Wry anarchist Crispin Sartwell makes the case for keeping drugs illegal.

For one thing, as many have argued, the unenforceable prohibition on drugs brings the law into contempt. When average citizens of your country know they are criminals, they lose respect for law and for the agents of the law.

But contempt for the law is the sure — indeed really the only — sign of a free people. People who respect the law simply on the grounds that it is law deserve every nasty little thing that happens to them after that. They ought to spend some time cultivating moral and intellectual autonomy.

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Secondly, of course, in a situation of legalization, the government would regulate drugs, and massively profit through tax revenues. That is the last thing that anyone should want.

In Pennsylvania, where I live, the state is currently the only authorized distributor of wine, liquor, and gambling services. It’s hard even to come up with a decent bottle of champagne or a reasonable game of cards (hard, but, thank God, not impossible). Most states are extremely dependent on income from the tobacco settlement and from taxes on cigarettes.

The government is already the primary purveyor of vice in our great nation, and it’s a small step from here to a government that’s your primary pornographer, pimp, and narcotics dealer. I would not object to this at all if they delivered these key services efficiently. But no.

If you think we’ve got a wasteful bureaucracy now, just wait until the American state is the cocaine kingpin. The government can’t even deliver hurricane aid, much less heroin to all the Americans who need it.

More here.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 5:24 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling and Poker, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.