Thanks to an anonymous tip and a quick response from the Sam Houston State University Police Department, the streets of Huntsville, Texas are markedly safer. I hope every student on campus feels more secure because of the events I monitored on November 13. On November 13, 2001, officers were dispatched to Smith Hall in reference to a suspicious odor. The officers believed the odor to be of burnt marijuana. After obtaining a search warrant and entering the dorm room in question, officers discovered a small quantity of pot and a device for smoking it. One of the residents was subsequently taken into custody, transported to the Walker County Jail, and booked on charges of possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Indeed, I sleep better at night knowing that one more pesky recreational pot smoker is behind bars!
Not really.
I still think about November 13 -- about the radio traffic I heard on my police scanner as the events unfolded, about the young man who went to jail for foolishly smoking in his room, about the valuable law enforcement resources wasted on another pot smoker. If there is a legitimate purpose of government, the institution in society with a monopoly on the use of physical force, then it is to protect me from the harm of others. I can only justify the existence of more than eighteen thousand law enFORCEment agencies by clinging to this idea. I cringe when reality sinks in: Government at all levels has systematically taken the liberty (my liberty, that is) of protecting me from myself. Drug prohibition, commonly referred to as the War on Drugs, is a poignant example of how the government tries to run my life, as if the politicians know what is best for me.
Many anti-prohibitionists do not condone the use of illegal substances. (Notice the phrase "illegal substances." In Nancy Reagan-like form, I just said no to the word "drugs" because the term includes many perfectly legal things, including nicotine, alcohol, and Viagra.) The unfortunate Smith Hall resident -- in truth, the former resident, as University policy called for a mandatory suspension -- came to a different conclusion. He made the poor decision to ingest in his dorm room a substance with which the Congress and State Legislature do not agree, so he no longer goes to school here. Because of the Higher Education Act, he will never again qualify for financial aid, a distinction that applies only to those convicted of drug offenses. Murderers, rapists, and thieves -- people who actually cause harm to others or the property of others -- are welcome at the federal trough.
(For the record, I do not support the government's involvement in funding for higher education. The private sector provides an abundance of scholarship, grant, and loan opportunities. The Higher Education Act merely illustrates the flaws of a system designed to impose the politicians' moral code, at gunpoint if necessary.)
The problem with drug prohibition lies with the assumption that people are incapable of making decisions for themselves. The problem is exaggerated by the assumption that people like Teddy Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, and Strom Thurmond are equipped to make these decisions for us. I disagree on both counts. Only I am qualified to run my own life. I know what is best for me, not some distant legislator concerned only with political expediency. My life is too important to turn over to the politicians.
The paternalistic state is both unjust and unnecessary. The answer to social problems is not another government program backed by coercion; the answer is personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is the cost of individual liberty. A society cannot be free without personal responsibility, and personal responsibility cannot exist without a free society. It is time to re-legalize drugs and let people take responsibility for their own lives. People are entitled to decide what to do with their bodies. What people choose to ingest and what they choose to do in the privacy of their own homes should be of no concern to the government, so long as no force or fraud is involved.
People, by nature, are free. It is only through submission that people trade their freedom for a new law, higher taxes, another layer of bureaucracy, and a false sense of security. When I discuss ideas of this sort, people of opposing viewpoints fallaciously offer the notion that there can be too much freedom -- that the government serves as a check on excessive liberty. I respond with the suggestion that "too much freedom" is nothing more than one person disagreeing with what another person chooses to do with his freedom. Freedom is not a function of the popularity of the activities in which people choose to engage. To the contrary, the extent to which a society values freedom can be measured by its tolerance for unpopular activities. One could evaluate our society's commitment to liberty by looking at the War on Drugs, a coercive attempt to stamp out an unpopular activity.
The initiation of force is never permissible. As such, drug prohibition is more than a miserable failure; it is morally bankrupt. The act of consuming an illegal substance involves no initiation of force, but busting pot smokers most certainly does. What separates Libertarians and other liberty-loving people is our disgust with the initiation of force. It is universally wrong, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a neighborhood thug or the Sam Houston State University Police Department.
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