Personal freedoms

I've gone on about this before, in the context of abortion, but the more I think about it the more I realise it's not just about abortion.

'My body, my choice' is a question of freedom, of rejecting Stare intervention, of having the possibility to live your life how you want to live it.

The discussion was about drugs, and whether they should be banned or not, not from an economic point of view but from a moral point of view. Does the government have the right to decide for people what is good or bad for them? Of course not. People are not stupid, and should not be treated like they are. People are grown ups and they can make choices, and (in the society I live in) they are generally free to make these choices.

However there is a point of contention here. If I accept that people are free to do what they want with their bodies as long as they don't hurt anyone else, then what about people with dependants? These people may not directly harm anyone by taking drugs, but being responsible for other people, they might indirectly harm them (for example by spending money meant for taking care of these dependants on drugs/whatever else).

Should these people be stopped from doing this by the government? Should different rules apply to people who are responsible for other people? No. The same rules should apply to everyone. Substances should not be banned, no matter how harmful or addictive they are: alcohol is more dangerous than heroin, and it is still legal. It is however possible to make it illegal to not take responsibility for your dependants. 

Let's put an example out there: a man who is addicted to morphine and is responsible for his wife, who happens to have a chronic illness. As long as he's taking good care of her, the government should have nothing to say. But even if he weren't, the solution shouldn't be to illegalise morphine, but to take away his responsibility (and any benefits he receives due to this responsibility). Of course, his wife also has a say in this. If she feels she wants to stick with her husband, no one can stop her, even if he isn't providing adequate care. It's their choice after all. 

In the case of dependants who cannot make their own choices, it is the governments' responsibility to make sure they are well cared for, not to make the people who are at any point responsible for them any less free. In this scenario, parents might be denied guardianship of their children if they are not taking good care of them, but simply taking  drugs is not a good measure of whether they are good parents.

People are more complex than their actions. Kant summarised this by proposing a moral of absolutes, rather than declaring 'good' or 'bad' actions.