> How about letting consenting adults free of doing what they want to their own body and legalizing all drugs?
If drugs were legal, and someone suggested making them illegal, I would be against that.
However, a world where drugs have been illegal for decades in most countries is a very different world, and the consequences of legal drugs will be very different.
For example, I think it's pretty clear that legalizing drugs in one US state will result in a number of undesirable things happening in that state, such as drug tourism, increased crime, increased accidental deaths, increased public health spending, taxation of drug sales, government intervention to ensure product safety, etc. Sure, some states have legalized marijuana, but that's a fairly benign drug. Legalizing something like crack or heroin will almost certainly lead to an increase in accidental deaths, which will cost the state money to deal with.
A simple example: the most tolerant places tend to attract the kind of people who are most difficult to tolerate. Look at the homeless situation in San Francisco, and imagine what the crackhead situation would be like there if drugs were legalized. Crackheads would swarm in from all over the country.
So, to prevent the impact of drug legalization from falling disproportionately on certain states, drugs would need to be legalized everywhere at the same time. But even then, the same dynamic may play out between countries (probably less so, because moving between countries is harder than moving between states, but still...)
Furthermore, the libertarian vision of drug legalization will not be the one that happens, if drugs are indeed legalized. We live in a world where governments have public health obligations. We aren't just going to let people die of overdoses in large numbers -- at some point, people will believe that something must be done, and tax dollars will be spent on needle exchanges, rehab, and public health interventions on a large scale. It's not as simple as saying that people can put whatever they want in their bodies and deal with the consequences on their own -- we don't live in the kind of political world where that will be possible. We don't allow that for seat belts or motorcycle helmets, and there is no reason to believe we would allow it for drugs.
You might respond that the kind of public health spending necessary would be lower than the spending that is currently needed to fund the war on drugs, but political debate doesn't take place in a vacuum of pure rationality. Voters have shown time and time again that they would rather spend money to punish than to heal. Until a widespread societal change in moral views takes place, it will be far more difficult to get money for drug treatment than for the war on drugs. So, when faced with the potential costs of drug legalization, most voters will reject it and opt for the status quo, but maybe with more legal weed.
If drugs were legal, and someone suggested making them illegal, I would be against that.
However, a world where drugs have been illegal for decades in most countries is a very different world, and the consequences of legal drugs will be very different.
For example, I think it's pretty clear that legalizing drugs in one US state will result in a number of undesirable things happening in that state, such as drug tourism, increased crime, increased accidental deaths, increased public health spending, taxation of drug sales, government intervention to ensure product safety, etc. Sure, some states have legalized marijuana, but that's a fairly benign drug. Legalizing something like crack or heroin will almost certainly lead to an increase in accidental deaths, which will cost the state money to deal with.
A simple example: the most tolerant places tend to attract the kind of people who are most difficult to tolerate. Look at the homeless situation in San Francisco, and imagine what the crackhead situation would be like there if drugs were legalized. Crackheads would swarm in from all over the country.
So, to prevent the impact of drug legalization from falling disproportionately on certain states, drugs would need to be legalized everywhere at the same time. But even then, the same dynamic may play out between countries (probably less so, because moving between countries is harder than moving between states, but still...)
Furthermore, the libertarian vision of drug legalization will not be the one that happens, if drugs are indeed legalized. We live in a world where governments have public health obligations. We aren't just going to let people die of overdoses in large numbers -- at some point, people will believe that something must be done, and tax dollars will be spent on needle exchanges, rehab, and public health interventions on a large scale. It's not as simple as saying that people can put whatever they want in their bodies and deal with the consequences on their own -- we don't live in the kind of political world where that will be possible. We don't allow that for seat belts or motorcycle helmets, and there is no reason to believe we would allow it for drugs.
You might respond that the kind of public health spending necessary would be lower than the spending that is currently needed to fund the war on drugs, but political debate doesn't take place in a vacuum of pure rationality. Voters have shown time and time again that they would rather spend money to punish than to heal. Until a widespread societal change in moral views takes place, it will be far more difficult to get money for drug treatment than for the war on drugs. So, when faced with the potential costs of drug legalization, most voters will reject it and opt for the status quo, but maybe with more legal weed.