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Asked by icancu to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 19 Mar 2013.
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Tom Branson answered on 19 Mar 2013:
Good question. Yeah why shouldn’t we do whatever we like to our own bodies?
But you have to realise that it is not just you that might be affected. If you get ill or do harm to yourself then you might have to go to hospital – so then the NHS has to pay to make you better. And what if you hurt someone else? Or if you can’t control yourself and smash some stuff up?
I think people should have freedom to do many things if it is in their own home and they won’t affect anyone else. So the law is there to protect people, either protect you from hurting yourself or from hurting other people.
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Jack Heal answered on 19 Mar 2013:
Tom’s pretty much nailed it there. The law’s there to protect people. We should be able to do what we want to ourselves but not when other people get harmed. Harming other people can be direct, like hitting them or damaging their property, or indirect like costing tax payers money by being in hospitals.
However, making drugs illegal leads to a black market where there’s no safety standards or quality control and so it can make the drugs more dangerous. In addition, making something illegal means that you make some people into criminals which means you have to enforce punishment…which costs money.
There’s no easy answer, but the drug laws are to protect people – the users themselves and others who’d be affected by someone using them. -
Yalda Javadi answered on 19 Mar 2013:
This is such a good question…. we go through our whole lives knowing and accepting that drugs are illegal but never question why?!
Basically the short answer is that drugs are illegal because they are bad. Bad for you, bad for the economy, bad for society and therefore laws are in place to protect you. That said, not all of these harmful drugs are illegal, for example, tobacco and alcohol are also bad for you but legal. In fact a report showed that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm to people that used them, than every drug except heroin, methamphetamine, and crack cocaine.
So what ultimatley determines if a drug should be legal or not? It comes down to the degree of harm and danger it causes. And the heroins and the crack cocaines are very very dangerous.
Will we ever live in a society that makes tobacco or alcohol illegal too… probably not.
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anon answered on 19 Mar 2013:
Some street drugs can make you very poorly and the law is there to protect people from some of these dangers. The flip side of this argument is that alcohol and tobacco are also drugs – but they aren’t banned. I guess when people first started smoking & drinking no-one realised that they could be dangerous – and because we’ve had them around for so long, no-one would accept a ban nowadays.
I totally agree with you that people should be given freedom to do most of what they want – but if they are causing harm to themselves or other people then it’s sensible to try and prevent it happening in the first place.
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