Libertarians for Drug Prohibition?
During a CNN town hall last week, a member of the audience asked Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, about heroin legalization. Although the former New Mexico governor correctly pointed out that prohibition makes heroin use more dangerous, he disclaimed any interest in repealing it, saying his legalization agenda is limited to marijuana. He thereby undercut the utilitarian case against drug prohibition and missed an opportunity to make a moral case for individual freedom.
The Libertarian Party's platform states that "we favor the repeal of all laws creating 'crimes' without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes." Johnson therefore was deviating from the party line when he declared that
"we are not espousing the legalization of any drugs outside of marijuana." That was the easy way out, since most Americans recognize that marijuana is less hazardous than alcohol and think it should be legal. But what is the point of a Libertarian presidential campaign if it does not encourage voters to think about public policy issues in a more consistent and principled way?
With regard to alcohol and marijuana, Johnson said, "When it comes to choices in your own life, you should be able to make those choices as long as you're not doing harm to others." But he declined to extend that tolerance to other drugs, which makes no sense from a libertarian perspective. Either using force to protect people from their own risky decisions is legitimate, or it is not. If it is not, the specific nature of the decisions—whether they concern drugs, say, rather than food, sex or gambling, or heroin rather than alcohol or marijuana—should not matter. A government that respects individual freedom only insofar as it pertains to familiar or safe activities does not really respect individual freedom. Johnson should have said that any kind of drug prohibition violates the principle that each individual is sovereign over his own body and mind.
In addition to favoring political pragmatism over principle, Johnson's answer obscured the ways in which prohibition aggravates the problems it is aimed at solving. He alluded to some of those side effects but did not clearly connect them to the question he was asked, and he shied away from the logical conclusion that the problems caused by prohibition can be eliminated only by eliminating prohibition.
The heroin question came from Maureen Morella, a New Jersey woman whose 16-year-old son, Jesse, suffered brain damage after snorting heroin with his friends in 2004. "He became very sick and vomited," she explained. "He aspirated and was left with brain damage so severe that now, 12 years later, he remains in a wheelchair with no ability to eat or speak, and he is fed through a tube in his stomach."
One important point to make about this incident is that something very similar could have happened with alcohol. People who drink too much and pass out on their backs can (and periodically do) choke on their vomit, which can result in death or permanent disability. The possibility of such outcomes is not usually considered an argument for bringing back alcohol prohibition, possibly because prohibition did not protect drinkers from fatal or disabling accidents. If anything, it made such incidents more likely by encouraging quick consumption of potent beverages on the sly.
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