Self medication

Great Debates
1

Are there ANY limitations society should be able to put on self-medication? I’m not talking about the possible bad consequences of say, drunk driving, which I think most everybody agrees should be a crime (at least if it results in an “accident”). But what about the poor bastard who sits at home and drinks, smokes, or injects his way to a stupor at home night after night. Maybe he’s together enough to keep a job, and can afford his habit. Maybe he has frequent crashes, can’t hold a job, and is on Wellfare, but commits no crimes except buying/using the drug.

Is there a moral difference between those two?

Should you sentence a drug user to treatment in the absence of other “crimes”? What if this includes some kind of forcible detainment/isolation?

What if the drug user is 12? or 7? What about punishing the parent of the drug user?

Curious for opinions…

2

Well, if his reliance on welfare is a consequence of his habit, I’d say that his taking money from the system just so he can get a buzz every night is wrong.

If the only one who suffers any consequences is him, then he has done no wrong.

We have as much right to do so as we would have to do the same to alcoholics.

Punishing the parents is justified if and only if it can be proven that the parents’ effort to raise a good natured child is grossly inadequate.