[MawNicker]

The failure to obtain a college education has an external impact on the families, friends, employers, and coworkers of those failing to be college graduates. Failure to be a college graduate affects the ability to abide by social norms imposed upon everyone. In a developed nation with a safety net, failure to be a college graduate might even implicate society's need to rescue those who can't work or injure themselves during uneducated activities.

You're making an argument for which anything could be illegal. The public could develop an irrational prejudice against people wearing purple. Then you could make all of those statements about that. Is it the public's right to ban purple clothing? Do we still have freedom simply because there is more than one other color? This may seem facetious but it's not that far from tattoos and piercings. You're almost suggesting that there shouldn't be inalienable rights. I understand that in "reality" there ultimately aren't but I hadn't realized our society was so ready to abandon the ideal.

[rayiner]

We require people to get a high school education for precisely the reasons you state.

[msandford]

Why stop there, though? Why not college, and a PhD? I mean, we mandate that everyone in the US buy health insurance because if you're not paying into the system you're part of the problem. What limit is there to this power?

Can we force women to be on birth control until they're married and/or have "enough" money and/or fulfill some other arbitrary criteria for having kids? Society -- statistically speaking -- has to pick up the tab for kids born to lower income single moms through WIC, food stamps, etc. That's clearly something that society has an interest in and thus a right to control/regulate right?

If you disagree with the above statement please address it as a matter of far-reaching prinicple rather than as a matter of pragmatics. Our society is ostensibly, largely built on principle; it's illegal to murder because nobody wants to be murdered. This is very straightforward. If we concede that society has an interest in how people interact, truly what is off limits?

[rayiner]

Principle bends to pragmatism. It's illegal to kill other humans, except when it isn't (accidents, self-defense, military action, abortion). There's nothing straightforward about the lines we draw between when it's okay versus not okay to kill people. People are entitled to trade their labor freely, except when they aren't (minimum wage, child labor).

Humans are social creatures; they are interdependent cogs in a machine. So as an overarching principle, society is entitled to regulate to interactions between people. To make that bearable, we recognize certain "fundamental rights" that society cannot infringe. Procreation is a deeply-held one, which is why society cannot force women to be on birth control. Taking drugs is not one of those rights.

[ZoeZoeBee]

Society has infringed upon the "fundamental right" of procreation numerous times. Forced Sterilizations have been used many times for a variety of reasons throughout the history of Western Civilization including the modern US, and "voluntary sterilizations" happen more often than they are discussed still to this day.

[mordocai]

The argument other people in the thread are giving though is that taking drugs SHOULD be one of those rights.

[sarvinc]

Just want to point out that here in the US we don't require anyone to graduate high school. In most cases minors are required to attend school. My point is that, in the past, minors weren't able to chose for themselves. Instead the guardian often chose to make the child work thus continuing a cycle of poverty.