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Private Choices—Public Consequences
By Steve Farrell
Is the decision
to take or distribute illegal drugs sacrosanct, now and forever?
Or to put it
another way, are all moral choices, no matter how extreme, beyond
the reach of the law because they involve private decisions on moral
matters?
This is a good
question.
There are political
forces both on the left and on the right that would howl, “Yes!”
in response. “After all,” they would add, “we
are talking about matters of conscience, and conscience is sacred
and conscience is private!”
They might even
quote John Adams who spoke of the Divine right of conscience or
Thomas Jefferson who spoke in terms of conscience being the voice
of God within. They might remind us that both The Declaration of
Independence and Holy Writ contemplated conscience as one of three
great inalienable rights.
Who can argue
with that? They would be correct. Then again, they would not. Conscience
is sacred and private, agreed. But choice is an entirely different
matter. The former ought to guide the latter and the latter the
former, but conscience and choice are not synonymous, not by a long
shot.
Webster defines
conscience as “Internal or self-knowledge, or judgment of
right and wrong; or the faculty, power or principle within us, which
decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our own actions and
affections, and instantly approves or condemns them.”
Some writers
call conscience, the moral sense, and consider it an original faculty
of our nature. Christians might identify conscience, in part, as
the light of Christ that lighteth every man which cometh into the
world. They might also say that conscience can be enlarged, improved
and guided—or restricted, distorted and hardened by environmental
factors and the choices we make.
Yes, conscience
is all about, feelings, convictions, perceptions—things that
are ours and ours alone—and they remain ours and ours alone
so long as we don’t act upon them.
Choice, on the
other hand, in the context of choosing to sell or take drugs, involves
action. It is when we put our conscience to work—or fail to
put it to work in a world filled with family, friends, neighbors,
fellow workers, fellow citizens and complete strangers.
And here’s
the key, choices, unlike an un-acted upon conscience, have consequences,
public consequences. The consequences may be good, or neutral, or
even inconsequential to anybody or anything (if they are of a minor
nature), but when those consequences prove pernicious to the health,
safety, and prosperity of those around us—what began as sacred
and private in the quiet corners of our conscience, is now troublesome
and very, very public.
One reader wrote
me the following:
“In the
case of illegal drug use, someone who is not harming anyone else,
and not even responsible for anyone else, is threatened with incarceration—that
is the kind of imposition of morality by force of law, rather than
by peaceful persuasion, that I can't support as a Christian or a
libertarian.”
This is not
a new argument. Many of us have heard it before. And although the
reader is sincere, his position is naïve. Are we really supposed
to believe that drug abusers hurt nobody but themselves, or that
the effect is inconsequential to the health, safety and prosperity
of the community?
Ask the parents,
the spouses, the children, the relatives, the employers, the neighbors,
the innocent strangers who have been betrayed, battered, bruised,
robbed, raped and murdered by them. Ask the taxpayers who assume
the costs when families no longer will or can.
Millions of
innocent people hurt physically, emotionally, and economically due
to the so-called private moral choices of drug abusers. Bear in
mind:
- Nearly one-half
of substantiated child neglect and abuse are associated with drug
abuse. (1)
- Children
whose parents abuse drugs are almost three times more likely to
be abused and more than four times more likely to be neglected.
(2)
- Let’s
put a number on that: Nearly one million cases per year (each
case possibly involving several children) and approximately twelve
hundred deaths. (3)
- Individuals
with severe addictions commit an average of 63 crimes against
their fellow citizens per year. (4)
- 80 percent
of all crimes committed are committed under the influence of drugs,
with 82 percent of US prisoners having a history of drug or alcohol
abuse. (5)
- One-third
of drug addicts are key players in spreading the deadly AIDS epidemic.
(6)
- Just over
two-thirds of parents involved with the child welfare system need
drug treatment. SSI is yet another matter.
- An unknown
number of females and males are being raped thanks to the use
of a new illicit drug in the US, GHB (liquid ecstasy), where predators
render their date or acquaintance without memory of a sexual assault.
Statistics are shaky because the presence of the drug is hard
to test; its recreational use is new; and victims aren’t
sure what went wrong until well after the fact.
- The President’s
Office of National Drug Control Policy in 2000 put the national
price tag on the public affects of drug abuse from 1992 to 1998
at 870.4 billion dollars. That’s 150 billion dollars per
year by 1998 and rising—translating into 1,153 dollars per
taxpayer, 2,306 per two-income household annually. (7)
Who says such
decisions are private? Certainly not the victims! The personal decision
to abuse oneself with drugs, like so many other so-called private
choices begets a public cost—a devastating public cost—one
which destroys families, takes lives, subverts our nation’s
values and costs every American big bucks. The question, then, ought
not to be, “Is there a public interest in discouraging and
punishing illicit drug distribution and use?” but only, “How
can we best fight the good fight while continuing to protect the
liberties of law-abiding citizens?”
Contact Steve
at stevenmfarrell@yahoo.com
Footnotes
1. Childhelp USA. National Child Abuse Statistics, June 2002 http://www.childhelpusa.org/pdf/stats.pdf
2. Children’s Defense Fund. Child Abuse and Neglect Basics
3. Ibid.
4. Gebelein, Richard S. The Rebirth of Rehabilitation: Promise and
Perils of Drug Courts, US Department of Justice, May 2000.
5. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).
Behind Bars: Substance Abuse and America's Prison Population, Columbia
University, 1998.
6. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of Drug
Policy, the Grand Lodge Convention, Wednesday, July 9th, 1997
7. The
study focuses on the cost of illicit drug use only.
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