Okay fine you should be allowed to do whatever you want to your body...but under the following terms.
-you shouldn't be allowed to get any government funding when your brain gets fried and you can't function enough to hold a job
-you shouldn't be able to take up space in any hospital for any health conditions related to the drug use, those spots should be reserved for people with heath problems that were not caused by illegal activity.
-you should waive the right to have health care benefits because if you want to continually partake in a activity that makes you a higher risk, you shouldn't burden the system for the rest of us (or you should at least pay elevated rates like a lot of insurance companies charge for smokers and drinkers)
Quote from the white house's website
Recent estimates suggest that the abuse of alcohol and drugs costs taxpayers more than $294 billion annually in preventable health care costs
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011109-27.html
I assume this applies to drinkers, smokers, the obese and anyone with an unhealthy diet or poor exercise routines?
Let me just say that, personally, I don't indulge in regular excess enough to end up in such an extreme position, and have no plans to. What's more, if I were to end up like that, I'd more than likely be happy to let them pull the plug...I'd rather go at 40 with my faculties relatively intact than live to 80 feeling like Ozzy Osborne looks.
In general terms, a few things:
Firstly, I do not believe any developed liberal democracy could ever go to the lengths of prohibiting all drug users from receiving healthcare or benefits.
You may not have ever been a drug addict, and neither have I, but if I may use a religious idiom we could all be there but for the grace of God. I count myself lucky that I don't need a bottle of vodka or a gram of coke to get out of bed in the morning, and unlike some I look on those who do with empathy, compassion and pity rather than sheer contempt.
Addiction is a disease like any other. Yes, people have a choice to take drugs outside of addiction, but addiction is not a choice, it destroys choice. For those not really addicted, drug related health issues are the result of one of two things: the desire to no longer exist, an indicator of depression and at any rate not the thought of a rationally functioning being (cases of altruism and terminal illness aside, as no longer existing is not the desire but a side-effect) or losing out in the sort of calculated risk we all take every day. If you cross the road, or live in an area with high violent crime when you could live somewhere else, or a million other things from leaving your front door to riding a motorbike, you take a risk because you think it's worth it. Taking a drug like, say, ecstasy, that has the same likelihood of killing you as the morning after pill is no different a risk than crossing the road just because it involves drugs.
Specifically, I can't see the reason for this confusion that equates what is moral and what is legal. If heroin addicts should not be allowed in to hospital, neither should anyone with type 2 diabetes, alcohol poisoning or obesity due to over-eating and lack of exercise.
Your position is frankly no less cruel and inhuman than the idea that people who attempt suicide should be left to die slowly rather than helped, and possibly even cajoled into doing so to reduce the number of "useless" people in our society. Fortunately, most of us don't see people as things that are useful for making other things to make our lives cushier.
Legality is relevant in one important manner in this case: if the drugs were legalised they, like tobacco and alcohol, would be taxed to the point that users put billions of pounds more in to the economy than they take out in healthcare. Until then, it's the government's fault that they choose not to take a cut of the money I spend on illegal drugs, at the same time wasting money on an un-winnable war on drugs and pushing up the price of the drugs themselves due to the risks and middlemen involved so I have less money to spend in the 'overground' or 'formal' economy. Sad, yes, but not my fault.
Credit crunch busting tip of the week: legalise drugs and prostitution, regulate and tax them.
