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 f

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offered differing assessments of what is moral and what is not. The definition would seem therefore to lead to a form of relativism. Hume, however, believes that there are some general moral sentiments which are common to all human beings. Certainly he believes that all human beings share the idea that they have moral feeling at all and also that the way moral feelings operates is the same, though the moral feelings themselves may show some difference. Hume assumes that our sense of approval and disapproval is innate, a human characteristic, though elsewhere he insists that human knowledge is entirely the product of experience. In some degree, we praise what we have been taught to praise and condemn what we have been taught to condemn. This is apparent in a comparison of different societies where different human actions are approved of or disapproved of by the community and by the individual member of the community. Utility of this sort is involved in Hume's conception of justice. Because of his emphasis on utility, Hume disallows the idea that there are eternal and unchanging laws of justice, simply because what has utility in one place and age may not in another. Consequences are again the determining factor. Immutab

Category: Philosophy - M