Individual rights are
pretty easy to invoke, aren’t they?

“I have a right
to whip this black boy into submission. He’s my property!”

“I have a right
to have sex with my wife whenever I want, no matter what she says. She’s MY
wife!”

At one time, those
rights claims made sense to a majority of Americans. But rights are funny
things, because throughout every time and place in history, different people
have had different ideas of where their rights come from, and therefore, what
they constitute. Sometimes particular rights have been God-granted. Sometimes
inherent. Other times constitutional, natural, self-evident and the list goes
on.

So to avoid
Hegelian-overkill and to treat you like the college-educated students you are,
let’s just state the obvious: Your rights are relative. And until the Ron Paul
Revolution actually knocks on your door, you also live under a government, and
therefore your rights are in fact endowed by the legal system. (Notice how I
did not say justice system. Relativism, remember?)

So it struck me as
quite amusing, and maybe a little tragic, when my colleague Kyle Szarzynski
made a claim that Americans’ rights were being violated because it was illegal
to consume drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines (“‘War on
drugs’ cloaks oppression,” April 23).

Astutely enough,
realizing that rights claims of the moment usually need empirical evidence to
convince the society they will not harm it, Mr. Szarzynski stated some
interesting facts in support of legalizing all drug use. Chief among these was
that illegal drugs aren’t actually that bad. He stated that according to the
American Medical Association 435,000 people died of tobacco-related
illness last year, while drugs such as cocaine and heroin only directly
accounted for 17,000 deaths last year, according to drugwarfacts.org.

But these statistics
are entirely misleading.

While only 17,000
deaths were directly related to the aforementioned illicit drugs —
meaning overdosing — the dealing, buying and stealing of these drugs is
accountable for far more societal ills, primarily poverty and death. In cities
and slums all over this country, the primary cause for crime is poverty, and
one of the most concomitant results of poverty is drug addiction. Drug
addiction often leads to further poverty — passed down to future generations
— and the vicious cycle of a sector of the downtrodden population continues as
such.

It does not take a
doctorate in sociology to realize that it is the drug lords, not the
government, whose intention it is to suppress the downtrodden for their own
gain when it comes to the business of lethal drugs.

So tell me, Mr.
Szarzynski, if you are a child born to a cocaine addict, without the structures
of support in place that are fundamental to success in school, have not your
legal rights been violated from the very beginning of your existence? Has not
the spirit of our legal system been contradicted when you do not have the
viable chance at life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness? If the great equalizer,
education, is only given the chance to permeate a young life within a family
and community ensnared in a cycle of drug addiction and poverty — as is the
case for millions of Americans — do we not see a societal obligation to
intervene?

Well, yes, in fact, a
vast majority of us do. And it is precisely why our legal system has heeded the
relative beliefs of generations of Americans and made certain drugs illegal. Sure, it’s easy to feel
like Big Brother is breathing down your neck when you’re a middle-class college
student who can’t do a line on the bench in Library Mall. But a?moment’s pause to reflect on the varying and immutable circumstances that
condition every human’s life would surely result in a reconsideration of what
you have dubbed “blatantly immoral” regarding drug use.

Without question,
“the war on drugs” has been poorly executed. Recent numbers from the
National Drug Threat Assessment show a rapidly increasing number of Americans
over 18 are trying everything from marijuana to heroin to methamphetamine.

Similarly, as Mr.
Szarzynski correctly points out, not enough attention has been placed on
rehabilitative efforts. The White House’s proposed budget for 2009 cut funding
for treatment and prevention of drug abuse to under $5 billion — worth about
two weeks in Iraq. Likewise, the president’s proposed budget aimed to cut
drug-free school grants by nearly 15 percent, all of which accounts for the
seventh straight year the White House has aimed to cut prevention spending.

But like many Bush-era
policies, execution has not been a strong point. And one man’s incompetence
should not lead to another man’s complacence.

Too often we are wooed
by the ideas of those who — under a false pretext — parade the benefits of
giving up. If it’s too hard, too complicated, if the research isn’t immediately
decisive, if the government is too involved, etc. — then no matter the
possibility for your tax dollars to be of humanitarian good, it’s just not
worth it. This is exactly the time when rights claims have a funny way of being
slipped in to justify the downright egomaniacal.

To be sure, there are
good arguments for the legalization of some drugs, the strongest case being for
marijuana. But there is a reason that no country in the world — not a single
one — permits drug use of all kinds: It falls on the opposite side of Right.

?

Andy Granias ([email protected]) is a junior
majoring in political science and philosophy.