I second pretty much everything Dana has said (and said quite well, I thought).
In response to Classic:
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Not if what you do on in the comfort of your own home affects what you do on company time. What i f you are a doctor on call and you're high as shit when "the call" comes?
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This applies just as much to alcohol.
It is part of a doctor's duty, if they are on call, to stay capable of responding. So it is not connected to the "privacy of my own home" argument.
On that topic, this is a well-explored problem with the liberty principle. Suppose we consider the liberty principle as: you can do what you like to yourself, provided that you don't harm others.
The obvious problem is that no person is an island, and virtually everything everyone does affects others. Recall that woman who wanted to reach 1,000 lbs? Well, the *main* harm falls on her: she'll die early. But there will be many other effects: her child will receive less parenting from her than otherwise, she will be less economically productive and contribute less socially, and incur extra health care costs.
So the liberty principle needs to be reformulated. In social philosophy, that debate is still underway.
In the meantime (and as part of the debate) what we can do is look at lots of examples that we generally agree on.
People are allowed to be obese or very underweight; even deliberately so. People are allowed to go skydiving (1 in 4,000 chance of chute failure), fishing (kills about 50 Australians per year) or do boxing (causes brain damage). We're allowed to drink and smoke, binge on cheese and chocolate, and sit on our increasingly increasing posteriors and guzzle mass-media.
In all of these cases there is harm to the individual and
some cost to society. Most are in some sense addictive.
Yet an individual is "allowed" to make decisions about doing these things.
Can anyone tell me a good reason why recreational drugs should be treated differently?