With Jeff Sessions at the forefront the drug war, opioid addiction spreading like wildfire, celebritarians promoting drug mysticism, and cannabis culture are taking over America in record numbers; drug abuse is a hot topic as of late. Reactions range from advocating a tyrannical police and surveillance state, universal healthcare, nationalised treatment, social darwinism, legalization, taxed and regulated drugs, and decriminalisation. Wherever a spot for controversy exist, I’ll be there to capitalise on outrage culture so please donate.
For a libertarian the answer may at first seem quite obvious; decriminalisation. States have a nasty habit of using such moral crises to crack down on dissenters rather than help people with abuse problems. Arbitrary distinctions between OK drugs like alcohol and nicotine, and bad drugs marijuana and mushrooms seem quite senseless when drawn by criminal enterprises calling themselves a nation states. Governments only exist through theft and violence and have no legitimate claim over us to tell us what we do to our own body. We will decide what to do for recreation, thank you very much.
But a problem happens when you’re aiming to create a free society and of tons of dangerous drugs pour across our borders lowering the IQ and self-awareness of the population. Many of whom smoke weed or trip balls and succumb to dumb ideas like The Venus Project, or go on a meth bender and advocate fascism and spousal abuse. A lot of drug users find gainful employment difficult or become handicapped because of the drug and then clog up our welfare state. Because people who are using tend to fall into a life of crime, it requires more police presence. When addiction strikes their own families they seek government solutions, so that’s bad but not as much as my government solution I’ll propose in just a bit. Changing drug preferences from more harmless things like marijuana to more harmful drugs like opioids means societal tensions.
A good libertarian will tend to put principle first, no doubt. But I am not one of those degenerates. If welfare rolls are burdened, abolish welfare. If a police presence is repressive, restrain or privatize the police. If people commit crimes, punish the criminals who committed them not the drug. But that’s not going to happen politically, ever. So the best thing to do is participate in statism to apply band-aids with all kinds of unintended consequences that only exacerbates the problem.
Let’s dial back the clock and analyse why people do drugs in the first place. Growing up under the modern surveillance and police state is difficult. But imagine a free-market world. People tend to associate with peers with different preferences and leisure activities just like they do today. Those choices lead to certain outcomes that allows me to make blanket judgements on the collective groups when a portion ruins their lives by being a crackhead.
Imagine a market scenario where the drug markets are OK and everything is fine because of reasons that have been explained before. At this point I just want it to be clear I have some understanding of economics because I listen to Contra Krugman.
Now this is the part where I throw that knowledge out the window for an emotional plea like a liberal would do. What if the drug prices are really high because of the state and it’s creating a market signal for criminals and warlords to come in. Think of the children! If not think of the children, then think of the people asking us to think of the children who vote.
So while you snooty libertarians who aren’t nearly as enlightened as me sit back in your ivory towers and sneer at the state for creating the drug problem it has, I have to deal with these problems including a temptation to smoke meth and record the whole thing for my podcast. We don’t live in that ideal world so we need to clamp down on drug use. Here’s why.
Drug abuse is a government program.
When people do drugs it puts a heavy burden on the healthcare system which is mostly state funded. People who use drugs go on the black market which has questionable standards and makes the drugs dangerous. People do those drugs, fuck up their bodies and go on programs like SSI disability, medicare, medicaid, and they drive up premiums on the ACA insurance marketplace. That means more taxes and increased costs of “private” health care.
Let’s be pragmatic; it’s not going to be legalized any time soon so instead of agitating for a reduced role we should expand the role because consequentialist reasons. Nevermind I rail against consequentialism in regards to politics and ethics, this is the only time it’s valid… well, this and the wall.
But that’s not even the tip of the iceberg! We also don’t have the luxury of being principled when people are robbing your house for drug money. We don’t have the comfort of ideological consistency when someone high on PCP assaults you. We don’t have the extravagance of having anything resembling a coherent idea when some crackhead rapes your wife. There’s a clear correlation between drug abuse and crime and that’s as far as we need to go on that and I’ll just leave it there.
Furthermore, we live in a world where there’s forced or heavily encouraged drug use. Kids often go to school and get misdiagnosed with ADHD and get prescribed Adderall and Ritalin. Hospitals will provide opioid pain medications to people who are not in a position to objectively consent. Because there’s this element I’m going to present a dichotomy of choices here: we can crack down on all of it or let bad things happen. I’m also going to say that there’s no third option of allowing choice in all areas of drug use.
Most importantly think of every communist you’ve ever met. Don’t they all talk about how we should all take drugs and “everything will be great, bruh.” This is true across the board and isn’t a false stereotype. These people who are mentally damaged by drug use, vote, and democrats know that they can get footholds on elections when they put some kind of legalization measure on the ballot. Yes on recreational Marijuana and vote against the God Emperor Trump because he’s literally Hitler, bruh. We can’t have that. You can’t have that. Sure pot legalization sounds great to be put on a ballot, but if it means Crooked Hillary gets to sit in the Oval Office, sorry, but people just need to be jailed for that crap.
As much as I would like to live in a world where I don’t have to risk jail time for my vices, yours needs to be outlawed and you need to be punished. For Western Civilization and my people. But mostly because I think pot smells bad.
(THIS IS SATIRE)