Drugs negate human rights

cc. At the Second International Symposium Against Drugs in Zofingen in April 1997, Geneva philosopher Professor Jeanne Hersch gave a remarkable opening speech on the topic of ‘Drug legalisation – a contradiction to human rights’. Her thoughts on what a human being is and what they should be highlight the inhumanity of drug legalisation and the distribution of narcotics. Drugs undermine the basic attribute that makes a person human: the ability to make free and responsible decisions as a human being. Drugs, even when administered by doctors, are contrary to humanity and human rights. The transcript of her unscripted lecture printed here has been authorised by Professor Hersch.

I may disappoint you, because I will not be able to tell you exactly what to do and what not to do. I will tell you one thing, just one. I don’t think I have ever tried to give a lecture in my life that deals with just one thing. I want to explain only one thing to you, but this one thing is not easy.
  It is simply this: I believe that there is no purely technical, external, legal solution to the drug problem. The discussion can swing one way or the other. But what must not be allowed to swing is the idea of what a human being is and what a human being should be.
  In empirical terms, I cannot argue with a doctor who proposes a solution with which I disagree. He tells me: “I am a doctor. This young person has come to me and needs help. And I have that help. For example, I have methadone or something else that would allow him – at least for a while – to continue working and living. I cannot refuse him that. That is why I am giving it to him.” Could I, out of my ignorance, dare to say, “You must not do that!”? I believe that many of our contemporaries find themselves in this situation.
  However, in response to what I cannot reject, I must not simply remain silent or deny the doctor’s reasoning. That is why I must appeal to your conscience in my speech:
  With humans, it is never the case that something existential, something that is crucial to life, can be solved by simple technology or a medical solution. The question is different: what is at stake in human terms? What is at stake for this young person as a human being, not as a donkey or a cow or any other animal, but as a human being?
  You have to get to the point where the person says: “I won’t do it, I won’t take it, whatever the consequences. It is against my human dignity, it is against my humanity, that someone wants to save me with a purely chemical means. I am not the kind of being that can be saved with a chemical agent. If it were purely physical, then perhaps it would be possible – but even then, it is not always the case.” Where the sick young person as such is at stake, their conscience, their freedom, no solution should be offered that might later undermine their humanity.
  The lack of strength in the fight against drugs in our country and in other countries is no coincidence. I believe the reason lies not only in the fact that many people profit from it in some way, which is indeed the case, but also in the fact that our sense of what is fundamentally human has been weakened. There are snakes in our society – drugs are one of them. They are very cunning, as snakes are. There are clever snakes that draw their strength from our weakness, that have a sense of what is crucial in humanity. And what is that? What is crucial in humanity is that human beings are free, that they decide what they do. Perhaps they do not decide, but they could decide. As a result, they are also responsible for how they decide.
  The ability to make decisions is the basis for the international community’s proclamation – at least in words – that human beings have rights. Why else would humans have special rights? Other animals also have everything we have, except for this ability to decide for themselves. These human rights have become so important in the contemporary view of humanity that they are considered more important than all laws; they have become the basis of all laws. The laws are there to support human rights. We Swiss actually have a duty to understand this better than others. That is why it is a pure perversion of thought to claim that it is a human right to be allowed to consume drugs or not to consume them. That is not true! Drugs negate human rights by denying that ultimately it is not a doctor who gives the permission, but the individual’s own conscience.
  Because human beings can make responsible decisions – and since they can, they should decide – they have a duty to be decisive beings. That is something we cannot get rid of. This connection has been valid since the day human beings were created.
  Of course, we can tell young people: “Go to the doctor. He will give you what you need.” But then everyone has to decide for themselves: “Do you want to take it or not? Do you want a chemical substance to decide what becomes of you? Can you accept something like that?
  When you are 14 or 15 years old, it is very difficult to accept that your parents decide what is good for you. And would you accept that a chemical substance decides what you will become later in life? Can you bow down to this drug? Can you accept, in the most fundamental sense, to cease being a human being?” That is what is at stake. That is the point where I would allow myself, even though I do not understand anything about it, to say to any doctor: “No, you do not decide here. Here, the free human being, the free responsible human being, decides.”
  This is not the person who is actually free, but the person who knows that he can become free and who does not have the right to renounce himself. I think that this feeling, this primal feeling, should be practised on a small scale, in kindergarten, in the children’s class: “You can decide. Do you want it to be this way or that way?” And gradually, the child will develop the ability to choose, to not accept anything else, that is, to be a democrat. To be a democrat, I believe, is nothing less than that.
  Anyone who fails to see – however difficult it may be – that it is your own responsibility to make yourself a free person has never educated anyone. Anyone who understands this also understands that this conviction is stronger than any knowledge, any authority, any sophistry. This is the only thing I wanted to say to you today.
  Before I came here, I read some explanations from doctors who think to give drugs to a patient in order to help, from people who naturally believe they are right.
  I found no trace of this understanding of human nature in them. It seems that in our society, people no longer think that the first priority is to save a human being. And that means saving a human being, not just any animal; it means not simply keeping them alive as if they were any other living creature. If we succeed in reviving this connection [between the human being and his capacity for rational, responsible decision-making, for making a free human being out of oneself] then no snake will be powerful anymore, and this will gradually disappear.
  In my opinion, an alarm bell is ringing. An alarm bell to remind us to stick to the essentials, to what makes us human. •

First published in Zeit-Fragen No 5 of May 1997

(Translation Current Concerns)