Another Drug War Victim

Government at all levels, by definition, tramples the rights of individuals. Generally speaking, it’s only a question of degree. The FDA routinely prolongs the suffering of individuals desparately waiting for new pharmaceuticals. They allow people to die while testing drugs that might prevent their deaths, or at least lengthen their lives. The state does not care about your life, or the quality thereof. With that in mind, does the result of California resident Angel Raich’s appeal really surprise anyone?

A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

It makes you wonder why States bother passing any laws, whatsoever. Clearly, the federal legislators know better, so we should just let them do all the heavy lifting, and let our State representatives just, like, hang out by the pool or something.

But there’s a question that I’ve posed before: The Temperance Movement understood that the “proper” way (if there can be a “proper” way to interfere with individual sovereignty) to prohibit alcohol was by amending the constitution. And that experiment can only be described as a spectacular failure. I still don’t understand why the standard for opiate/narcotic prohibition is so comparatively lax. Can someone explain it to me? Because the “problems” of alcohol and narcotics seem qualitatively very similar, and I just don’t understand why in one case, the standard is near bulletproof, and in the other it’s not and nobody thinks that it needs to be.

No matter how prohibition is implemented, the reality of its effects should not be ignored. It has never achieved the grandiose plans its supporters use to justify their bold utilitarian claims. It has generally destroyed families, and begat crime and corruption. Being taxed to suppor the program would be bad enough if it simply didn’t work. Being taxed to destroy families and lives, to organize crime, to sire corruption and contempt for order – in addition to its well-documented inefficacy – is simply deplorable.