(topic for Socrates CAFE @Chengdu)
Should drugs be legalized?
In the movie Scent of a Woman, Charlie(acted by Al Pacino) confesses to a seventeen boy that he is obsessed with women. No wonder the last thing that he wants to do before his suicide is to make a trip to New York, a place he can find the class one prostitute.
A good women he can smell so he could then die peacefully.
Old Charlie’s case is not simply a man is seduced by the species so called women, but a human being becomes desperately loyal(irresistible) towards his or her love(addiction). And this kind of addiction, generally is cheered by all culture, just in different level.
However, some addictions will never be praised.
The world-known marketing guru Seth Godin, writes ”smoking is a marketer’s dream come true. “ [1]There are few artificial things in this world are designed to be impossibly to quit. Drugs, the lethal ones, belongs to this group.
It is a doubtful thing whether smoking should become a symbolic thing in culture, but drugs is proved and wildly recognized as a bad thing for individuals, families, and societies.However, this is not enough to justified the act of drug addicting itself. As Kant explained, we should consider the motivation behind the action, but not the consequences of actions. From his perspective, when a humans fails his loved ones with full awareness the irreversible harms in future, this is wrong.
The rules of society says, you can kill yourself, but you cannot kill others. And maybe the most acceptable drug trials is when you already decide to suicide, you replace women with cocaine.
- Seth Godin. The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) (Kindle Locations 194-195). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. [↩︎]
