In which I school those who favor drug legalization, with an economic argument.
So, basically, the reason drugs are illegal is they're addictive. But it's really not because being an addict is beneath the dignity of a free man, making its victim a slave to a mere chemical; no, it's much simpler (the preservation of human dignity being only a happy side-effect). Addictive substances are illegal because they render their victims incapable of making rational economic choices.
There is, you see, a rational limit to the law of supply and demand. That limit is, when one charges more than is reasonable for an actual (not an economic) necessity. If there is a drought, and you have a water monopoly, and you charge me as much as you think I can possibly afford, you know what happens? I'll steal the water, that's what happens; you stand a good chance of dying in the process. This isn't the case with non-necessities, because "I'll die if I don't" is not a factor in that equation.
But addiction, well, addiction puts a person in a state where they will—or feel like they will—die. And so they're willing to kill and steal for drugs. The legality of the substance has no effect on the willingness of junkies to commit crimes to get it. Certainly legalizing it would probably reduce the incidence of crimes by drug-dealers—but licensing assassins' guilds would reduce the incidence of hitmen murdering witnesses, wouldn't it? "Laws create crime" is a stupid argument.
It's funny to me that libertarians so often favor drug legalization, generally on the basis of economic arguments vis-a-vis the "War on Drugs". But hey idiots, economics deals only with the "rational actor", and an addict isn't one. Your obsession with "consenting adults": yeah, again, people under the influence of psychotropic substances can't give legal consent. You see the problem? The thing at the basis of all your arguments is destroyed by the very thing you're arguing in favor of.
Oh, and alcohol? Yeah, all these objections apply to alcohol; we just grandfather it in because of tradition. Though then again, mankind has had 40-60 centuries to work the kinks out of how it copes with alcohol—and look how problematic it still is. "One mildly addictive substance causes all these problems, let's legalize some that are much worse"—the only position that is an argument for is disenfranchising the person who makes it.
3 comments:
Interesting and novel argument.
Not all drugs are addictive, though arguably the ones that aren't addictive fail to make very "good" drugs to abuse.
Any drugs suitable for abuse - those that give a considerable 'high', I guess - are arguably psychologically addictive, in which case your argument holds.
"It's funny to me that libertarians so often favor drug legalization, generally on the basis of economic arguments vis-a-vis the "War on Drugs". But hey idiots, economics deals only with the "rational actor", and an addict isn't one. Your obsession with "consenting adults": yeah, again, people under the influence of psychotropic substances can't give legal consent. You see the problem?"
1. Calling people idiots doesn't work well if your aim is to try to persuade these people, or anyone else who's reading for that matter.
2. Even if it's true that an addict cannot give what we might call meaningful consent once addicted (the current legalistic definition of consent is irrelevant), at the point at which the adult first takes the addictive drug, he or she can.
1. Calling idiots idiots is honesty, and they are wholly and utterly incoherent in their ideas. If being called out on that fact in blunt language will prevent them from acknowledging a logically correct argument, they're not only idiots, they're also intellectually dishonest sentimentalists.
2. The vast, vast majority of Roman slaves freely sold themselves into their status. Does that make slavery not immoral in that situation?
Rights follow solely from your dignity, either simply as a human person or as the possessor of some status (citizens have special rights within a community, for instance). That being the case, you do not have the right to alienate the dignity that was the origin of the right in the first place.
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