The LACK of Virtue of Selfishness

This rant is inspired by the death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman,an actor I have no special feelings about,but whose work I have enjoyed in select films throughout the years. if ya haven't heard he was found dead in his bathroom today and the early reports are saying he killed himself,accidentally,by overdosing on heroin. Having said that,here's my thoughts on this:

I have a very Libertarian view,as such I am almost entirely a live and let live type of person,so long as it fits into the framework of it 'neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg' I don't happen to feel that it's terribly much my concern. I feel like the use of NON-medical drugs (gotta say it that way since somebody took offense to the term "illegal" since it's the government making them illegal) and the abuse of those substances as well as legitimate drugs available by prescription. Drug abuse hasn't broken my leg,per se,but it sure has picked MY pocket and YOURS. Ya wanna say making pot and coke and meth legal would eliminate that? I doubt it. You still have a multitude of issues that come with those substances that legality won't cure. Pot isn't addictive in the same sense as something like heroin but there are chronic (temporally speaking) users and you can't deny that while using it a person is hardly someone you want to be in charge of anything remotely important.

All that being said here's my point;Phillip Seymour Hoffman seems to have died because he was stupid. He thought he could continue to use heroin (early reports are claiming all of this and even if the reports are wrong all you'll have to do is replace Hoffman with someone else's name) with virtually no consequences. He'd been through rehab and even went through a refresher course last year,but it seems that his willpower was nearly non-existent. Hoffman's actions were nothing but SELFISH. Why? The man had three children who now are missing a parent. Did those kids deserve this? Did they ask for it? I say no to the first and highly unlikely to the second.

There are some things that are illegal for good reason,most non-medical use drugs fall into that category. Is it still up to the individual to decide whether to ever use these substances? Yes,but I don't see any contradiction in that view to the view that the government may deem their use illegal and do what they can to keep them out of the country. I tend to believe that Hoffman did this not because he made an informed decision but rather because he was now an addict that felt helpless to resist using heroin. We should use his selfish act to demonstrate how bad an idea use of these substances is,but we probably won't. He'll be remembered as this great actor and the reason we can ONLY remember him will likely be mostly forgotten or swept aside.