Quote:
Originally Posted by Daradon
Not a good parallel. One is a human rights issue, the other isn't. I mean, I guess in a libertarian sense, making drugs illegal is a rights issue. I sure don't think the government has the right to tell us what we can do to our bodies. But, it's not a prejudicial human rights issue where one groups is being excluded from another group, and treated differently. At least with drugs being illegal everyone is being treated the same way, and in that sense, fair to some extent.
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Strongly disagree.
Control over one's body is the most simplistic of human rights arguments.
Whether I want to put a penis in me and not be persecuted for it or whether I want to put a cigarette or a joint in me, is a fundamental qualifier of personal freedom and human rights.
Also, the enforcement is very much a prejudicial human rights issue as in the States, minorities are so vastly overrepresented in drug arrests to the extent that they appear as modern extension of Jim Crow style racially motivated persecution.
Things are similar in Canada, where in urban areas, the vast majority of low-level drug arrests are of visible minorities, often relatively new landed immigrants (this is especially true in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver).