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Answer by Bradley
Doucet: |
I thank Mr. Racicot for
taking the time once again
to write in with his
thoughts on the drug war,
and I offer the following
points for him and others to
consider in this important
debate:
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• It is
prohibitionist drug
laws (which lead to
inflated profits)
that attract
criminals to the
drug trade in the
first place. Absent
those prohibitionist
laws, drug use would
not entail any harm
to others, and
therefore it is
those laws that must
be condemned and
ultimately repealed.
Prohibitionists are
initiating the use
of force against
producers and users,
and everyone in
between, with
predictably
unfortunate
unintended
consequences.
• Drugs and liberty
are most definitely
not antonyms. It is
no more true to
claim that every pot
smoker is a slave to
pot than to claim
that every drinker
is a slave to booze.
Some drug users
become drug abusers
and some become
addicts, but even
here, what is
required is
treatment, not
incarceration – and
certainly not the
incarceration of
non-abusing non-addicts!
• I am entirely in
favour of requiring
drug abusers to pay
higher health
insurance rates as a
way of making them
accountable for the
consequences of
their actions. The
fact that they are
not accountable
under our current
one-size-fits-all
government health
insurance monopoly,
though, is not a
reason for
prohibiting drug
use; it is an
argument for
abolishing that
one-size-fits-all
health insurance
monopoly.
• A significant
portion of humanity
always has and
always will seek out
mind-altering
experiences. Today,
with our massive
efforts to prohibit
certain psychoactive
drugs, they are
nonetheless readily
available in jail,
of all places, so it
is doubtful that
even the most
draconian police
state could stop
people who want
drugs from getting
them. |
I realize that ending drug
prohibition will not be easy.
The desire to control and
restrict the peaceful
activities of others seems
almost as widespread as the
desire to alter one's mental
state with drugs. Still,
while drug use has been
around forever, drug
prohibition is largely a
20th century phenomenon.
Whereas ending drug use is
quite literally impossible,
ending prohibition will
merely be prohibitively
difficult.
B. D.
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