I encountered this amazingly stupid article about why Libertarians should support drug prohibition today and wanted to get some quick thoughts out about how backwards and frankly completely mental it is. And then I remembered all my lessons about PR and I’ll share those observations, too.
The author starts off with a declaration. Not a definition of his terminology, like one would in any real rational argument. He makes several, patently false declarations and then bases the reasons one should oppose legalization of recreational drugs on his own declarations. I mean this is PR 101.
He fails to correctly define freedom; rather he supposes that it is:
Freedom isn’t just the bare ability to do something; it is the ability to act under the influence of properly functioning cognitive faculties.
Then he turns into a sophist weasel with,
If you value freedom, then you should oppose the legalization of recreational drugs.
Well of course by YOUR erroneous definition of freedom, I’d be crazy to disagree with you because FREEDOMMMMMMMM! I wouldn’t be freedom-ing hard enough, right? Nice use of that buzz word, there Joe Goebbel.
Oh, but it gets better:
All should agree that one of the essential responsibilities of government is to protect and promote personal freedom. To that end, governments have an interest in restricting activities that impair, destroy, or otherwise undermine personal freedom.
On this point, one essential ingredient of personal freedom is rationality.
First, is rationality really an essential ingredient necessary to the condition of freedom? Or is the lack of an external authority in the personal lives of humans actually freedom?
Let’s have a look at the definition of freedom from the American Heritage dictionary:
freedom (frēˈdəm)►
n. The condition of being free of restraints.
n. Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression.
n. Political independence.
and good old Merriam-Webster:
Definition of freedom
1 : the quality or state of being free: such as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence
c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous freedom from care
d : unrestricted use gave him the freedom of their home
e : ease, facility spoke the language with freedom
f : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken answered with freedom
g : improper familiarity
h : boldness of conception or execution
Nope, not seeing anything about rationality there. Nice try on the double-think, sucka.
Hey, what about people with mental disabilities who aren’t able to reason? What about the uneducated, and those born with low IQ? Are they any less free in the absence of a coercive, paternal daddy-state? This article assumes that all humans are born equal in mental faculties, and also assumes that everyone alive is capable of higher reasoning. This is simply not true at all. We cannot ascribe reason to be a key component to personal freedom, and use it as an argument for governmental regulation when reason is not universally available to all humanity, in equal amounts.
Furthermore, one can be rational AND use recreational drugs. The two are not mutually exclusive. If we apply the argument of impairment of reason being a hinderance to personal freedom to its fullest extent, then we must naturally ban a wide swath of prescription medication with known cognitive-inhibiting effects. We must also somehow contain those “irrational retards” and sock them away somewhere because they are obviously dangerous to themselves, since they can’t reason their way into their own personal freedoms.
GTFO of here.
Accordingly, since the government has a responsibility to protect personal freedom, it must also protect and promote a culture that is conducive to clear thinking and discourages impaired thinking.
If anything, the “gubermint” is there to protect life, liberty, and property. Not regulate to what extent someone can reason. That’s like, Orwellian, man. Additionally, such things can be protected in the absence of a coercive state, and there are many examples throughout history that prove this point. For the sake of the brevity of this rebuttal, I’ll leave you to the research yourself, if you dare! #GoogleVoluntaryism
Recreational drug use interferes with clear thinking.
Do I really need to repeat myself? Just because you keep saying something doesn’t mean it’s absolutely true! The author points to studies that show the detrimental effects of drug use, but he fails link to the beneficial effects of the same drugs! Yo man, your facts are suspiciously convenient facts.
There are two ways in which drugs affect cognition. First, there are the immediate effects of consuming certain drugs. The immediate effects of hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP include rapid mood swings, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, and a distorted sense of time and self. Heroin produces euphoria followed by nausea and clouded mental functioning. The immediate effects of marijuana—which is often heralded as a “safe” drug—include anxiety, dysphoria and paranoia, altered judgment, cognitive impairment, and psychomotor impairment.
Have a look at the side effects of Ritalin, Prozac and the worst of all, Adderall, and get back to me on that, k? And there’s plenty of studies that show that these legal, prescription medications may not be necessary at all to mental health, and are in fact making the mental health of the patients taking them… worse! Golly gee, imagine that!
Second, there are the long-term effects of drug use. Many drugs have addictive effects that impair the freedom of drug users by exerting a powerful influence over their future actions. Drug addicts who become physically and psychologically dependent on drugs have their sense of self-control diminished or even destroyed. These addictive effects can bleed into other areas of an addict’s life, affecting his ability to work, learn, care for himself, interact with others, and form relationships. They may impel him to act destructively in order to fuel his addiction, thereby affecting the freedom of others besides himself.
Oh my god, more of this overlords defining things nonsense… and more pre-crime slippery slope arguments… look at the words “can” and “may”… pretty freaking weak when you consider where there is no VICTIM there is no CRIME. This includes a victim that MAY be created in the future… which doesn’t actually exist in the present. NEWS FLASH DON QUIXOTE… that windmill you’re tilting at ain’t actually a dragon — it’s all in your head. In this author’s case, it’s in his delusional temporal “something that might happen somewhere on the planet at some arbitrary point in the future” kind of thinking.
These are very serious concerns, to be sure, but the immediate effects of drug use are by themselves enough to show that recreational drug use is intrinsically antithetical to the good of freedom and personal autonomy.
Again, repeating yourself over and over doesn’t make something true. 2+2=5 isn’t true because you keep saying it! I am waiting for the positive proof that recreational drug use is antithetical to liberty, at all!
Also, does the author know that the drug war itself is racist AF, the policy was only enacted to keep minorities down? Does he know that crime and drug use and the irrational behavior he’s griping about actually skyrockets when prohibited? Gee, it’s almost like the law is creating false demand for a “taboo” product — no wonder illegal drugs are so attractive to rebellious teenagers. Derp.
Have a look at countries where there are NO bans on drugs. The instances of teenage drug use is LOWER than its counterpart countries, and the percentage of recreational drug use overall stays the same among the population. MEANING THAT DRUG PROHIBITION DOESN’T WORK, IT ONLY CREATES MORE CRIMINALS, RESULTING IN LESS NET FREEDOM. What part of this does the author truly not understand?
...the government should prohibit those substances that have no legitimate use aside from recreation.
Okay, let’s have the government define what recreational drugs are, because letting the overlords make arbitrary definitions has worked out oh so well in the past, and have NEVER been politically motivated at all! Sheesh, it’s like this guy has conveniently forgotten about regulatory capture!
In addition to making them difficult to obtain, prohibition serves to drive up the cost of drugs, which in turn reduces demand by making it more expensive. It’s simply a matter of supply and demand: the more expensive you make something, the less willing people are to buy it.
Umm… what? Demand for an addictive substance does NOT go down if the price is higher. You can’t look at this in a pure economic sense because physiological and psychological addiction is one of the variables. Look at cigarettes for an example of this. Sure, demand for tobacco has gone down, but we can clearly see in the trends over the last 40 years that is more due to social pressures than anything the government did! Higher prices only hurt the poor. NOT HELPING!!!
Drug legalization would make drugs both cheaper and more available, which in turn increases use. A 2015 study in the Journal of Health Economics found that medical marijuana laws increase marijuana use in both adults and adolescents.
Wait, is this an effect of an actual rise in recreational drug use, or recreational drug use that is actually reported (ya know, since reporting/admitting it before was admitting one’s criminality)?
In adults aged 21 and older, the frequency of binge drinking also increased.
Well gee, what’s that about human nature? I wonder if binge drinking decreases over time, and I also wonder if binge drinking would be as much of a problem in the absence of an arbitrary age limit, “you must be this tall to ride” kind of regulations, like in Germany?
From an actual study out of Germany:
The results of a study presented in Berlin show that German youths are drinking less. According to a federal study, over the past 30 years, alcohol consumption among German teens has dropped by half. Although officials view the results as largely positive, concern remains about youth binge drinking.
The Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA) said around 13% of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 consumed some form of alcohol at least once per week, compared to 21% in 2004 and 25% in 1979. Young adults between the age of 18 and 25 also showed reductions in alcohol consumption, with 35% drinking once per week compared to 67% in 1973.
However the report highlights that of the 7,000 teens and young adults surveyed, 8% of males said they reached intoxication - defined as consuming five or more drinks during one occasion - at least once per month. Those numbers remained stagnant compared with 2009.
Elisabeth Pott, BZgA director, stated that young adults in German were ill-informed of the consequences of binge drinking and that teenagers connected alcohol merely with ‘partying and having fun’ and were less aware of the ‘serious health effects.’
Asked as to their motivation for drinking, over half of the 12 to 17 group said alcohol made it “easier to approach others.” Just under 20% of those asked said they could “forget their problems” after drinking alcohol. The study also showed that peer pressure was a decisive factor in the drinking habits of young people: the more often one’s circle friends consumed alcohol the higher one’s one alcohol consumption proved to be.
I mean, if you really want to look at the original study, it’s in German. I can’t read German so I picked that from the English Cliff notes.
Back to this guy's insanity:
Prohibition makes drugs more expensive and less available, which in turn reduces drug use. Alcohol prohibition, which many think ended in failure, actually reduced per capita alcohol consumption by about 30 to 50 percent.
Actually, no, prohibition INCREASES consumption, and kills far more people than the actual drugs it attempts to regulate. Wow, the stupidity. And the one-sided, cherry picking of evidence in this article is astounding. Just a few Internet searches topples this house of card argument real fast! Here's an image from [Drug War Facts] (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/node/946#overlay=table/netherlands_us):
Of course, not all drugs are used recreationally. Alcohol can be consumed as a mild social lubricant without the intention to get drunk.
Ummm…..
I can’t even. I give up. How is that NOT recreational use???????????????
But not all choices are worth respecting. As I noted earlier, we cannot respect freedom without also respecting the conditions that make freedom possible. One such condition is the preservation and maintenance of properly functioning cognitive faculties.
We’ve been over this already. The definition of freedom proposed in this article is FALSE.
Also, drug addiction is a social issue, not a legal one since the latter creates more criminals rather than actually solving the crisis of recreational drug use in the first place.
I don’t know… maybe the way that the entire society is an engineered shit show of violence and cruelty might have something to do with dependency on recreational drugs? You can’t solve this problem with guns. Compassion and bringing it to light, and truly understanding its causes will heal it. You don’t throw people in prison for mental illness, so why throw drug addicts there for possessing “illegal” drugs?
Alright… I’m kinda done with this nonsense. But, I did a little digging. This site titled “Public Discourse” isn’t necessarily Libertarian, even though they use the buzz word over and over…
If you really dig into who created the site you will turn up a Republican think tank called “The Witherspoon Institute” and their stated mission, in part, is:
The Witherspoon Institute is an independent research center that works to enhance public understanding of the moral foundations of free and democratic societies. Located in Princeton, New Jersey, the Institute promotes the application of fundamental principles of republican government and ordered liberty to contemporary problems through a variety of research and educational ventures.
The Witherspoon Institute carries out its educational mission through the scholarly work of the Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution and the Center on Ethics and the University. These two centers provide opportunities to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to examine the moral foundations of political, philosophical, and social thought and to assist leading scholars in performing rigorous scholarship, often from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Republicans in Libertarian clothing… nothing new for the Libertarian Party! wooooo #LibertarianDumpsterFire2018
Oh, and for a site titled "public discourse" it's really strange to me that they don't allow comments on their articles.
I'm Sara. I'm an unlabeled spirit having a human experience. I found my way into anarchy/voluntaryism since some of the concepts resonate with my understanding of The Principle of Ahimsa. If you find my blog posts useful, please join a Facebook group I created: Philosophy, Spirituality and Liberty. Namaste!