I find it tremendously amusing and a little bit disheartening that some conservatives are so short-sighted as to be more concerned about libertarian advocacy of drug legalization than about the Republican leadership following the Democratic lead in increasing central state power and abandoning national sovereignty to supranational organizations. As Britain has discovered, local politics don’t matter one way or the other once Brussels makes its decision.
Let me grant the most paranoid conservative fear and state that even if I knew that every school child in America would immediately begin smoking pot every single day that I would still support ending the drug war. Even if I knew that every single adult in America would be riding the electric high wire on cocaine every night, I would still support ending the drug war. Because neither of those things will kill America dead beyond any hope of recovery the way that increasing the power of the central state always kills a society in the end. This has been clear since the days of Rome; it is true now.
Look, paranoid drug warrior, fire up a joint and see what it does to you. Don’t forget to inhale! Are you still a freedom-loving responsible individual? Now take all your money and ask a government bureaucrat to act as your pursor, alternatively, just shoot yourself in the back of the head for belonging to a government-disapproved group. Are you still a freedom-loving responsible individual? No, you’re either a dependent serf or you’re dead. This is not rocket science!
Libertine hedonism is a predictable late-stage phenomenon. To focus on it is to concentrate on the symptom, not the disease. Sometimes the symptoms will grow worse as the disease is treated. But the disease must be treated or the patient will die. To make the disease worse in the name of fighting – unsuccessfully, in the case of the Drug War – the symptom is not only illogical, it is doomed to failure.