illicit drugs should be legalised in Australia

Ok, we need no definition here, illegal drugs need to stay illegal based on this thought: >A person that takes drugs most likely does so of their own accord in order to be happy. Once they take drugs, they develope an addiction, dependence, tolerance and eventually cannot stop. They then cease to be happy, if they in their original right mind could make the decision to stop because it was taking away their happiness, they would do so. So it is up to us to make that decision for them, assuming that it is a moral obligation for a human to help another human in need. To start this debate, lets examine the intent and purposes of illicit drug use, consider the following chain of logic: > Utilitarianism is the philosophy by which most people abide > Drug users come under the overall catergory of 'most people.' > Drug users are therefore, normal people who take drugs to be happy What I wish to claim, is that we can only enforce law on normal people. Once someone's ability to reason and choose out of freewill are negatively affected by druguse, they cannot be measured up against the law.These people are therefore obliged to stay normal, in oder to be able to abide by the law. its their duty to society in exchange for the privalige of living in 21st centruy civilization. Outside this debate, I questioned jamie the following: Would you force someone to stop hurting themselves if they did not want to do it? This question seeks to identify a difference between the mental and physical persons of an individual. In drug use, this 'physical side' is the person harming themselves by taking drugs due to the fact that they are now depending on it. The mentail side is the persons original state of mind, his/her reasoning before it was affected by drug use. So the question asks, if someone had an impaired ability to choose, and they were hurting themselves against their normal reasoning, should you intervene? Or in other words, if someone is taking drugs and is addicted, should we stop them? Throughout the duration of the debate I will attempt to bully James into saying yes. If we should stop people from taking drugs, then that means we should not legalise drugs in Australia. Im going to do a precognitive rebuttal now and say that my opponent is probably going to claim something along the lines of: People have the right to choose to do something that harms themselves as long as it doesnt harm anone else. Firstly, I have a contention against the word 'right.' In the sense that it doesn't exist. There are privaliges, but there are no such things as rights. Thats working from the standpoint that you were born into society. if you are one of the 200 uncontacted settlements, you owe nothing to society and have the right to remain secluded. But if you are born into society, you have the privalige of everything that society gives you inexchange for the following responcibilities: >The duty to protect society >The duty to progress society >The duty to maintain society Society is a collection of like-minded humans, not in the sense that they believe the same ideas, but that we all share the ability to reason. Anyone who has destroyed their ability to reason in order to make themselves happy has not fulfilled their role to maintain society. They have reduced the imput of a perfectly operational human being and turned it into a person who leeches, a person who requires welfare benefits and the generosity of the law-abiders to remain alive. This is the first causation effect that follows the desicion to take drugs if viewed as a wave. on the bottom line, there is no way to harm yourself in society that doesnt harm someone else. Every death reduces the total output of the working humans simply because there is one less worker. All humans can work, old people use to work once upon a time, so they are excluded, and mentally disabled people can work, if not, they are an exception too, because they did not choose to be disabled. Consider the following statement that may or may not be brought up by the affirmative team: 'What if someone wants to hurt themselves to be happy?' my answer would be that firstly, one must be able to prove that the individual should be put first before the majority, and secondly, one must be able to prove that there is a someone who is in society that owes nothing to society. With those two points taken care of, I look forward to hearing from my opponent.