A letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun yesterday shows how important it is to raise people’s vision to higher level — one that goes beyond reform and instead goes to the principles of a free society.
The letter was written by a man named Michael Westerhaus. His letter brings up some of the important points about the government’s decades-long war on drugs:
1. “Our failed war on drugs” has brought on deaths of people from corrupted black-market drugs.
2. Charging the sellers of drugs with murder is just political posturing.
3. No-knock raids have killed innocent people.
4. Drug laws bring into existence drug cartels and gang wars “with more murders.”
5. Drug laws are not going to prevent addicts from doing whatever is necessary to get drugs.
To those points I would add the following one: People have the fundamental, God-given right to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful it might be. That’s an essential aspect of a free society.
But then here’s the kicker. Westerhaus cannot bring himself to see the solution to all this drug-war mayhem. He writes, “We need to find a better way to solve the medical problem of addiction.” The title of his letter to the editor is, “Find a new way to fight drug war.”
Oh so close, but yet still so far. Westerhaus is clearly on the verge of recognizing the only solution to America’s drug-war woes, but obviously still can’t bring himself to see it. The solution is not to find a new way to fight the drug war. The solution is to end the drug war. That necessarily means repealing all laws that criminalize the possession and distribution of drugs.
Prohibition of alcohol produced the same consequences as the prohibition of drugs. While there were those who called for new ways to enforce Prohibition, Americans finally came to the realization that the only solution was to end Prohibition. That’s what we need with the drug war.
Thus, the importance of raising people’s vision to a higher level — not on reforming the drug war but instead to the principles of a free society. Settling for reform can, at best, only result in an improvement of our condition as serfs. To achieve the free society, we have to dismantle and repeal, not reform, all infringements on liberty. That necessarily means making the consistent, principled case for the free society, including ending, not reforming, the drug war.
