December 5, 2008
A Toast!
To the 21st Amendment, ratified by Utah (go figure!) this day in 1933.
The WSJ features an awesome guest editorial which suggests that we learn the liberty and crime lessons of the 1930s (not that it looks like we learned the economic ones...)
But let's hope it also serves as a day of reflection. We should consider why our forebears rejoiced at the relegalization of a powerful drug long associated with bountiful pleasure and pain, and consider too the lessons for our time.The Americans who voted in 1933 to repeal prohibition differed greatly in their reasons for overturning the system. But almost all agreed that the evils of failed suppression far outweighed the evils of alcohol consumption.
Blog Friend Perry and I have had some chatter of late about what constitutes a "true" libertarian. I would rank, very highly, opposition to the War on Drugs. I don't think any sentient grown up is "for" drugs. I've watched them kill or ruin the lives of too many of my friends.
Yet I think this issue divides the conservatives from the libs. Bill Bennett and Paul Gigot and a bunch of people I respect think that the Government is doing a good job or at least having a positive impact. Bill Buckley saw, and the boys at Reason see the costs to liberty as being too high and lacking Constitutional or moral grounding.
I object to locking up Angel Raich and I object to the entrapment of Tommy Chong and I object to government intrusion into the market's providing a rent-seeking opportunity for violent teenage gangs, giving them the money to recruit young men into a dangerous occupation.
You don't have to like it, you don't have to use it, you don't even have to believe that it has medical value. But you cannot allow the government to continue this intrusion into non-Interstate commerce and personal behavior and call yourself a friend of liberty.
Happy 21st Amendment Day -- Bottoms Up!