Your job change does not endanger others...so it does not apply no where near equal to addiction problems.
Depriving people of mood and mind altering drugs and alcohol is not a punishment. Using them is a punishment.
But, this is going to be my last post because we are just going back and forth and in your libertarianism you are not conducive to looking at factual information fully. Your lack of understanding value...which is literally what economic science is the study of is why you do not have valid assumptions. You try to simply say, oh, freedom freedom, freedom, without any restrictions other than those you arbitrarily come up with. It is like looking at the surface of the glass window without peering through to see what is actually on the other side. Or, in another way to put it, you are viewing 2 dimensions in a 4 dimensional world.
However, I will relate a real life story that just happened last week in our area. Husband and wife separated...husband drinks too much and is abusive from alcohol changing his brain. He calls the wife and begs her to meet him and see if they can work it out. They go out he gets drunk...she leaves him there. He gets ride to his home (not hers) he gets a gun drives in his car over to his house kills the wife. Calls the daughter telling her that he had killed her mother and was going to kill himself. The daughter talks him out of killing himself. He called the police who arrested him.
Now, what you think is that well, until he committed the crime he was fine. He wasn’t...there was great damage already done to not only the wife and his kids but to employees (he owned a business) and those close to him by any other means. In other words, way before the crime in which you would limit your analysis to, there was great harm being done.
Reasoning without God’s morality ALWAYS goes bad eventually, by the influence of evil into our lives. That is more factual than your misguided version of economic science which you really do not understand well anyway.
But, you are free to believe whatever you desire ConservingFreedom. So best of luck to you and yours.
My job change also affects others directly - the analogy holds.
Your job change does not endanger others...
Move those goal posts: from "affect" to "endanger". Government may legitimately act against clear and present dangers - but only a tiny minority of uses of mood altering drugs end in harm, so clearly such use is not endangering.
It's unjust and immoral to punish ALL drinkers and druggers for the impaired driving done by SOME drinkers and druggers. And lack of sleep also impairs driving ... but it's not the government's business to set adults' bedtimes.
Depriving people of mood and mind altering drugs and alcohol is not a punishment.
Imprisoning (or even fining) them for possession of alcohol or other drugs IS a punishment.
if legal-pot states don't excessively tax or restrict market entry, illegal pot will eventually be about as big as illegal alcohol.
Of course it depends upon those factors somewhat...but that isn't the whole denominator either. Other supply and demand factors come into play.
Unless you can show that those other factors systematically boost the competitiveness of illegal as compared to legal drugs more than they do for the drug alcohol, your observation does not refute my argument.
No response to this point?
legalization (without overtaxation or overregulation) will lower the price of a fix and thus the crime needed to pay for it.
drug and alcohol use changes our minds...makes us more likely to do harm intentionally or unintentionally.
And yet the numbers show that murder was higher during Prohibition than before or after.
No response to this point?
Your "economic" argument is not a valid economic argument because you make false assumptions in your argument.
So you claim. What are those alleged false assumptions?
Your lack of understanding value...which is literally what economic science is the study of is why you do not have valid assumptions.
That's a baby step toward an answer; what "value" have I allegedly not understood?
Drugs and alcohol thus end up hurting others by its intrinsic changing of the minds of the users making the proclivity to do harm to others higher.
Prohibtions end up hurting others more by their intrinsic giving to criminals the means and motive to greater violence.
No response to this point?
I am not convinced that more harm would be done through prohibition if there was government cooperation at local levels, which there was not. There was corruption...
Corruption is also an inevitable byproduct of prohibitions, which inflate profits and restrict them to the hands of criminals who can thus more readily bribe humanly flawed government agents.
No response to this point?
there was great damage already done to not only the wife and his kids but to employees (he owned a business) and those close to him by any other means. In other words, way before the crime in which you would limit your analysis to, there was great harm being done.
Such harms are not government's business - any more than the financial and psychological harm I'd do by quitting my job to pursue my dream of being a professional competitive surfer.
Reasoning without God's morality ALWAYS goes bad eventually
Must everything immoral be illegal?