Hyehudi.org

I occasionally get some unusual responses when I write about the evils of the government’s war on drugs.

On election day, Tuesday, November 6, I had an article published on this website titled “Voting Right.” The article was about the marijuana ballot initiatives that were being voted on that day. I maintained in the article that voting right meant voting in favor of ballot initiatives to legalize the medical or recreational use of marijuana.

I took this position because, as a libertarian, I believe that there should be no laws at any level of government for any reason regarding the buying, selling, growing, processing, transporting, manufacturing, advertising, using, or possessing of any drug for any reason.

This is not because libertarians believe that drugs are beneficial or harmless and not addictive or dangerous, but because

1) it is not the proper role of government make such laws,

2) anyone should be able to do anything that’s peaceful as long as he doesn’t infringe upon the personal or property rights of others, and

3) a free society has to include the right of people to use or abuse drugs.

Just because libertarians oppose the war on drugs doesn’t mean that they believe it would be a good thing for anyone to use drugs, that they are indifferent to or unconcerned about the dangers of drugs in the hands of children, or that they are naïve about the potentially negative consequences of drug abuse.

In my article, I called for the war on drugs to be ended immediately and completely, although the article was mainly about marijuana.

Here is the only negative response to the article that I received. I have obscured the writer’s name to protect his privacy.

Subject: weed
From: W****** P******** <w******.j****.p********@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 06, 2018 9:11 am
To: lmvance@laurencemvance.com

my dead son thought the same way

Now, I assume from this response that this man lost his son. This is a terrible thing that I would not want anyone to have to go through. I also assume that this man’s son used marijuana on a regular basis, and not just on occasion. I think it is also safe to assume from this response that this man blames his son’s death on his marijuana use. I don’t know what else to make of this response. I am commenting on it because I am sure that others who have had loved ones die from drug overdoses feel the same way.

I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr. P., but marijuana did not kill your son.

First of all, as I wrote about a few months ago, the federal government acknowledges that no one has ever overdosed on marijuana.” Does this mean that smoking marijuana is beneficial, healthy, safe, wholesome, risk-free, and harmless? Of course not. Does this mean that someone high on marijuana has never had an accident or done something stupid that resulted in his death? Of course not.

Second, and more importantly, even if marijuana did kill those who smoked too much of it, even if marijuana was the most dangerous Schedule I drug, and even if marijuana was the most dangerous substance known to man, the person smoking it is directly responsible for the consequences of his actions.

Libertarians make much of individual liberty when it comes to the drug war. As well they should. Any legal adult should have the freedom to use marijuana to medicate himself or to get stoned out of his mind. But with freedom comes responsibility. This is why personal responsibility should be preached when it comes to the drug war just as much as individual liberty.

To the drug user I would say:

• Using drugs may adversely affect your health
• Using drugs may ruin you financially
• Using drugs may be addictive
• Using drugs may grieve your family and friends
• Using drugs may cost you your job
• Using drugs may cost you your family
• Using drugs may destroy your mind
• Using drugs may cause you to lose your friends
• Using drugs may wreck your life
• Using drugs may have unintended negative consequences
• Using drugs may kill you

I would also say to the drug user that you are fully responsible for the costs and consequences of your actions—not your family, not society, and certainly not the government. It is not the job of the government to prevent anyone from using drugs, to warn anyone about the dangers of drug abuse, to provide drug users with clean needles, to send anyone to drug rehab, to help anyone get off drugs, or to pay for anyone’s drug-related medical treatment.

No, Mr. P., marijuana did not kill your son. Marijuana did not kill your son anymore than a knife, a gun, or a blunt instrument committed a murder. Your son is personally responsible for whatever happened to himself or anyone else because of his marijuana use.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

After a week of insisting that a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina was going to happen, President Trump at the last minute sent out a Tweet explaining that due to a Russia/Ukraine dispute in the Sea of Azov he would no longer be willing to meet his Russian counterpart.

According to Trump, the meeting had to be cancelled because the Russians seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in Russian waters that refused to follow instructions from the Russian military. But as Pat Buchanan wrote in a recent column: how is this little dispute thousands of miles away any of our business?

Unfortunately, it is “our business” because of President Obama’s foolish idea to overthrow a democratically-elected, pro-Russia government in Ukraine in favor of what his Administration believed would be a “pro-Western” and “pro-NATO” replacement. In short, the Obama Administration did openly to Ukraine what his Democratic Party claims without proof the Russians did to the United States: meddled in a vote.

US interventionism in Ukraine led to the 2014 coup and many dead Ukrainians. Crimea’s majority-Russian population held a referendum and decided to re-join Russia rather than remain in a “pro-West” Ukraine that immediately began discriminating against them. Why would anyone object to people opting out of abusive relationships?

What is most disappointing about President Trump’s foreign policy is that it didn’t have to be this way. He ran on a platform of America first, ending foreign wars, NATO skepticism, and better relations with Russia. Americans voted for this policy. He had a mandate, a rejection of Obama’s destructive interventionism.

But he lost his nerve.

Instead of being the president who ships lethal weapons to the Ukrainian regime, instead of being the president who insists that Crimea remain in Ukraine, instead of being the president who continues policies the American people clearly rejected at the ballot box, Trump could have blamed the Ukraine/Russia mess on the failed Obama foreign policy and charted a very different course. What flag flies over Crimea is none of our business. We are not the policemen of the world and candidate Trump seemed to have understood that.

But now Trump’s in a trap. He was foolish enough to believe that Beltway foreign policy “experts” have a clue about what really is American national interest. Just this week he told the Washington Post, in response to three US soldiers being killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, that he has to keep US troops fighting in the longest war in US history because the “experts” tell him there is no alternative.

He said, “virtually every expert that I have and speak to say if we don’t go there, they’re going to be fighting over here. And I’ve heard it over and over again.”

That is the same bunkum the neocons sold us as they lied us into Iraq! We’ve got to fight Saddam over there or he’d soon be in our streets. These “experts” are worthless, yet for some reason, President Trump cannot break free of them.

Well here’s some unsolicited advice to the president: Listen to the people who elected you, who are tired of the US as the world’s police force. Let Ukraine and Russia work out their own problems. Give all your “experts” a pink slip and start over with a real pro-American foreign policy: non-interventionism.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.