Recently, I wrote a letter to the paper to argue for the proposition
that adults should be free to eat, drink and smoke any substance they
want, and that the government should not persecute any adult for doing
so.

Whether an adult takes a substance that he thinks might improve his
health, or he takes a substance for the purpose of ending his life, or
he takes a substance for a religious purpose, or simply to achieve
what he considers to be a mind-altering effect, the taking of the
substance is an expression of a person's freedom.

Free people have a right to control their bodies.

People understand that some individuals may actually harm themselves
in exercising their freedom. But is society better off to let people
worry about what substances they will put in their own bodies =97 with
or without the advice of others=97 or is society better off to have
spies going about communities to persecute people who are
experimenting with drugs?

There was one letter in the paper, in response to mine, that expressed
the idea that freedom is "two-edged."

The writer stated, "The freedom of one person is limited by the
responsibility not to interfere with the rights and freedoms of
others." He said that he would have no objection to people who smoke
marijuana or inject themselves with other substances provided these
people "manacled themselves to a tree." What about beer drinkers? The
writer may have come up with another argument for saving the trees in
the Fayetteville beer-joint district.

I believe the facts are that most people who consume marijuana and
other substances that are "controlled" by the government do not hurt
other people.

Many people who take such substances do so in their homes or in places
away from others who might not want to be around them. Nevertheless,
the drug users are hunted down by government spies and thrown into
prisons, sometimes for many years.

Who is interfering with whose rights and freedoms in these
cases?

If an adult takes a substance that intoxicates him and he hurts or
endangers another person or disturbs the peace, then most people agree
the person should be prosecuted and possibly punished. I assert that
it is an adult's right to consume whatever he wants to consume as long
as he does not hurt another person and otherwise abides by the law.
Why should it be a crime for a person to take a substance he thinks
might cure him of a disease or makes him feel better?

Charles Howard,
Fayetteville