Should All Drugs be Legal?
Question 107 in Faith Seeking Freedom: Updated & Expanded
This question is from Faith Seeking Freedom: Updated & Expanded, available in paperback, PDF, and Kindle.
In the print edition of Faith Seeking Freedom, this question is titled “Why do libertarians oppose prohibition, including the War on Drugs? Are you saying all drugs should be legal?”
There are two primary reasons why libertarians oppose prohibition laws. The first reason is that enforcement of such laws violate people’s property rights. The second is that these laws tend to do more harm than good and fail to address the root problem of substance abuse.
When laws are adopted that impose punishments on people for selling, possessing, or using drugs, the enforcement of these laws requires the use of violence to stop people from doing what they want with their own money and their own bodies. It is inappropriate to use violence to prevent a person from doing something merely because some third party believes that thing is harmful or immoral. Such rules are “simply human commands and teachings” (Col 2:22) and “have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence” (Col 2:23). Instead of this sort of legalism, Christians recognize that we are under a directive to exercise self-control. We are called to wisely abstain from things that, while within the realm of our possible choices, are not edifying, or even worse, may enslave us or cause another to stumble (1 Cor 6:12, 10:23).
Apart from this moral and philosophical analysis, there is also the question of whether prohibition works. It does not. In fact, drug prohibition tends to result in more concentrated, dangerous drugs, greater associated criminality, more overdoses, and less legal accountability for faulty or adulterated products. And the progress of both alcohol prohibition and the drug war have been accompanied by the abuse of civil liberties through expanded use of warrantless seizures, civil asset forfeiture, broader surveillance by police, and infringements on the right to keep and bear arms such as the National Firearms Act of 1934, the passage of which was made possible by rhetoric about prohibition-related gang violence.