Letters

From the November 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

We must emphasize the economic benefits of legalization since it has been demonstrated that libertarian imperatives are irrelevant to the majority of voters. Current data are useful in macroeconomics but aren't meaningful to the average person. If columnists/economists such as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell put the benefits in terms that people could readily perceive, e.g., net savings in federal, state, and local taxes for a hypothetical owner of a $100,000 home in Broward County, Florida, earning $35,000 a year, perhaps we could gain sufficient support.

Changing welfare by providing benefits in kind, e.g., housing, issuing credit cards for purchases, making direct payments for utilities, and minimizing cash-in-hand would result in little money for drugs and a strong incentive to earn it if we rigorously prosecute property crimes. Pardoning those jailed solely for drug offenses would provide the necessary prison space and probably result in a marked decrease in confinement costs. One long-term effect would be to instill a work ethic where it's currently nonexistent.

As this country has all but given up on free markets, it would be up to the government to keep drug costs down to the point where even someone with a 500-pound gorilla on his back could feed it for a reasonable amount, perhaps $10 a day.

Michael Dorion
Deerfield Beach, FL

It is sad that Ethan Nadelmann does not understand the underlying moral reason for drug prohibition to be lifted: A person's body is his or her property, to do with as he or she wishes. As such, the prohibition of certain drugs is itself a violation of personal property rights. When he questions the libertarian's emphasis on property rights he legitimizes the government's drug prohibitions. He also sanctions government restrictions on personal speech and privacy--both of which are simply different forms of property.

The problems caused by prohibition are not simply practical. They are ethical as well. Property rights are the basis for the entire U.S. Constitution. By allowing our government to violate the rights that Americans have in physical property, we have opened the door to violations of personal property rights--and to the crime that such transgressions prompt.

Michael C. Betts
Charlottesville, VA

If the positions and philosophy espoused by Ethan Nadelmann are the "cutting edge" of rational drug policy discussion, we are indeed doomed to long-term carnage in the name of prohibition. For a person supposedly dedicated to individual liberty and common sense, Mr. Nadelmann's philosophy is entirely too inconsistent, filled with the caveats and personal biases that, if implemented, would lead to even more irrational policy.

Even as he advocates fundamental freedom to make personal choices, he claims that a free market (even in cigarettes!) without the government playing an inhibitory role is "not a desirable thing." Like a true statist, he endorses the idea of government "encouraging people to act in their own interests"--which, of course, can be defined not by each individual, but by Ethan Nadelmann and Big Brother. In other words, while I have a perfect (or at least recognizable) right to smoke, it is perfectly legitimate for the government to use my money to try to discourage me from doing so!

Even more nonsensical is the idea that drugs should be sold by mail but not on the open market. The basic fact that Mr. Nadelmann evades is that government has no legitimate business in the drugs arena. He seems to be trying to inch along the path of regulation, with bureaucrats deciding what drugs people can possess and use, in what quantity, and in what places. This policy is the same as prohibition, except that the individual decisions made by the bureaucrats might be less extreme than the decisions that are currently in force.

Saying that people have a right as long as it is exercised in an acceptable way is to say that they don't have that right at all. The whole point of a right is that it cannot be revoked or infringed on by the state. If it can be, it is not a right, but a privilege or a whim. This is not to say that government does not have a legitimate role in responding to actions done under the influence--because at that point, the rights of others may be implicated. However, until that point, no amount of academic jargon can finesse the issue. As Ayn Rand wrote, "The fundamental question is, 'Is man free?' All the rest is practical application."

I greatly respect Mr. Nadelmann's candor and admire his willingness to admit that he has not considered every nuance of the issue. However, unless and until he begins to build upon a more solid philosophical foundation, his argument will continue to dissolve into confusion, uncertainty, and inconsistency. Because he is in a position to be heard, I hope that his message will develop into a consistent, rational call for an absolute end to prohibition, and an unqualified endorsement of individual rights and liberties.

T. Anthony Rowls
Cincinnati, OH

Mr. Nadelmann replies: Debates with libertarians are always fun and interesting. Since I spend much of my time debating and addressing the 98 percent of Americans who prefer more punitive and prohibitionist policies than I do, it is refreshing to think about the issues raised by those who want less restrictive policies.

I am familiar with, and even sympathetic to, the criticisms raised in the letters, including both those that view any government restriction on property or self-regarding behavior as unethical and those that view the regulations I favor as a slippery slope toward Big Brother. I do believe that individual freedom needs to be accorded far greater due in our laws than is currently the case--but I also believe that democratically elected governments can and should play modest roles in advancing public health. Politically, we have little choice but to work with reform-minded prohibitionists in advocating and designing compromise policies that remove the worst aspects of drug prohibition. And intellectually, I find it difficult to imagine a libertarian approach to drug control surviving the inevitable pressures to protect children and mentally disabled adults from unrestricted drug availability.

Let me take this opportunity to point out one other area of dispute between libertarians and those, such as myself, who are more civil libertarian in our preferences. I believe strongly in a right of privacy and bodily integrity and favor laws that would severely restrict the power of employers, both private and government, to test their employees' urine, blood, hair, and skin for the presence of drugs. Many libertarians, by contrast, believe that freedom of contract is the more important right--one that includes the right of powerful government and corporate employers to subject citizens to virtually any conditions, including invasive testing of bodily fluids. There is, I believe, no way of finessing this conflict of fundamental rights. Libertarians have no choice but to choose which rights they want government to elevate over others.

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