WHICH RIGHT IS RIGHT ON DRUGS

Individual rights are pretty easy to invoke, aren't they?

"I have a right to whip this black boy into submission. He's my property!"

"I have a right to have sex with my wife whenever I want, no matter
what she says. She's MY wife!"

At one time, those rights claims made sense to a majority of
Americans. But rights are funny things, because throughout every time
and place in history, different people have had different ideas of
where their rights come from, and therefore, what they constitute.
Sometimes particular rights have been God-granted. Sometimes
inherent. Other times constitutional, natural, self-evident and the
list goes on.

So to avoid Hegelian-overkill and to treat you like the
college-educated students you are, let's just state the obvious: Your
rights are relative. And until the Ron Paul Revolution actually
knocks on your door, you also live under a government, and therefore
your rights are in fact endowed by the legal system. (Notice how I
did not say justice system. Relativism, remember?)

So it struck me as quite amusing, and maybe a little tragic, when my
colleague Kyle Szarzynski made a claim that Americans' rights were
being violated because it was illegal to consume drugs such as
heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines ("'War on drugs' cloaks
oppression," April 23).

Astutely enough, realizing that rights claims of the moment usually
need empirical evidence to convince the society they will not harm
it, Mr. Szarzynski stated some interesting facts in support of
legalizing all drug use. Chief among these was that illegal drugs
aren't actually that bad. He stated that according to the American
Medical Association 435,000 people died of tobacco-related illness
last year, while drugs such as cocaine and heroin only directly
accounted for 17,000 deaths last year, according to drugwarfacts.org.

But these statistics are entirely misleading.

While only 17,000 deaths were directly related to the aforementioned
illicit drugs -- meaning overdosing -- the dealing, buying and
stealing of these drugs is accountable for far more societal ills,
primarily poverty and death. In cities and slums all over this
country, the primary cause for crime is poverty, and one of the most
concomitant results of poverty is drug addiction. Drug addiction
often leads to further poverty -- passed down to future generations
- -- and the vicious cycle of a sector of the downtrodden population
continues as such.

It does not take a doctorate in sociology to realize that it is the
drug lords, not the government, whose intention it is to suppress the
downtrodden for their own gain when it comes to the business of lethal drugs.

So tell me, Mr. Szarzynski, if you are a child born to a cocaine
addict, without the structures of support in place that are
fundamental to success in school, have not your legal rights been
violated from the very beginning of your existence? Has not the
spirit of our legal system been contradicted when you do not have the
viable chance at life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness? If the
great equalizer, education, is only given the chance to permeate a
young life within a family and community ensnared in a cycle of drug
addiction and poverty -- as is the case for millions of Americans --
do we not see a societal obligation to intervene?

Well, yes, in fact, a vast majority of us do. And it is precisely why
our legal system has heeded the relative beliefs of generations of
Americans and made certain drugs illegal. Sure, it's easy to feel
like Big Brother is breathing down your neck when you're a
middle-class college student who can't do a line on the bench in
Library Mall. But a moment's pause to reflect on the varying and
immutable circumstances that condition every human's life would
surely result in a reconsideration of what you have dubbed "blatantly
immoral" regarding drug use.

Without question, "the war on drugs" has been poorly executed. Recent
numbers from the National Drug Threat Assessment show a rapidly
increasing number of Americans over 18 are trying everything from
marijuana to heroin to methamphetamine.

Similarly, as Mr. Szarzynski correctly points out, not enough
attention has been placed on rehabilitative efforts. The White
House's proposed budget for 2009 cut funding for treatment and
prevention of drug abuse to under $5 billion -- worth about two weeks
in Iraq. Likewise, the president's proposed budget aimed to cut
drug-free school grants by nearly 15 percent, all of which accounts
for the seventh straight year the White House has aimed to cut
prevention spending.

But like many Bush-era policies, execution has not been a strong
point. And one man's incompetence should not lead to another man's complacence.

Too often we are wooed by the ideas of those who -- under a false
pretext -- parade the benefits of giving up. If it's too hard, too
complicated, if the research isn't immediately decisive, if the
government is too involved, etc. -- then no matter the possibility
for your tax dollars to be of humanitarian good, it's just not worth
it. This is exactly the time when rights claims have a funny way of
being slipped in to justify the downright egomaniacal.

To be sure, there are good arguments for the legalization of some
drugs, the strongest case being for marijuana. But there is a reason
that no country in the world -- not a single one -- permits drug use
of all kinds: It falls on the opposite side of Right.