I agree with my libertarian friends that government repeatedly, even habitually, makes a mess of things through its economic (actually, antieconomic) interventions into various marketplaces. When it comes to illegal drugs, however, the doctrinaire libertarian argument that drug use is a “victimless crime” is simply wrong.
Before addressing that argument directly, I’m going to make a couple of personal statements about drugs. These statements are addressed to all. I’m hoping to speak heart-to-heart to those taking or leaning toward taking illegal drugs, whatever their individual political beliefs may be.
First, although the following statement is about as unoriginal as one can get, it remains true that happiness and personal contentment are not commodities that can be bought. There’s nothing you can inhale, ingest, or inject that will bring you happiness or solve life’s problems for you. You need to find something deeper and more lasting—a spiritual dimension to life (yes, this is God-talk); an unselfish purpose; love and companionship; having a difficult-to-achieve, even heroic, goal—to overcome life’s griefs, disappointments, setbacks, and that insidious enemy, boredom.
Ideally, those who know you and love you would recognize when you need support and encouragement to help cope with your challenges, but it doesn’t always work that way. Ultimately, each one of us needs to learn how to navigate our way through life with a mind that isn’t befogged in some artificially altered state of consciousness.
When you’re young, there’s a strong tendency to believe that you’re bulletproof, indestructible. Sorry, but you’re not. Even if you read the grim statistics about the tens of thousands of deaths in the United States from taking illegal drugs (more fatalities each year than in the entire Korean and Vietnam wars combined), you flatter yourself that you aren’t as weak or vulnerable as those unfortunate individuals who succumb. That’s quite a high-stakes bet. If you’re right, you go on living, just as you would have had you never taken drugs; if you’re wrong, you lose your life. Sounds like a sucker’s bet to me.
Second, never forget that people who sell you drugs aren’t your friends. They’re in it for the money. If you die, well, too bad, but that’s just the way it goes. I recall a time when I was lost in grief as a young guy and I took a detour into the world of the counterculture. There was a pink pill on the streets being sold as mescaline—something with extra appeal to those who grooved on all things organic. The only problem was that a chemical analysis of those pills (conducted by an underground newspaper, bless their hearts) showed that the contents were LSD and the common rat poison strychnine. The creeps pushing that fake mescaline weren’t their customers’ friends.
Similarly, those who sell, say, fentanyl, today aren’t concerned about your safety. They just want your money. Do you really want to entrust your life and health to such people? Actually, there are some pushers of potentially lethal drugs who are after more than just your money: The Chinese Communist Party wants you to die. They’re pushing certain drugs in the hope of killing off a certain number of young Americans. That violates the libertarian non-aggression principle and justifies us in fighting back. You don’t really want to cooperate with or advance the goals of the aggressors, do you?
OK, now I will address the libertarian argument that buying drugs is a victimless crime. Do you recognize the name Fernando Villavicencio? A former journalist, he was a candidate for the presidency of Ecuador until he was assassinated a few months ago. Mr. Villavicencio’s goal was to liberate his country from the murder and corruption of narco-politics. The international drug cartels eliminated Mr. Villavicencio as part of their ongoing campaign to bury law and order in Ecuador (and other countries) so that they can operate with impunity and enlarge their blood-soaked fortunes.
Why am I bringing up Mr. Villavicencio? Because he’s a victim of drug usage by Americans. American drug-takers helped to kill him. Wait a minute, cry doctrinaire libertarians, that’s not true! All American drug users have done is engage in voluntary exchanges, willingly buying drugs at an agreed-upon price from a willing seller. If drugs were legal, then users could have purchased them from private, profit-seeking companies with guaranteed quality control and safety standards, and the gangsters and cartels would be out of business. So it’s our government’s fault that Mr. Villavicencio was murdered. It was the misguided war against drugs that did him in.
Freedom, as precious as it is, isn’t absolute. The right to put whatever you like into your body doesn’t entitle you to engage in antisocial activities that impose costs on others. If you can get stoned, high, strung out, or whatever in the privacy of your own home, and then go out the next day and show up at work on time and fully functional, and not use public or private sidewalks, lawns, porches, etc. as crash pads or toilets, fine.
Even if actual property values don’t fall, drug-takers are still violating the right of people in a neighborhood to enjoy the clean, orderly sidewalks and scenic streets that they valued when they purchased their homes. Again, do your own thing, but don’t mess things up for others. Being a derelict may seem like voluntary self-destruction to which any person has a right, but it isn’t a right when it imposes costs, whether monetary or emotional, on others.
Whether such people should be in mental hospitals, boot camps, prison, public work details, etc., is a question with which our society needs to grapple, but the libertarian argument that drug-induced self-destruction is a victimless crime is disingenuous. Drug abuse is a horrendous problem, and resigning ourselves to it because we are “tolerant” isn’t a viable response.
