I understood you to mean you favored retaining hard drugs' criminal status. Since this appears not to be the case, I apologize for my rant.
Theron
I have been trying to find the posting where you misunderstood my position or feel that you owe me an apology for your previous post.
I have not been able to find it but, anyway, I have been in favor of legalizing ALL DRUGS since at least 1966. Prior to 1966, I was undecided on this issue, but by 1966 I had made up my mind on this one. If you want to check this you can see the many articles published in the Berkeley Barb in Berkeley California by or about me concerning this issue. The Berkeley Barb is available in some libraries. Also, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley has a collection of Sam Sloan papers from that time. Somebody donated them to the library a few years ago. I myself do not know what they have. I left them behind when I left Berkeley in great haste at the end of 1967.
The logic behind my position on drugs is simple. Suppose that I have some life threatening illness and suppose that this illness can be cured by a drug which has not yet been approved by the FDA but is in the experimental stage. This is a matter of life and death for me. Should I have to die just because some government bureaucrat tells me that I cannot have this drug?
This is a common situation, not rare at all. Not only are there millions of AIDS patients who are trying to get these experimental drugs but are not allowed to have them, but there are many "orphan" drugs which have so few patients that no drug company is willing to go to the expense of the approval process.
Turning to recreational drugs, it is obvious that the two most harmful and dangerous substances are alcohol and tobacco. Yet, they are legal because they are popular. No politician will ever be elected who advocates making these illegal. So, instead, they go after the drugs like LDS, cocaine, ecstasy and so on.
I am preaching to the choir. Everybody in this group with the exception of about two people agrees with me on these points. However, going further, the point that every person should have the right to decide which drugs he or she takes or does not take is so fundamental to the entire Libertarian philosophy, that I would say that anybody who does not agree with this is not a Libertarian period.
I feel that this is perhaps the only issue like that. On almost every other issue, reasonable men can disagree. For example, almost all Libertarians are in favor of legalized abortion. However, I believe that there are a few Libertarians that are not. Not many, but a few. I would say that a person could be considered Libertarian even though they are opposed to legalized abortion. Just about every other issue is like that. However, on this one issue, legalized drugs, there is only one correct side of the issue. That is that all drugs should be legalized. There are no two sides to that issue. There is only one even arguably correct side.
In other words, the question about legalized drugs is the defining point for a Libertarian. If you are opposed to legalizing all drugs, then you are not a Libertarian, by definition.
Sam Sloan