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Moral Philosophies & Drug Usage

Drug abuse is seen as a major social problem that has been the occasion for a massive effort on the part of the U.S. government to interdict drugs before they arrive in the United States, to use criminal sanctions to stop traffic in drugs in American communities, and to place a stigma on drug use so as to control it and to influence successive generations not to take up drug abuse in the first place. This effort has been very costly in terms of money and human suffering. The fact that drugs are illegal has created a vast underground market for them and has contributed to the rising crime rates in our communities as drug abusers steal and commit murder in order to get the money they need to purchase their drugs. The perception that the drug war has been a failure has contributed to calls for legalization as a new way of coping with the problem. Those calling for legalization have numerous arguments as to why this would benefit society in the long run by reducing street crime, reallocating law enforcement priorities, and shifting the battle against drugs from law enforcement to treatment. Opponents of legalization feel either that these benefits would be illusory or that taking a moral position against drug use is more important and can be more effective under the present law enforcement model. Underlying the argument between the two is a simple question: does society have a right and a rationale for raising objections to the use of harmful drugs? While few of the seminal philosophers on political and ethical issues addressed the issue of drugs directly, what they had to say about the nature of freedom and the need for a balance between individual rights and the rights of society is applicable to the question of drug use.

Thomas Aquinas was an important Christian philosopher of the thirteenth century, and he wrote his Summa Theologica between 1265 and 1273. The philosophy of Aquinas was grounded in Aristotle's Metaphysics. ...

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Moral Philosophies & Drug Usage. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:52, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690567.html