ILLEGAL DRUG USE LEADS TO SURRENDER OF SOCIAL LIBERTIES

The writer maintains an insurance practice in State College and has taught
political science, economics, insurance and risk management.

Many of the people demonstrating locally for marijuana legalization
describe their crusade in terms of human rights and a struggle for freedom.
Some allege medicinal benefits, including glaucoma, nausea and unique
pain-relieving properties. The Doonesbury comic strip has been making the
same point recently.

It appears, however, that the demonstrators have a very limited grasp of
the rational and historic origins of human and civil rights. They seem to
have adopted a simplistic definition, which is: "I may do whatever I wish,
as long as I do not bring harm to anyone else." Exactly how they expect
people to manage the second part of that statement while under the
influence of a mind-altering drug remains unexplained.

Human rights are more accurately defined as those freedoms of action which
are required for the realization of the full potential and continuation of
human life. John Locke described those as broadly based on life, liberty
and property rights, every one of them bringing with it a commensurate
obligation for its responsible exercise.

Human beings are not born with the powerful instinctive behavior of other
animals. We have only one primary tool of survival, which is the capacity
of our minds to reason. We survive and are successful to the extent that,
one, our minds are able to perceive reality accurately, and that, two, we
are able to respond to that reality in a rational manner.

To the extent that we misread reality, or that we respond in irrational
ways, we risk bringing harm to others and ourselves.

The reason that lying and deception are immoral is that they distort
reality for other people, leading them to respond to potentially harmful
false perceptions. The abuse of intoxicating or hallucinogenic substances
is intentionally lying to oneself, and is such a contemptible act that it
has no place in a serious discussion of human rights.

One of the greatest libertarians of the 20th century, Ayn Rand, described
drug abuse as "the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for
a deliberately induced insanity. As such it is so obscene an evil that any
doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity."

Rand would have been very angered to learn that the name of her fictional
hero, John Galt, was being used locally to promote the legalization of
narcotic substances. How ironic that, here in State College, the movement
is being led by self-proclaimed "libertarians."

Derived from our human rights, American civil rights may be defined as
those freedoms of action that are required for full and active
participation in a democratic society. Freedoms of speech, press, assembly,
worship, petition and voting are among them. Pot smoking would be a strange
bedfellow in such a list, since it is essentially an act of withdrawal.

Far from being an act of participation, drug use is an avenue of escape. It
contributes nothing to active citizenship or to the democratic process.

Therefore, to describe pot smoking in terms of human and civil rights is to
demean the virtue and basis of both ideals.

With respect to the medicinal argument, we know that morphine and other
narcotics have medical applications, but we do not make them available for
recreational purposes, nor do we let people write their own prescriptions.

There should be no objection to legitimate and professionally prescribed
medical applications of any particular substance, including whatever is
useful in marijuana, although whether or not smoking is the safest and most
effective delivery system is open to dispute.

Other than that, however, the medicinal argument is not persuasive, and
appears to be little more than an attempt to anoint the legalization
crusade with an air of legitimacy.

For the vast majority of users, the lighted marijuana cigarette is
symbolic, not of freedom, but of license. Its dull glow illuminates the
entry portal into what becomes, for far too many, the self-induced
schizophrenia of serious drug abuse.

The inescapable conclusion is that recreational marijuana use adds nothing
to civilized society or to human productivity. It has a significant
potential to detract from both.

Far from being promoted, it should be actively discouraged by anyone with
any semblance of social responsibility.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski