DON'T DO DRUG LEGALIZATION

Like everyone else in America, I had never really listened to the arguments
of the drug legalization crowd because ... it's not going to happen. These
people are like scholars whose area of expertise is an obscure bug in a
Third World country. Their theories could be completely insane, but no one
cares enough to bother listening to them.

The most superficially appealing argument for drug legalization is that
people should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies, even if
it ruins their lives. Except that's not true. Back on Earth, see, we live in
a country that will not allow people to live with their own stupid
decisions. Ann has to pay for their stupid decisions.

"We" have to "invest" in "our" future by supporting people who freely choose
to inject drugs in their own bodies and then become incapable of holding
jobs, obtaining housing and taking care of their children. So it's not
really quite accurate to say drugs hurt no one but the user, at least until
we've repealed the welfare state.

And don't give me the now-we'll-have-to-regulate-fatty-foods slippery slope
argument. Precisely because you can see a difference in eating a hamburger
and smoking crack means there is a huge difference between the top of the
slope and the bottom -- which is why pure slippery slope arguments are
always stupid. Let me just ask: Before he serves you, would you prefer that
your bus driver or investment banker had consumed a hamburger, a cigarette
or marijuana?

In fact, smokers and fatty-food consumers clearly benefit society through
their years of tobacco-or hamburger-fueled hard work. They also undoubtedly
save the taxpayers money by dying relatively swift deaths from corroded
arteries or cancerous lungs. (Junk food and tobacco companies tend not to
want to advertise that particular great savings to the Social Security
system, but it's true.)

As Joseph Califano has pointed out, even John Stuart Mill said there were
some things people could not be permitted to choose to do with their own
bodies in a free society: "The principle of freedom cannot require that he
should be free not to be free. It is not freedom to be allowed to alienate
his freedom." Drugs enslave people.

So do cigarettes and alcohol, the drug legalizers say. Indeed, they
fervently claim that alcohol and cigarettes are no better (and probably
worse) than marijuana.

As Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico (and only the most recent Republican
to figure out that the path to fawning media coverage is to adopt a dumb
liberal idea) puts it (as summarized in a fawning article in The New York
Times): "Last year 450,000 people died from smoking cigarettes. Alcohol
killed 150,000, and another 100,000 died from legal prescription drugs. How
many people died last year from the use of marijuana? Few, if any. From
cocaine and heroin? Five thousand."

I'll accept all the drug-legalizers' lying statistics and demonstrate that
their arguments are still dumb, but you have to admit that someone who lies
in formulating an argument is not to be trusted. And that figure on
cigarette deaths is a bald-faced lie.

The 450,000 number refers to all "smoking-related" deaths. A
"smoking-related" death is any death that under any circumstances could be
connected to smoking, including heart attacks and a plethora of cancers. If
an obese 99-year old smoker dies of a heart attack while shoveling snow, his
death is listed as a "smoking-related" death.

Indeed, the books are so cooked on the "smoking-related deaths" alleged by
the American Cancer Society that a 1993 article in the American Journal of
Epidemiology was able to show that by using the exact same methodology,
smoking saves 277,621 lives each year. (The methodology also proves that
504,000 people die each year from insufficient exercise, and 649,000 die
from improper diets.)

It is known that marijuana smoke is much worse for the respiratory system
than is cigarette smoke. The only reason you don't hear about a lot of
people dying from marijuana is that -- well, for one, like the guy shoveling
snow, a pot-smoker who dies of emphysema goes down as a "smoking-related"
death. But also people don't smoke pot like they smoke cigarettes. And one
reason for that is: Marijuana is illegal.

Still, let's grant the drug-legalizers their phony statistics. Assume
alcohol and cigarettes induce dependency, ruin lives, cause disease,
depression, countless traffic injuries and fatalities, and increase the
incidence of homicide and suicide. This is supposed to be an argument for
legalizing another drug like them?