Other drugs are very bad indeed, like MPTP, an improperly synthesized ``designer'' analogue of Demerol which lead to Parkinson's Disease, or heroin. But lung cancer is no picnic either, and cigarettes are (quite properly) legal; emphysema and black lung disease and a host of other horrible fates are the expected occupational hazards of the encouraged profession of coal mining (at least, owning a coal mine is encouraged; the considerably less profitable task of actually taking coal out of the ground remains, as always, a poorly paid way of committing suicide); and the manufacture of firearms is a large industry --- one of those high valued-added manufacturing ones our economically illiterate President is so concerned about --- which has as its end lethal violence at home and abroad. In short: the law tolerates many activities which are at least as coercive as even the worst drugs, which corrode the human spirit at least as badly as drugs, which are at least as lethal as drugs. The peculiar vileness of drugs is not apparent. The inevitable conclusion is that they are illegal because of hypocrisy, or superstition, or both.
An opponent might grant this and insist that it is better to control some dangerous and immoral activities than none. But the plain fact is that drugs are not controlled, and our efforts in that direction have a terrible cost.
Criminalization of drugs corrupts our public servants and our trade, especially our police and our banks; jams our prisons and our courts; erodes our civil liberties and brutalizes our police; teaches disrespect for all laws and trivializes crime; artificially inflates the price of drugs, and so makes it worthwhile to fight and kill for markets, to sell dangerous substances; keeps consumers ignorant of the actual properties of drugs, and so foolish enough to piss their life away on heroin or crack; and ties up vast amounts of money, time and ingenuity in essentially futile cat-and-mouse games. Criminalization is not the public interest.
Lest I be misunderstood, I think drugs are at best recreations (the record of the ``anesthetic revelation'' being as poor as that of other revelations), at worst a ticket to degradation and destruction. But whether or not a responsible, informed citizens choose to use them is none of the state's business. Are they pushed on the ignorant, the immature, the mentally deficient? Does their use demonstrably endanger others? Then the state may be within its rights to intervene.
Those who find such rather elementary notions of independence, sovereignty and civil liberty alien or unclear are advised to consult John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, or move to Singapore.