[fighterpilot]

Drug gangs destroying South America, tens of thousands dying due to Fentanyl-laced pills, lost tax revenue, huge taxpayer expense, petty crime used to fund overpriced drugs, are all signficiantly worse things than what you are afraid of. It's a laugh to see all these right-leaning people who pretend to be libertarians (not sure if that's you, but in general) but are actually in favor of a large state and authoritarian government intervention on topics such as drugs.

[throwaway0a5e]

How is there any lost tax revenue if it's not taxed? Why should everything be taxed be default?

[fighterpilot]

Opportunity cost of tax revenue.

  "Why should everything be taxed be default?"

The opportunity cost point was the least important in that list. If you don't want to tax it, that's fine with me.

[iammisc]

I'm not a libertarian and I'm not a small government person.

I believe inimited government, not small government.

If you need a giant government to enforce law then you need a big government.

For example, if you have a government of say 100 people, and they decided to hire 10 people and start a fast food restaurant I would be against this new government of 110 people. On the other hand, if the same government needed to hire 5000 people to combat drugs, I'd support that.

Why? Because limited government means government should only do a limited number of things. Opening a fast food restaurant is not the proper place of a government. Enforcing drug law is. Government can be as large as necessary to accomplish that.

[fighterpilot]

Ok, you are not a hypocrite, but I still think it's objectively bad policy from a cost-benefit standpoint, and it's bad from every political perspective. Four arguments that might move a right-leaning person:

- The drug war is indirectly causing more illegal immigration into the US because it's destabilizing South America.

- The drug war is shifting large profits away from US pharma and into foreign narco gangs, which is bad for GDP growth and therefore the strength of the nation.

- The drug war means taxation needs to be higher because it's expensive.

- The drug war creates more street crime, which ranks highly in what right-leaning people care about.

So I just don't understand why right-leaning people (not just libertarians) are so actively voting against almost all of their stated interests. Add to this a number of other reasons (how bad it is for the black community, how poor whites are being literally killed by fentanyl, how it pushes people into more dangerous and cheaper drugs such as ice and crack, how hypocritical it is for alcohol and cigarettes to be legal, how morally questionable it is to punish a victimless crime), and the case is clear cut to me.

[iammisc]

> Ok, you are not a hypocrite, but I still think it's objectively bad policy from a cost-benefit standpoint, and it's bad from every political perspective. Four arguments that might move a right-leaning person:

I'm not a libertarian, but libertarians -- unless they're of the high school variety -- are not carte blanche small government. They are certainly limited government. Perhaps you should begin by not arguing against high-school-level strawmen.

> The drug war is indirectly causing more illegal immigration into the US because it's destabilizing South America.

Almost certainly, but what happens in South America is not america's problem. America can build a wall and deport the illegal aliens back, as any sovereign country would.

> The drug war is shifting large profits away from US pharma and into foreign narco gangs, which is bad for GDP growth and therefore the strength of the nation.

Yes, unfortunately, we do not imprison enough whites for their drug habits, and instead jail mostly non-whites. The solution is to put more white drug users in jail for a very long time or institute pretty harsh rehabilitation programs (i.e., not released until you're sober for X amount of time, and then close follow-up monitoring).

> The drug war means taxation needs to be higher because it's expensive.

That's fine. I'm not against taxation, as long as the taxes are being spent on worthwhile things that are the purview of government. For example, if you told me taxes had to be raised 1% for 'diversity training' I'd say no, because diversity training is not the purview of government. If you told me taxes had to be raised 20% due to an increase in crime and the need to imprison and incarcerate more criminals, that would be okay. WE all have to share society's burdens, I just don't want to share the burden of things I don't want.

> The drug war creates more street crime, which ranks highly in what right-leaning people care about.

Indeed. So we should institute harsher criminal sentencing.

> So I just don't understand why right-leaning people (not just libertarians) are so actively voting against almost all of their stated interests.

Dude... you live in a bubble. There is no group of 'right-leaning' people who 'state' their interests in some centralized publication.

The only people who 'state' right-leaning people's interests are left-wing publications trying to create strawmen. Perhaps listen to others instead of imagining their interests?

> how bad it is for the black community,

The black community was the initial force behind the drug war

> how poor whites are being literally killed by fentanyl

More doctors and pharmacists should frankly be in jail.

> how it pushes people into more dangerous and cheaper drugs such as ice and crack

Great, those dealers should be imprisoned too. We have too few prisons in this country, given the level of crime and drugs.

> how hypocritical it is for alcohol and cigarettes to be legal

Alcohol and cigarettes have a long cultural history. They are luxuries tolerated for the culture. Not something innate.

> how morally questionable it is to punish a victimless crime

The victim is the person doing the drugs. It is well within the purview of government to punish people for victimizing themselves, to discourage the behavior. For example, many countries used to criminalize attempted suicide. I'm not going to turn this into an argument on that... but that is well within the government's purview.

[fighterpilot]

Your argument is that the cost and side effects don't matter, the war on drugs must be won no matter what. You hand wave away the negative consequences (illegal immigration can be magically dealt with with better enforcement!). If that's your perspective then I can't change your mind because it's coming from a place of ideology.

  "The only people who 'state' right-leaning people's interests are left-wing publications trying to create strawmen. Perhaps listen to others instead of imagining their interests?"

What? Illegal immigration, taxes, crime and the economy are among the top issues for conservatives, and your drug war is making all of those things worse. If you think these aren't concerns for conservatives you are just wrong. Polling of conservatives establishes this clearly as does the rhetoric of leading conservatives. The economy, crime and illegal immigration were all big parts of Trump's platform.

I vote conservative for the most part. I'm just not one of those authoritarian dick head conservatives that try to control other people's lives over victimless crimes. And no, the person who smokes pot isn't a victim. Tobacco and alcohol are worse for the body than the occasional vape, so I completely reject your premise.