by Claude Opus 5.5
If someone agrees to take a drug, have they also agreed to whatever happens to them afterwards?
It is easy to slip into thinking that one choice covers everything that follows from it. “She chose to drink, so she has to accept what happened.” “He decided to go to the party, so he knew the risks.” In everyday life we sometimes talk like this, and sometimes it is fair. But when it comes to what other people do to us, this way of thinking goes badly wrong, and seeing why is one of the most useful things this topic can teach.
Choices and their consequences
Start with something everyone agrees on. If you choose to do something risky, you are responsible for the risk to yourself. If you decide to go skiing and break your leg because you went too fast, it was your choice and partly your fault. We think people should own their decisions.
Now change the example. You go skiing, and another skier deliberately crashes into you. You chose to ski, and skiing involves the risk of collisions. Did you agree to being knocked over on purpose? Obviously not. You agreed to the activity and its ordinary risks. You did not agree to someone else choosing to harm you.
That is the key difference. Some consequences just happen. Others are caused by another person’s choice. When another person makes a free choice to do something to you, your earlier choice does not turn their choice into yours.
Applying this to drugs
Taking a drug is a choice about your own body and mind. It may be a risky or unwise choice, and in many places an illegal one. But it is a choice to take the drug, nothing more. It is not a choice to have sex, or to be touched, or to be photographed, or to have anything else done to you by anyone else. Those things involve other people deciding to act, and they need their own permission.
In fact, there is a stronger point. Taking a drug can make you less able to make or communicate choices afterwards. So the very thing that someone might say shows you “agreed” to what came next, being intoxicated, is the thing that makes it harder for you to agree to anything at all. If the drug leaves someone confused or barely aware, that should make other people more careful, not less.
Why people still think it
If the argument is so clear, why do people keep saying things like “she took the drugs, so what did she expect?”
One reason is that it feels fair to hold people responsible for risky choices. That instinct is reasonable when the only person harmed is the one who chose. It stops being reasonable when someone else does harm.
Another reason is that it lets other people off the hook. If we can say the victim brought it on herself, we do not have to think about the choices made by those who acted. Blaming the victim can be a way of avoiding uncomfortable questions about friends, institutions or ourselves.
A third reason is confusion between being sensible and being responsible. It may be sensible to avoid getting very drunk or taking drugs in unfamiliar places, just as it is sensible to lock your bike. But if someone steals an unlocked bike, the theft is still the thief’s fault. Giving safety advice is fine. Using a failure to follow it as an excuse for someone else’s wrong is not.
In the case behind these seminars
One of the disputed facts in the Cornell case is whether the drugs were taken willingly. The original decision not to prosecute relied on a signed statement describing the drug use and what followed as voluntary. The complainant’s lawyer disputes this. It is important not to assume either side is right. But the question here is what would follow if the drugs had been taken willingly. The answer is that this would not mean she agreed to anything else. It might matter for understanding what happened, but it would not settle whether there was consent to sex.
Does it ever matter?
This does not mean that choosing to take a drug never matters at all. If someone chooses to drink and then drives, they are responsible for the crash, even though they were drunk when it happened, because the harm comes from their own actions. The difference is between what you do while intoxicated and what is done to you. You remain responsible for your own actions. You do not become responsible for other people’s.
Questions for discussion
Try this test. Replace the drug with something else: a person who chose to walk home alone at night, or who chose to wear something particular, or who chose to trust a friend. Does anyone think these choices mean she agreed to whatever happened next? If not, what is different about drugs, if anything? And if you were in a group where someone had clearly taken something and was vulnerable, what would “looking out for her” actually involve?