Drug Laws

End The War Now!

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As Ron says:

While the war in Iraq may outrageous there is another war that is equally outrageous and is truly bi-partisan, the war on drugs.

And Anthony Gregory frames this abomination as we all should:

The drug war is misdirected. It is foolish. It is stupid, unworkable, disastrous, tragic and sad. But beyond all that it is evil.
The drug war is grounded in an evil premise: that people do not own their bodies, that they have no right to control what they do with their own lives and their own property, that it is appropriate to lock them in cages if they produce, distribute or consume chemicals in defiance of the state.
This is a monstrosity. As long as America has the drug war, it is not a free country. Politicians who support it and expand it, knowing the evils it entails, have no business lecturing us on morality.
The ideology of the war on drugs is the ideology of totalitarianism, of communism, of fascism and of slavery. In practice, it has made an utter mockery of the rule of law and the often-spouted idea that America is the freest country on earth.

Read the rest and then consider just how you will start standing up to the jackboots of the drug war. How you will help lead them to their Nuremberg and there is no excuse for any of the drug thugs be they presidents, senators, governors, mayors, narcs, prosecutors, swat teams, etc. They should all know better.

They are all guilty of crimes against humanity.

Smoking Outdoors

This entry was posted in Anarchism Drug Laws Law Libertarianism Regulation on by

In the midst of a fine hammering of the use of false information  to support efforts to ban all outdoor smoking Michael Siegel says the following:

There is, in my opinion, simply no justification for invoking the state’s police powers to regulate smoking on streets and sidewalks, places where people are free to move about and where, in most situations, people can simply avoid substantial exposure to secondhand smoke. And I am aware of no scientific evidence that secondhand smoke exposure on streets and sidewalks is a significant public health problem.

Well, yes, it is not a public health problem but it can be damned obnoxious and offensive to a nonsmoker. I can choose whether or not to enter a smoking establishment but why should I have to delay or hasten my walk down a sidewalk because some jerk (being polite) decides to light up right in front of me (other examples are myriad).
Outdoor smoking should be allowed but the smoker should be subject to charges of simple assault and/or battery if the smoke touches another person or forces them to change their position or path in order to avoid the smoke.
Via Hit & Run via To the People

bush Supports End to Prohibition

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Comparing immigration to prohibition is not that farfetched:

It also makes sense to take pressure off the border by giving people a legal means on a temporary basis to come here, so they don’t have to sneak across. Now, some of you all may be old enough to remember the days of Prohibition. I’m not. (Laughter.) But remember, we illegalized whisky, and guess what? People found all kinds of ways to make it, and to run it. NASCAR got started — positive thing that came out of all that. (Laughter.)

The result bush describes is what happens anytime government gets in the way of people freely exchanging goods and services. Now if bush would just open his mind a little bit more and see that the war on drugs also needs to be dismantled.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to evaluate the NASCAR reference.

Via a new Nevada focused marijuana legalization site.

Disengaging From the Drug War

This entry was posted in Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Earlier this month the King Count Bar Assocation (WA) held a drug policy conference titled Exit Strategy for the War on Drugs: Toward A New Legal Framework. In a followup opinion piece Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey wrote that although the conference attendees seemed to agree that the prohibition should end they had some problems with the next step:

Prohibition had failed. Drug laws had not stopped Americans from getting drugs; it simply made them get drugs from criminals. But if not from criminals, then from whom? On marijuana, they could not agree.

Some of the attendees wanted to make sure that the same government that has demonstrated such dramatic failure in the war on drugs was rewarded by having a monopoly on the distribution of marijuana:

The idea of any corporate control is troubling to me,” said Deborah Small, a New York activist who proposed to give marijuana distribution to the government.

Might a government monoply reap monopolistic windfall profits? Well, sure:

Much of the crowd was tolerant of intoxication but not of profit. They would replace police and jailers with doctors and social workers. The Dutch scene, with private-branded marijuana in private-sector cafes, was too commercial for them. Too fun. They would give marijuana oversight to the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
Merrit Long, chairman of that august monopoly, told the conference the state’s profit was $200 million on $600 million of sales.

Heck, even Microsoft doesn’t make that kind of margin. Unless they propose to continue the prohibition on growing marijuana, which doesn’t quite seem like an end of the drug war, then folks will just plant those seeds of BC bud in their gardens and bypass the government monopoly.
Initially the best way to keep corporations out of the business is this: only allow individuals or partnerships to produce, distribute and sell the goods. Over a longer period corporations can be kept out by eliminating the laws that facilitate the existience of the modern corporate structure.
Ramsey closes with this:

But I, too, fall into the trap of looking for a system that would align the rules with what Americans actually do. Americans don’t want that. Drug prohibition reflects our ideal of a sober America, and it is politically impossible to abandon that.
Yet life continues. We legislate nationally and ignore locally. We have our own version of Holland, really, except that ours is harsher than theirs, and does not attract tourists.

Excuse me but whose idea of a sober America? All those folks with their 6-packs and liquor cabinets? Bruce, you’ll have a better chance of convincing us that we have an ideal of sober America when no congress critter drinks, when liquor sales have dropped to nil. Nope, drug prohibition reflects a misuse of government power and the disproportionate power of those who make their livings off the drug war.
Let’s retire all the drug terrorists warriors now!
NB: Well known blogger Mark Kleiman was a participant at the conference.