Drug Prohibition Folly

It has been said that politicians usually do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities but quite often they end up doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The call in some liberal quarters for drug legalisation is a case in point.Its advocates argue for it not on moral grounds of liberty of the individual  but on the utilitarian grounds that it would reduce crime.They also see it as a great tax revenue raising exercise and seek through heavy regulation to have a state monopoly over its distribution.

Although it is true that the prison population would be drastically reduced were drugs legalised it makes no sense as an argument for on those grounds one could advocate de-criminalising rape murder and burglary and close the prisons down completely.

The lesson of prohibition and its repeal was never properly learned and stems precisely from this wrong thinking whereby prohibition was abandoned   on utiltarian grounds of stopping crime rather than on the grounds of a defense of individual liberty.

A proper defense of liberty would be to abandon drug prohibition as it represents a violation of individual rights.This is in no way to endorse drug taking as it clearly impairs the cognitive faculties but a true test of a belief in liberty  occasionally involves a willingness to defend  some of its least attractive applications.