DRUG PROBLEM WORRIES SOME

It's the big stumbling block for some economic conservatives and
social liberals who otherwise might walk right through the Libertarian
Party door.

But there it is. Take it of leave it.

Libertarian Party members believe you should be free to use any drug
at all, whether it's herion or tobacco.

"We're the only national party that has since its founding taken the
position that you own your own body, life, and property," said
Dottie-Lou Brokaw, "and that government has no business regulating
what you drink, what you smoke, what you own, what you sell, or what
you buy."

In what sounded more like an effort to place a consistent plank on the
party platform that personal experience ("I myself choose not to use
drugs," she says), Brokaw talked about the belief of many libertarians
that all drugs, from tobacco and alcohol to marijuana, crack cocaine,
and heroin, should be legalized.

"You should be allowed to grow marijuana just like lettuce," she
said.

That particular drug, she said, "has been so demonized by propaganda
that nobody thinks of it" as anything but an evil substance.

"Why are we putting people into jail for this peaceful, honest
choice?"

Prohibition of drugs, she said, raises prices, decreases quality, and
increases the danger of those substances, whether they be marijuana or
cocaine.

"Prohibition creates crime and danger for everyone."

She said she believes that if all drugs were legalized, the "more
addictive, stronger substances" would be less likely to be used.

"If people want to self-medicate," she said, "they will go for the
least amount of medicine.

"If we legalize marijuana first, and get rid of the marijuana laws, we
could see what would happen."

The illegality of heroin, she said, makes it more dangerous because
addicts use unclean needles; when clean needles are proposed,
government objects.

The Libertarian approach extends to currently legal drugs, like
tobacco and alcohol.

"Tobacco shouldn't be demonized by people who don't like tobacco," she
said, and the same is true of alcohol.