Applying the Principles

• Legal Principle:
  • Competent adults must always have autonomy about what they put in their bodies. This applies to all substances, medicines, foods, drinks, etc. Competent adults are in charge of what goes into or does not go into their bodies. Taking a drug, by itself, creates no victim, so long as the user owns the substance and has permission to do so from the owner of the premises.
  • Prohibition of drugs does not work - it creates a black market that makes criminals wealthy, lowers the quality and safety of the drugs and how they are consumed, and requires the theft of the general public to pay the cost of policing, prosecuting, and punishing those involved. This was evidently true during the USA’s prohibition of alcohol during the 1920’s, as it is for the prohibition of other drugs today.
  • All the money spent on the drug war is money that could have been spent on identifying, arresting, and prosecuting the small percentage of people who commit actual victim crimes.
  • Sophisticated drug dealers, many of whom commit actual crimes, are incentivised not to end the prohibition that currently makes them wealthy.
  • There are currently >350,000 people in prisons in the US due to nonviolent drug-related offences.
  • A drug user must not create a substantial risk of harm, for example, by driving a car whilst impaired. Nor should drug users be permitted to violate their fiduciary duties owed to care for their children properly.
  • As always, the legality of an activity says nothing about whether it is advisable. Drugs can be addictive and harmful. Those who decide to use harmful drugs, including alcohol, have no right to force others to subsidize the negative health consequences of their bad decisions financially.
• Aspirational Values
  • Merely taking a drug does not, by itself, breach any of the Aspirational Values. But that is not an endorsement. Being dependent on addictive/harmful substances is clearly detrimental.
  • The incentive to disassociate from reality via harmful substances would be reduced once we address the root causes of ‘life on hard-mode’.

Conclusion

• Competent adults control their bodies, including which drugs they consume.
• Prohibition violates individuals twice:
  • by controlling their bodies and
  • by forcing them to pay for the cost of enforcing the prohibition.
• A free society is far less chaotic than endlessly fighting to impose our personal health preferences or moral views on each other.