those harms at a cost lower than the original harms.

Focusing on harming oneself, why should others, even through legitimate democratic means, be able to tell anyone what they can do to themselves? Why should society be able to use the force of law to stop me from harming myself?

SHOULD YOU BE ALLOWED TO KILL YOURSELF?

It’s helpful to start with an extreme act, suicide. Should I be allowed to commit suicide? Is it okay for another person to use force to stop me from intentionally killing myself?

I say, for the most part, you should not be allowed to kill yourself.

Outside of specific scenarios, no sane healthy person commits suicide. Human beings have a basic instinct to survive. The continuation of living is a basic human goal. Unless you’re being tortured or manipulated in such a way to force you to divulge life-protecting secrets, or unless you’re terminally ill and will experience nothing but pain until death, it is not sane or rational to commit suicide.

If you want to commit suicide and are not in one of these special scenarios, you’re ill. You’re not mentally well. We should not allow people in a state of mental disease to end their lives. By extension, we shouldn’t allow people in a state of mental…