http://www.examiner.com/article/drug-bath-salts-may-be-banned-light-of-recent-zombie-attacks
According to pure libertarian thought, anyone taking bath salts should be allowed to do so since they’re not infringing on anyone else’s rights.
Thoughts?
I think you pretty much covered it.
But, what if it causes a person to be dangerous?
What if foreign policy of US makes some people dangerous to life and/or property of others? Anarcho-capitalism is just relatively better (loosely speaking) than statism not a perfect nirvana.
I don’t understand. How many persons are murdered each year using kitchen knives? Yet nobody dreams of banning kitchen knives. A few weeks ago a local farmer was murdered using garden implements (of course the perpetrators remain unknown). Yet nobody is proposing a ban on hatchets, chainsaws, secateurs etc. I can walk into any shop and buy both. If I have the money to pay, no questions are asked.
But of course this is part of the neverending “War on Drugs”, so leave your rationality out of the door please. Each and every drug appearing on the market is immediately advertised as the most dangerous chemical in the history of mankind. Reefer Madness is still with us. As it has been explained time and time again, the economics of prohibition are to blame. People want drugs to get high. It has always been that way. Of course they cannot buy marijuana or cocaine from a reputable supplier, so they turn to the black market. Black market doesn’t care that much about offering quality products. It cannot afford to do so. The black market motto is “This is what’s available right now. Either buy it or beat it. You won’t find anything else”. So people buy low quality products: these can be heavily laced hashish, bazuko (a form of cheap cocaine popular in South America) or bath salts. Do people really want to have their brains scrambled by such junk? Of course not. But they want to get high, and they have no alternatives to low quality products with tons of side effects.
Assuming by “dangerous” you mean “uses or threatens to use aggressive force”, then such (threatened) use of aggressive force is already opposed by libertarians. The circumstances that bring it about are irrelevant. That said, I think the aggressor should be pacified with the minimum amount of defensive force necessary.
Simply having knives doesn’t impair your mental functioning and make you a threat to other people.
Ah, so what if the ban reduces these kinds of cases? From a utilitarian perspective this seems to make sense.
I’m not a utilitarian.
i think you’re missing the whole point, had we never made drugs illegal in the first place they wouldn’t have designed this drug… you can blame this whole incident on the war on drugs, of course, people will just go like "see!, we need to ban all drugs to keep us safe!.. " and bam this drug becomes illegal, making it more attractive, usage goes up, more crazy people, more designer drugs are made…
i love to flip this example when people like you try to blame freedom
I’m all for legalizing drugs, just not the ones that make you go insane to the point where you start attacking people at random and chewing on their faces.
making drugs illegal only drives usage up, just being illegal plays a big part in people even doing the drugs…
why don’t most people huff paint and common household cleaning items if they can get high off them?
Some people apparently don’t need drugs to do things like that. Maybe being human is inherently dangerous, so we should ban it!
What about substitutes? If I intend to be aggressive and you ban hammers I’ll just bash your head in with the bust of Bach on the mantle (or a toaster, or the ceramic dog dish, or a bowling trophy, etc…).
Preventing me and any other willing person from engaging in trade or attempting to criminalize ownership of anything by using laws based on what might be is as reasonable as using the prophecies of Nostradamus to pre-write history books for as yet unborn generations.
A person should have a choice whether or not to use the drug. And that person should also be held accountable for the results of that choice, including any ugly side effects. With freedom comes responsibility. So, if you ask this libertarian I’d say to keep the drugs legal. If someone takes the drugs and acts violently – infringing the rights of another – then that violence should be dealt with by force of law. The law should not prevent you from putting anything in your body that you want. But when you start hurting the body of another person (ie. eating their face), then do not be surprised if you get shot multiple times.
Alcohol, THC and/or prescription medication keeps most people high enough, I think.
Proof?
This seems to be a contradiction. First, you say you are for legalizing all drugs, then you put a condition on it. You want to ban bath salts? Something that is not a drug at all, but something to help your skin when you bath? What about mushrooms? and PCP? and LCD? Some people recreationally take those and are fine, others go crazy…where is your limit if not your own prejudice?
Your name is fitting you freedom loving party animal.
But alcohol does. Where’s your picket sign to bring back Prohibition?
Zing!