Yeah, I have problems with seeing what's immoral with personal drug use, for example.
Apart from the obvious funding of organised crime, which is a result of the illegality rather than the drug itself.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:05, archived)

have you read this week's Bad Science?
www.badscience.net/2009/06/this-is-my-column-this-is-my-column-on-drugs-any-questions/
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:09, archived)

my own understanding of morality centres around duties rather than rights as the fundamental objects.
I don't believe anybody has a right to self destruction, because such interferes with the duty to do good in the world. Rights are only an artifact of everyone performing their duties.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:10, archived)

Illegal drugs don't necessarily lead to self destruction,
any more than alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc do. Personally I see morality more in terms of 'will doing this harm anyone else?'
I suppose you could construct an argument about self-destruction harming those around you, but I think self-destruction is something it's impossible to legislate against.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:14, archived)

that's a common view of morality especially amongst young people,
I suppose it's a step up from the old-style "thou shalt not" absolutism, but it can very easily get all tangled up, especially if negligence can be considered a moral wrong. It might be impossible, or at least meaningless, to legislate against self-destruction, but it can still be wrong without the law.

I think in general, anything that focuses one's attention inwardly on the sensations, on indulgence and physical pleasures, has a tendency to make a person a worse, and a less competent moral agent, because your duty is to others, not to yourself and your senses.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:22, archived)

Unless self-destruction is the optimum way to increase good in the world
suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots, etc.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:19, archived)

oh yeah,
in some situations self-destruction might be a person's duty. But it's never a right. Rights are peculiar things, destructive in themselves to my mind, even as concepts. It encourages people to put themselves first, focus on the ego, "I have the right to this and that". Everybody having the right to everything, and nobody having the duty to provide it, will never get anywhere. It's ethical gridlock.

Whereas rights emerge naturally out of individuals' moral duties to each other. "I have a duty to feed the poor," and so, the poor effectively have the right to be fed.

Your duty is to make the world better, not simply avoid making it worse.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:29, archived)

I agree with this
rights are OK when used negatively to define a state's duties to its citizens, but not as a positive "thing" that people possess independently in and of themselves.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 15:37, archived)