I'm not taking either side - life's too complicated - it's interesting to watch.
Does your definition of "harm" include the costs that society is forced to bear for any treatment you might require? (And, no, "I have health insurance" isn't an adequate response to that question. When your health coverage pays for rehab or whatever, my premiums go up, too.)
I maintain that "externalized costs" can be a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. Under a strict interpretation of that ethos, you shouldn't get to unilaterally impose upon me any costs that I wouldn't otherwise have been obligated to bear, had you not engaged in $behavior.
From "Libertarian" premises, however, the solution to those costs is that smokers, drinkers, and people who eat poorly should pay higher healthcare premiums to offset the increased costs they incur.
The problem with that, of course (and a big part of why I'm pro-single-payer) is that people who eat poorly, for example, are disproportionately poor, themselves. It turns out, it's expensive, in terms of time and/or money, to eat healthily, and the poor, especially the working poor, tend not to have one or both of those to spare.
In point of fact, I'm an ardent believer in single-payer healthcare, and think it both tragic and (to the extent the notion of criminality applies to nation-states) criminal that the US is the only first-world nation that lacks it. So, yes, I do believe taxes can be very well spent in "help[ing] people".
I'm merely taking the NAP to its logical conclusion, and using that to argue against another Libertarian plank.
You don't have to support drone strikes, you just need to withhold your indignation when your taxes fund them, as opposed to drug treatment programs. Based on your posts here I'm pretty sure we're in 90% agreement or higher on both drug and health care policy, so I'm not arguing with you, but your OP could easily be mistaken for simple concern trolling. I doubt you pipe up in every thread discussing government spending, to "take the NAP to its logical conclusion".
EDIT: Thinking about it a bit further, however, I'd counter that piping up in every thread about government spending with, "But NAP!" would actually be the trollish behavior. It's contextually appropriate here, because my OP's parent comment was making a personal freedom argument — characteristic, if not stereotypical of Libertarianism — for the right of an individual to use whatever drugs they wanted.
One of my biggest criticisms of Libertarianism, as I've tended to encounter it (living in SF, and being regularly exposed to the somewhat unique strain of the ideology that thrives in Silly Valley), is that it often fails to recognize that you can't have rights without the responsibility to uphold those rights for others, and goes too far in the direction of "my" freedoms, without consideration of where the exercise of those freedoms might infringe upon yours.
Upon seeing yet another example of that, I think it's wholly appropriate to bring up the NAP and how, taken to its conclusion, that argument could actually become self-contradictory.
I also think it would be wholly inappropriate to bring up the NAP and drone strikes in a discussion of tax revenue being used to fund, say, national parks.
Well, yes it would be, and you're starting to get to the crux of why Internet libertarians can be so irritating :-)
But I'd argue that people who bring up NAP constantly at least have the "virtue" of ideological consistency. You can't really pick-and-choose with non-aggression, without quickly devolving into pragmatism i.e. "it's okay to force everyone to do X because it has outcomes most of us agree are desirable, but we shouldn't force everyone to do Y because not enough of us desire the purported result". If you're bringing up NAP (even as a devil's advocate) for one thing, but then conveniently not even showing up for other topics, or worse yet showing up but not defending NAP and instead arguing on consequentialist or pragmatic grounds, then really all you're doing is using the non-aggression principle as a tool to defend stuff you wanted to happen anyway. I guess maybe that isn't trolling per se, but it's certainly not arguing in good faith, either.
a) You can use the drug if seek it out (very limited advertising).
b) You will be monitored to make sure you don't go out in public in a disoriented or dangerous state.
c) You will be aware of and have easy access to treatment programs if you are showing signs of addiction.
Such facilities would have to keep an insurance policy against harms resulting from the clients' usage, including e.g. pre-funding of rehab for some percentage of them.
To the extent that most governments don't allow anything like this, that is the rights violation.
Very complicated topic.
When an addict is buying drugs while sober, they are giving consent. Just because they don't have a choice of not buying the drugs doesn't mean they can't consent to the transaction. I can't choose to not buy food. I can't choose to not pay rent.
Tobacco, sugar, and alcohol are legal in part because of their long history of use within the US and the practical difficulties of prohibiting them. If tobacco had been discovered five years ago instead of five hundred, and its addictive and carcinogenic qualities were known, it would not be legal to sell.
> When an addict is buying drugs while sober, they are giving consent.
It's the consent that a mugger elicits when he convinces his victims to hand over their money to avoid being stabbed.
Illegal drugs also have a long history of use, in all walks of society. Many of them, like cocaine and opiates and to a lesser extent cannabis, had widespread use before their prohibition. Further, if the laws had been written with respect for history, they should have accounted for the disaster that was the prohibition of alcohol.
It's the consent that a mugger elicits when he convinces his victims to hand over their money to avoid being stabbed.
No that's a different dynamic. The victim didn't want to be in that confrontation. More, nobody could rationally consent to that since it's dangerous and a net loss. The dynamics of a drug sale are more like the scenarios I listed. But more importantly, if a person is an adult and consensually buys an addictive drug with full knowledge of the addictive properties, then they are consenting to not just that purchase but also all future purchases that they may be physically compelled to make. As for people who were not made aware of the risks or were introduced to the drug as children (a class that could be decimated by legalization), there's a stronger argument that they might not be able to give consent, but they're going to be making the purchase regardless.
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/14443179...
Same way alcohol is legal but you shoudn't be drunk in the streets.
Marijuana is demonstrably less harmful than alcohol. It being illegal is flat out insane and can have no explanation other than ignorance, stupidity, or malice.
I definitely think that non-addictive psychedelic drugs with no demonstrated human toxicity (or not exceeding OTC drug toxicity) should be legal. Perhaps there should be some restrictions. I would be in favor of some form of licensing or gating to set some minimum level of personal responsibility. Maybe if you freak out and end up in a psych ward or commit a crime you lose your license. I'd put it in the same category as driving a car, riding a motorcycle, operating a motorboat, etc. People are going to be stupid with LSD but people are stupid with motorcycles and rock climbing and those are legal.
Harder drugs? I'm open minded. I used to be against the legalization of heroin, crack, cocaine, meth, etc., but then I read up on Portugal's experience with heroin and now I'm more open to the idea of a pure harm-reduction approach. But I am wary of these. Alcohol is legal and there are alcoholics everywhere. I don't think criminal prosecution is the right tool for the job, but I also am not sure we want more of that.
It's not easy to accidentally overdose on a drug when it's sold in standard doses, especially if dosage information is presented honestly. The government's position on drugs only serves to increase the rate of overdose among the population using them.
Also, it seems unlikely that the $hundreds of billions/year hard drug trade is driven by proceeds of petty crime+bottle redemption+welfare+other money sources traditionally associated with the destitute. It seems much more likely that the people buying most hard drugs are people with stable income.
Or regulatory inertia, or differing priorities, or effects you don't recognize / didn't account for, or...
Apart from those outliers I listed above, the only common negative result to people other than the user is their lack of productivity and the economic implications of that. And even of those outliers, most users are not addicts and do not hurt others with their drug use.
I'm not sure what you mean by modern takes on democratic socialism. Sanders is most certainly not a socialist, if that's what you mean, despite being for a progressive welfare state. If one upholds private property rights, they are not a socialist. Democratic socialism simply is socialism where socialist economic structure is ushered in by means of the bourgeois democratic system as opposed to (or at least in unison with) revolutionary movements.
That's one issue. Another is having a feasible way to transition from what we have now. The latter is probably the trickier one.
> I'm not sure what you mean by modern takes on democratic socialism. Sanders is most certainly not a socialist, if that's what you mean, despite being for a progressive welfare state.
I mean democratic socialism roughly as Sanders describes it, although there's obviously a big range even within the modern definition. So yes, just western democracy with the government doing lots of social programs. Not real socialism.
What if reading hacker news at work results in you losing your job and becoming dependent on welfare, should we outlaw news sites?
You have a right to drug use in private or where everyone present consents to your using drugs, like in group psychedelic rituals.
What I mean is, if you think about extreme situations, drug use will stop people from being able to provide you with legal rights. But forget about drug use, if everybody quit their job - which is totally legal - you wouldn't have any legal rights either.
And outside of the realm of people doing paid work, a child has the legal right to be raised by a non-abusive parent or guardian. If the parent is fucked up all the time, legally and at home, that child is having its rights infringed upon. Whether the government intervenes is another question.