by Claude Opus 5.5
Does alcohol or drug use change how responsible someone is for what they do? For what is done to them?
Alcohol and drugs are part of the story behind these seminars. The complainant had taken drugs on the night in question, and the district attorney’s original decision not to charge was linked to a statement describing her drug use as voluntary. Many cases of sexual violence involve alcohol or drugs, and they raise two different questions that people often confuse. First: if someone is drunk or high, are they less responsible for what they do? Second: if someone is drunk or high, are they partly responsible for what is done to them? The answers to these questions are very different.
Are people less responsible for what they do when intoxicated?
It might seem that people who are very drunk are less responsible for their actions, because alcohol affects judgement, self-control and memory. In some sense this is true: an intoxicated person may make choices they would never make sober.
But both the law and most moral thinking say that voluntary intoxication does not excuse wrongdoing. In England and Wales, a person who chooses to get drunk generally cannot use their intoxication as a defence to crimes like assault or rape. In rape cases, the question of whether the accused reasonably believed the other person was consenting is judged by what a reasonable sober person would have believed, not what a drunk person happened to think. The idea is that if you choose to drink or take drugs, you are responsible for the risks that come with it, including the risk that you will behave badly.
There is a good reason for this. If being drunk excused harmful behaviour, people could escape responsibility simply by drinking first. It would also mean that those most likely to cause harm while drunk would be least likely to be held to account.
That does not mean intoxication is irrelevant. If someone was drugged without knowing, or took a substance by mistake, their responsibility might be different, because they did not choose the risk.
Are people responsible for what is done to them when intoxicated?
This is a completely different question, and the answer is generally no.
Being drunk or high is not a wrong against anyone else. It may be unwise, and it may make a person more vulnerable, but it does not give anyone else permission to harm them. A person who takes advantage of someone’s intoxication is responsible for doing so.
In fact, intoxication can make the other person’s responsibility greater. Both English and New York law recognise that a person may be so intoxicated that they lack the capacity to consent to sex. If someone is in that state, sexual activity with them is not consensual. Someone who sees that another person is very drunk or drugged has more reason, not less, to be careful.
Why the two questions are often confused
People often blame victims who were drinking. They say things like “she shouldn’t have been so drunk” or “what did she expect?” These comments treat the victim’s intoxication as if it shared the responsibility for what happened to her. But that confuses vulnerability with blame. Walking alone at night may increase someone’s risk of being robbed, but nobody thinks it makes them responsible for the robbery.
There is also an unfair double standard. When the person accused of causing harm was drunk, people sometimes treat it as an excuse (“he was drunk, he didn’t know what he was doing”). When the person harmed was drunk, they sometimes treat it as a fault (“she was drunk, she put herself in that situation”). Both reactions are mistaken, and together they shift responsibility in the wrong direction.
What about choices made while intoxicated?
A harder question is whether a person who agrees to something while drunk has truly consented. The law in England says that a drunken person can still consent, if they retain the capacity to make a choice, but that capacity can disappear before a person loses consciousness. This is one reason why consent in situations involving alcohol or drugs is so difficult, and why the safest approach is to avoid sexual activity with anyone whose capacity is in doubt.
In this case, the question of whether the complainant’s choice to take a drug meant she had chosen what happened afterwards is central. Agreeing to take a drug is not the same as agreeing to whatever happens later.
Questions for discussion
Should someone who was very drunk be punished less for a crime they committed? Why or why not? Is it ever fair to say a victim was partly responsible because they were drunk? What responsibilities do people have towards friends who are very drunk? And if both people were drunk, how should we think about responsibility?