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by sponaugle 1646 days ago
And this is why we can't have nice things... because "we" don't "permit it". How does someone even write this sentence? Did they glance over at their crown, which says "King We", and think "thou shall not smoke!"?
1 comments

Well. There's plenty of things that are illegal. How far down the libertarian rabbit hole are you prepared to go?
Things that don't endanger other people or their property should never be illegal in the first place. Your body is your property and yours only. You should be able to do with it whatever the hell you please. The only open question here is who pays for any healthcare needs resulting from any self-inflicted damage to one's health.
It's only an open question because the government has inserted itself into the healthcare delivery business. If "we" were not paying for other people's health care, "we" would not need to care what they did or didn't do with regards to their own bodies.
But the US doesn't have universal healthcare from what I know, yet all drugs are illegal, with the exception of marijuana in some states.
You don't even need to go that deep. Does tobacco hurt others? Except for smokers costing the state more on average, which should never be a crime by itself, not really. I don't like cigarette smoke and think we should take obnoxious smells more seriously, but the logical conclusion is not banning tobacco use.
Agreed. The idea that the 'concept of banning' is a rabbit hole should not prevent actually talking about the concepts. To say something should be banned with such unsubstantiated arguments and complete disregard to the actual outcome is ridiculous.
We've run this experiment with the War on Drugs, and prohibition before that. Puritanical attitudes towards sex before that.

Where are these people who don't think the data is in?

Correction - we're still running this experiment. That was rather my point.
That rabbit hole is full of good and bad, and a good dig into that hole is what makes society work... so yes we should go down.
I agree completely. I do find some of the cherry picking from right-libertarians can make my head spin sometimes but left-libertarians can be just as guilty of that.

And as much as I find full-on anarcho-utopianism charming, I can't see it as much more than a fairy tale that ignores much of history and human nature.