Waging War on the 'War on Drugs'

"I will care more what my neighbor ingests if I have to pay a part of his insurance costs (which I am already doing for his retirement)."

I guess we'd better ban excessive salt, refined sugar, animal fats, red meat, alcohol, tobacco, dairy, processed food, fast food...

"I will care more what my neighbor ingests if I have to pay a part of his insurance costs (which I am already doing for his retirement)."

Your neighbor is still doing drugs and you're still paying for his health care. The War on Drugs hasn't changed any of this.

"driving well over the speed limit or driving drunk"

-- Gil

The owner of the road most certainly can make the rules for the road. If you violate those rules the owner of the road can disallow you from using their road. That the owner of the road in this particular case is the State is immaterial.

There are several things that the Drug War does, and does very well.

It allow lawyers to get very wealthy.

It allows those who invest in and run private prisons to get very wealthy.


It allows police departments to purchase all kinds of new toys by confiscating private property.


It allows politicos to snoop and interfere in private lives.


It allows black market thugs to get very wealthy.


It creates disincentives to go to college or get a trade when one can get wealthy by participating in the black market.


That is until they get caught, hire a lawyer, have their property confiscated, are put into prison, and stripped of their right to vote, hold a professional license or bear arms.

Yup, the Drug War is very effective at many things.

Curbing the supply or demand of drugs is not one of them.

I'm not pro-drug, but I am anti-prohibition.

Prohibition creates more problems than it solves.

You get corruption on all levels of government, black markets, resources wasted on enforcement, lost tax revenue, clogged courts and jails ... yet supply and demand never seems to change.

If supply and demand are not affected, what's the point of prohibition?

Is the point punishment?

If so it doesn't seem to do much good.

Maybe the point is deterrence?

It doesn't seem to do much of that either.

Maybe the point is to erode rights and confiscate property?

It does a bang up job at that!

Along w/ Carpe Diem, you are quite persuasive on most issues, Mr. Boudreaux (and Mr. Roberts).

* Note: messed up my URL on the other comment. :(

Awesome as a quote:

A society truly free tolerates all peaceful actions, from the sublime through the self-destructive.

I gotta admit that I have no clue as to how the thinking evolved in your mind K. Ackerman. That is about as far off base as you can get.

But,

Then the next post I can't even understand enough to decide if the guy is talking about the same subject.

I've been thinking about the of vidyohs about getting away in murder when yo run someone over when your drunk, its quite interesting but all I can say is when you are in this situation, you get to play games with a policeman, then you get shiny new bracelets, and a chauffeured ride to your new home.

-Miyaka Yusheto

I would feel comfortable with you being transported to the same hospital as your victims and be made to wait until they had all been treated, and everyone who was in the emergency room treated, before you were even examined. If you died in the meantime.....cheez, tough.

The problem with that is, if wanted to kill someone, all I would have to do is run someone over when I'm drunk, and I would get away with murder.

Jack of Spades,

Just to make myself more clear, in my scenario above I used the drunk reason for the accident and subsequent treatment; but, in reality the subsequent treatment I opinionated would hold true whether you were drunk, distracted, or just plain to arrogant to care about other drivers.

My point is that if one causes harm to another regardless of why, the treatment should include the concept of allowing the perp to suffer the consequences to the fullest.

Passing laws, enforcing laws, to reduce or eliminate risk is more futile that trying to prohibit substances.

don't Bogart that J, pass the pliers.

Jack of Spades,

Your arguments are well presented, but show too much of the authoritarian approach to your solutions.

Freedom is risk.

Begin by trying to eliminate any measure of risk and you are simultaneously eliminating the identical measure of freedom as well.

The issue comes down to either we are free, or we are not free. If one truly decides for freedom then one must be fully aware that one is also accepting risk.

Of course the one who wishes to use force or law to curtail or eliminate risk is by definition denying any desire for freedom, or trying to have it both ways, which is impossible.

Having come to this point, and accepting risk as part of freedom, we have to look at how one reduces risk without giving up or curtailing freedom. Yes?

My own opinion is that risk is voluntarily reduced when people are permitted, nay made to, suffer the consequences of their actions, even is said consequence is death.

For instance, say you got smashed on booze, jumped in your auto and ran it into another car and injured people, while severely injuring yourself with life threatening damage.

I would feel comfortable with you being transported to the same hospital as your victims and be made to wait until they had all been treated, and everyone who was in the emergency room treated, before you were even examined. If you died in the meantime.....cheez, tough.

When your children, mother, father, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and neighbors all saw and understood the simple pure idea that a irresponsible person is not going to the head of the line or be treated special or given special attention under any circumstance; and, we are all subject to suffer the effects of our own stupidity......people will reduce their stupidity level dramtaically. It would be a voluntary thing, because people aren't really as dumb as they act, they have just been enculturated to act with disregard for others and still believe that they will be taken care of.

Take away that mental safety net and expose them to their own idiocy and you will see idiocy drop very quickly.

So private road owners are allowed to take a prohibition stance? Well, can we then presume if they choose to ban substances then they'll be inundated with crime as that's what prohibition causes? The private owners then have to allow the use of various substances to stop the crime wave that can come with prohibition? Therefore 'private prohibition' won't work (except in small pockets where users will happily go elsewhere).

True_Liberal on 06/21/09 @ 8:21:56 PM

"Drinking or use of any other intoxicant, in private, is not risky to anyone else unless a vehicle is involved."

No...

Two points:

One does not need a vehicle to be a danger to their surroundings while not of sound mind.

The second point is that long term consequences of such behavior may not become evident for several years.

The test for any kind of risky behavior is this: Who else is placed at greater risk as a result? Skiing or skydiving places almost no one at risk other than the participant. Drinking or use of any other intoxicant, in private, is not risky to anyone else unless a vehicle is involved.

IF a law is necessary, it needs to be structured thus.

How about this? I believe motor cycle riders should not have a right to sue for damages for physical injury if they get hit, even if it's the other driver's fault. By choosing to ride unprotected, they place a higher responsibility and liability on those who are riding protected.

A driver impaired by drugs or alcohol resulting in another person's death is neither "sublime" nor "self-destructive." He imposes a tragedy on others and a burden on society. When did freedom from responsibility become a libertarian value? When did society loose the right to determine certain behaviors are inherently dangerous enough to others to prohibit them, before the dangerous potential becomes a deadly deed?

The war against drugs can't stop unless the following occur first:

1. No one must be allowed to plead diminished capacity for crimes or torts committed while intoxicated. You chose to take the drug, you are responsible for your actions while under the influence.

2. Welfare reform. If you're hooked on drugs, say goodbye to the social welfare net. If it's your choice to take drugs, then it's our choice not to pay for the consequences of it, and if you die on the streets, sorry for you.

3. If you believe you have the right to take drugs, then you have the responsibility to ensure that you can pay for any damages you may incur by your actions while under the influence. Bankrupcy should not be able to discharge debts due to damage caused by those under the influence. Drug users as a group must be willing to pay for the direct tort damages caused by those under the influence who are unable to pay the damages themselves. All such costs must be funded by an excise tax on the drugs.

Good luck getting 1-3 passed.

I've used a variation of Walter Williams argument as well, and I agree with his conclusion. Additionally, Steven Landsburg argued once that a better way to save lives in traffic situations would be to design cars that have spear tips mounted on the steering wheel poited directly at the heart of the driver. (This was used to illustrate the general theme of "incentives matter.")

I agree that one of the conditions for spontaneous order is private property rights. Hence why I would agree that privately owned road systems can set any rules they please, and I think that these should be expanded.

But another factor which comes into play in traffic situations is incentives and externalities. Property rights are important for incentives to work. That's why, for example, air pollution is considered an externality. Nobody owns the air, so nobody has a direct incentive to cut back on their pollution. Hence, people tend to over pollute, and we have pollution taxes to bring the level of pollution closer to the social optimum.

Driving on public roads has a similar spillover effect. I'm not the only person whose risk is increased by my reckless driving, so there will be a tendency for me to take more risks than are optimal. Traffic laws impose an additional cost on me for risky driving, when tends to make me drive more safely and therefore cut the risks I impose on other drivers. There is an optimum to be found. With speed limits, it's certainly higher than 14mph, probably not as high as 130mph. There is always room for debate on what that level is.

On a side note, Landsburg also points out that a better way to reduce pollution than taxes would be to establish a market in air. Much of what is considered market failure is, he points out, a case of market absence. Markets fail to regulate air pollution because there is no market for air.

Private roads would, I suspect, make more efficient traffic rules than pulic roads, but that only changes what the rules would be, not the fact that those rules will exist. So as to your question "much MORE effective is the added layer of outside regulation and does it justify it's cost?", my answer is a resounding "it depends." As I said, I consider all these limits open to debate. Should the speed limit be faster or slower? Should the legal blool/alcohol content be lower or higher? I'm no expert on either subject. I'm perfectly prepared to accept that both could be higher than they are now. My original point, however, was arguing against tarran's statement that we shouldn't regulate a drunk driver until he actually hits somebody. Some degree of prevenative law should exist; provided that it is drawn from spontaneous order, and provided that it applies to the public sphere rather than the private.

And on that note, I need to get going. Here in Iraq it's one in the morning. I look forward to reading what everyone else had to say in the morning.

"But what if there was a drug that can make people violent?"

Don't use it. So can booze, btw.

What are we doing with people who are violent w/o drug and alcohol use?

"What if that drug was potentially addictive?" Don't use it. So are cigarettes and booze btw.

"What if that drug impared judgment?"

Don't use it. So does booze btw.

"What if that drug impared vision and balance?" Don't use it. So does booze btw.

Every libertarian should read the classic essay by Lysander Spooner against the legislation of vice, and the letter by Mr. Boudreaux was sent in that spirit.

That said, this has nothing to do with driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The owner of property should be able to enforce the rules he makes regarding it. If roads are publicly owned, then the legislative process regarding them should prevail over someone's private conception of what the laws should be if they owned the roads.

Spontaneous order (as I understand it, btw) is possible only with enforced property rights, i.e. laws exist as a result of a natural order (what you said, I know). Otherwise you have chaos which gets you anarchy.

Once the basics are enforced, I would think that there is incentive to obey all the rules that do not have the power of law. these incentives work well enough to result in self regulation in which all parties benefit.

So far as speed limits and drivers licenses are concerned,the question I ask is: Does it make a real difference? Walter Williams likes to argue for something like a 14 mph limit on the interstate (another bone of contention in these parts, I know) because more people will end up living. He concludes (rightly, IMO) that those lives saved are not worth the cost (I'm told he's a pretty decent guy....).

The unfortunate and very tragic fact is that regardless of regulating automobile traffic, people will die on our roads. So the question is: How much MORE effective is the added layer of outside regulation and does it justify it's cost?

"William S. Burroughs died at age 83 after 50 years of heroin use.

A life cut short by just 5 decades of chronic abuse."

LOL. Good stuff. For a moment there I thought that previous "what if" post was a serious argument. Whew.

Reminds me of what was said on an episode of South Park about smoking, "if it gives me cancer when I'm 80, I don't care. Who the hell wants to be 90 anyway?"

K Ackermann -

To each of your "what ifs", I can offer up the example of alcohol. By every definition, alcohol is a drug. And alcohol can make people violent, is potentially addictive, impares vision, judgment, and balance. In fact, I consider myself something of a self educated expert on alcohols negative side effects, which also include the delusion that ex girlfriends really want you to call them at 3am, embarrasing pictures, the belief that you are a kareoke superstar, and a nasty headach the next day.

We also tried to make this drug illegal. But Prohibition wasn't exactly what you would call a resounding success.

Drugs kill.

William S. Burroughs died at age 83 after 50 years of heroin use.

A life cut short by just 5 decades of chronic abuse.

But what if there was a drug that can make people violent?

What if that drug was potentially addictive?

What if that drug impared judgment?

What if that drug impared vision and balance?

Only then would we make it legal.

Jared you would have to net that against the savings from prosecuting the war on drugs, the war on the terrorism criminal drug industries can sponsor, the war on cartels and their wars on foreign citizens, and the actual wars we fund in the name of this crusade. Then net it against the health care costs you currently experience due to unreliable quality levels of the black market products. I doubt the war on drugs is a money saver, even with public health care.

I wouldn't just make an exception out of New York...I was stationed at Camp Pendleton a couple of years ago. In San Diego, if there is 1.1 car lengths between you and the vehicle in front of you, someone will fill that space. After I was there for a year I went on leave back to my sleepy little hometown in Washington state, and my family was terrified at my new driving style.

And the great social philosopher Dave Barry says of Florida drivers that there is only one apparent law, which is that no vehicle may at any time be behind another vehicle.

But I agree with you on the general sync of the highway. Drivers on the freeway can be an example of Hayek's spontaneous order in action. I still consider Hayek's "Law, Legislation, and Liberty" series among the most profoud pieces of work of the 20th century. It can really open your eyes and change your way of thinking when you understand it.

But spontaneous order is not the same thing as anarchy. Indeed, the first volume of Hayek's trilogy was entitled "Rules and Order"; Hayek considered rules evolved out of spontanoues order to be vital for society. When drivers have that "sync" with each other, there is spontaneous order, and a Hayekian view would say that traffic laws should have their basis in finding rules which maintain that sync.

(At least, that's how I understand Hayek. If I'm way off base here, then can either Dr Boudreaux or Dr Roberts correct me?)

It's just that what I love about driving on the highway is how in sync drivers are with one another. You really see the mutual benefit idea playing out in real time (this is of course with the exception of New York......).

Perhaps accident numbers would be lower because drivers would have full responsibility for their actions (you couldn't say that you were within the limit) and would be forced to behave more prudently on the road (again - with the exception of NY!).

DAVE -

I did a quick check on that most respected of scholarly journals, Wikipedia. The data is from 2003, deaths measured per billion kilometers per vehicle. On the freeway, Germany had 3.8 deaths and non freeway driving was measured 12.4, the U.S. was 5.2 and 10.7, respectively.

Also, the Wikipedia article on the autobahn noted that while 75% of the of the autobahn has no speed limit, it does have other fairly extensive safety rules, from traveling distance to minimum speed to tire inflation, and that it's patrolled by mark and unmarked police vehicles equiped with video cameras to make infractions easier to prosecute.

At a glance, it suggests that these sorts of safety rules would be better suited for highway safety than current speed limits.

It does, however, fit into my larger argument. The general thrust of what I was trying to get at was that when it comes to traffic rules, you don't necessarily have to wait until someone gets run over, if it can be reasonably shown that their behavior imposed additional risks on third parties who had no option to consent. If the autobahns rules do a better job of that than speed limits, so much the better. The difference is one of technique, not principle.

The autobahn has no speed limit. Does anyone know if it is more dangerous? I'm assuming most people know what their comfort level is on the highway and those speeding wildly would likely speed regardless of limit.

Any data?

*Sam* Grove...sorry about that.

Same Grove -

Laws against sleepy or inattentive driving are much more sparse because they are difficult to quantify or measure. This isn't the case with speed limits or blood alcohol levels. One can debate the merits of particular limits (60 vs 65 vs 70 mph on the highway, .08 vs .10, etc), but they have the advantage of being measureable.

There is no way for a police officer to asertain that you were, say, 10 points worth of inattentive or 20% too sleepy.

Many accidents are the result of sleepy and/or inattentive driving.

Obviously driving while sleepy or inattentive should be made illegal. :)

Αμάτι Nώνυμος -

Huh?

One more caveat -

I think a very strong case can be made for the expansion of privately owned roads. It's only been done in fairly limited amounts, but where it has been tried it has been very successful. And the owners of those roads should be able to set any speed limits and alcohol related rules they wish.

tarran-

I'm not one of the ones who would claim that if you think it ought to be legal, you must approve of it. There is much which I would legalize but not approve, if I were the arbiter of such things. So you and I are on the same page here.

I also agree that if we had privately owned roads, the owner of those roads can set whatever standards he pleases.

But this is at the point where our opinions differ, "A drunk driver, like a sober driver, should be punished for the injuries they produce, not prophylactically for injuries they might cause."

What drunk drivers are punished for is not injuries they might cause; the punishment is for the increased risk they impose on other people. It's the same as speed limits. When someone whizzes along at 70mph in a 35 mph zone, the police don't wait form them to hit someone before issuing a traffic citation. It seems to me that a consistent extension of your argument should also call for the abolition of speed limits on public roads. Is that also something you would support, and if not, what is the fundamental difference between the two concepts?

"

truly free tolerates all peaceful actions, from the


"

They are now free to hang from a tree.

And the minute they start dumping that siht into your granddaughters tomato juice you will be a willing part of the posse, part and parcel of the vigilantes. You will quickly learn all the most exotic intricacies of how to tie the most beautiful hangman's knot in your neighborhood. You know something? They have already tomato-juiced-dumped. They will inevitably take out a few of us; and we will bag a gate-cut of them animals.

It is now time to rock & roll.

Take a bite out of trash

!

Jack,

Many of us feel that a driver who drives home without hurting anyone has not committed a crime, where a driver who kills a pedestrian did.

Having alcohol in our blood does not automatically harm anyone else.

A drunk driver, like a sober driver, should be punished for the injuries they produce, not prophylactically for injuries they might cause.

Many people assume that since we want to decriminalize driving while intoxicated, we must be fine with it. I personally would confiscate my kids' keys if I caught them drinking before hitting the road. Of course, if we had privately owned roads, road owners would be free to establish whatever rules they wanted for people using their property, and I would not think it amiss if a road owner refused service to drunkards . Please note, though, that when McDonalds refuses service to a guy who is behaving belligerently, they don't lock him up and ruin his life: they merely kick him out of the store.

"As long as you are free to choose to enter or NOT enter into that contract/agreement, is that consistent with the principles of a free society?"

CRC,

Yes, I believe so. I offer up as Exibit A my own experience in a very freedom restricting orginazation; the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marines have a "zero tolerance" policy regarding drugs. If you test positive, you are kicked out, period. I've known a few guys who were good Marines who tested positive and were sent on their way with an other than honerable discharge.

I thing drugs ought to be legal. Furthermore, I think that the Marine Corps policy regarding marijuana borders on the nonsensical. Pot is remarkably safe, as far as drugs go. (And if it were legal, it would be even safer due to the decreased risk of contamination.) By contrast, when I was a young Lance Corporal, I spent many weekends partying with my friends and drinking frankly irresponsible quantities of alcohol. What I was doing was much more dangerous than lighting up a joint, but it was perfectly within the rules.

But even though the Marine Corps drug policy is ill thought out (at best), I still agreed to abide by it when I joined. I don't consider the restriction unjust, because it was voluntary. If a civilian agreed to similar restrictions as part of a job contract, that is also just.

"Some Libertarians do argue drink-driving is fine"

Gil,

I don't know of any libertarians who argue that, but this could simply be due to a gap in my knowledge. Can you point me in the direction of a libertarian who makes this argument?

John Galt: "Can I still fire employees who are smoking marijuana or doing coke? And I have to be permitted to test them, too."

I would think yes, with the following explanation:

When you enter into an employment contract/agreement, the employer can choose to place certain conditions upon that employment. These conditions could include disallowing the use of drugs or alcohol (minimally on the job or on premise). There could also be a condition for submission to random drug testing. As long as you are free to choose to enter or NOT enter into that contract/agreement, is that consistent with the principles of a free society?

Do all side effects of drugs-use have to be peaceful as well??

Or are these side effects a seperate problem?

I really have trouble getting my mind around this problem.

In "a society truly free", yes, but that's not what we live in. End the idea of socialism, then we can talk about ending its consequences - such as the war on drugs. Then again, approaching the war on drugs as a consequence of the idea of socialism might just be an effective argument.

I.e., "You say I'm responsible for everyone, and now look, you've made me responsible for all these idiots. How about let's stop taking care of idiots and spend the resources on something useful"?

It may be ineffective in the long run and it may or may not be immoral, but it sure as heck makes us feel good doing it.

I think the above sentence speaks for both drug users and those trying to stop them.

A pretty blunt statement:

"A society truly free tolerates all peaceful actions, from the sublime through the self-destructive."

Is there really no more to say about this?

Peaceful is the only prerequisite?

Well, this depends. Can I still fire employees who are smoking marijuana or doing coke? And I have to be permitted to test them, too.

I will care more what my neighbor ingests if I have to pay a part of his insurance costs (which I am already doing for his retirement). If we could do a flat tax, and have everyone be responsible for their own medical care in a freer market setting, then I would agree with the legalization of drugs.

Another type of question - do people have the right to ban activities that aren't necessarily harmful per se but carry a high risk of a dangerous outcome: e.g. driving well over the speed limit or driving drunk (or driving well over the speed limit whilst driving drunk)? Some Libertarians do argue drink-driving is fine - they're hurting no one and some claim that they're better drivers when they're drunk. But then it could be argued that firing guns in public for no reason other than it fun should be legal too. However, how many would be willing to do drugs if it were as near-banned as smoking?

But then what happens when those who take drugs overdose? Some would say those who want to do drugs and yet desire public health services for the times when things go wrong are still interfering in the rights of others. Besides are Libertarians hoping that in an open society the drugs users are going to do drugs in quaint, simple way just like a morning cup of coffee? Or will society have more negative externalities with drivers have different way to be driving under the influence?

Well-stated.