TPI writes:
I mean, you're the libertarian here. People should be generally free to do stuff, so long as it isn't damaging to society, right?
I guess I'm libertarian? I hate the stigma of the title, though.
In TAE's perfect world, everything dangerous is legal, but everyone is smart enough to avoid dangerous stuff. Cocaine is perfectly legal and available on the open market (allowing tax revenue) but no one is dumb enough to inhale/inject/whatever it is you do with cocaine. Dynamite is also legal, but no one is angry enough to buy a truckload of it and blow up a building. Prostitution is legal, but no woman is at a point where she'll sell her body for money, and no man is at a point where he's so desperately horny that he'd pay for it. Gambling is legal everywhere, but people are prudent enough to not gamble with their money. Abortion is legal, but teenage girls don't get themselves pregnant, women are not raped, and birth control is used by any and all who wish to time their children effectively.
In my impossibly utopia, all is well and all are free. But we all make smart choices and we all take care of our bodies.
Back here in reality, we hardly make any smart choices. In fact most of our choices are terrible. Drug abuse is widespread, across all cultural lines, and abortion is a cauterizing hot button issue, both for people who fight for it and for those who argue against it. People still cover themselves in explosives and run into mosques, or murder their peers at military bases, or fight holy wars against each other. Prostitution and gambling are widespread and an unprecendented cultural phenomenon.
I'd love to say "sure, legalize pot...no one will abuse it" but the fact is that a lot more people would have access to it that are weak-willed than currently do while pot is an illegal substance.
Libertarians do not argue for the deregulation of everything, ever. Or if they do they are pointlessly idealistic. Instead, libertarians argue for the absolute safe minimum amount of government intrusion or regulation, especially into areas where no intrusion and regulation is necessary. In the case of motorcyclists wearing helmets and addictive drugs, absolutely the government should be involved, because enough people in our society do not have the personal fortitude to make the right decision regarding these dangerous things for it to be open and widespread.
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3 comments:
The bottom line is that Marijuana has medicinal purposes and is used medicinally by many people and there is absolutely no reason for it to be illegal. I’m hoping you don’t see this like the torture argument you threw out there that seems absolutely uninformed on your part. I wont be arguing that torture has a medicinal use. Its also the intoxicant choice of the last 2 generation. Some love alcohol, some love cigarettes, some like to have a glass or two of wine after work while others would prefer to skip the intoxicant of alcohol and prefer marijuana.
Are there plenty of dirty hippies that will throw up any excuse to get their precious pot legalized so they can sit on their ass all day getting stoned? Sure there are, but we have that problem with alcohol as well. Videogames also keep people on the couch. TV and movies. Sports are in a sense completely pointless in our lives yet we have thousands of people that are addicted to them and put so much of their time into watching games jumping from one sport to the next all year long leaving them terribly unproductive. There are plenty of things that could be compared, yet none of these are illegal.
If the only thing bad that comes from pot is potential laziness and an appetite for junk food, I don’t see the issue. And when so many people use it medicinally, and its medicinal qualities are very well documented, what’s the hold up?
But marijuana isn't addictive and it doesn't have any long-term health effects. It's safer than a whole lot of legal substances.
Of course people will use it to excess, as many currently do and as many people do with alcohol, Cheetos, and Simpsons reruns. But think of it this way: if say 10% of America's alcohol consumption switched to an equivalent amount of safe, legal marijuana, we'd have fewer deadly car accidents, less cirrhosis, less domestic violence, and so on.
And just so there's no misunderstanding, I wasn't using libertarian as a pejorative. I think it's entirely legitimate to have a strong--though not absolute--presumption in favor of liberty. Heroin would quite reasonably exceed what that presumption allows, as would amateur surgery and playing Russian roulette. I think excluding marijuana is a tougher case for a libertarian--not because people won't abuse it, but because in a free society people are free to do some dumb things.
Dude, the drug war is an even worse waste of money than NASA. NASA puts out cool pictures and the DEA arrests poor people with no options but to sell drugs or be owned by those who do.
Costs of drug war include:
overstuffed prisons
racial tension
growth of gang power dealing in black market substances
delegitimized government
From a cost-benefit perspective prohibition is delivering mediocre return on investment. Please address.
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