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If drug dealing is so harmless, then, given a choice, would you willingly live in a neighborhood full of drug dealers and users? Would you be at ease if you saw a drug dealer befriending your children? If you did not like that, would you sue the drug dealer instead of complaining to the cops? Or would you move out of the neighborhood -- and still insist that there was nothing wrong with drug dealing and drug using that tort law could not remedy?

First of all, given Prohibition II, it is unlikely that one would have a drug dealer living nearby without suffering the consequences of Prohibition II. Indeed, my biggest worry if I believed there to be drug dealers nearby would be that I might be walking through the hallway sometime when the police burst into my building.

If something like were legal, though, I don't see why I would have to view the owner of a pot store any differently from the owner of a liquor store, or the owner of a porno store, or the owner of a tattoo parlor, etc. Some such people I might not want around my children (if I had any); others I might not mind.

Even if it weren't totally legal, if law-enforcement were complaint-based, I would think a lot of the problems would go away. Basically, if you do drugs but ensure that you don't cause any trouble for anyone, you're fine. If you cause trouble, you're busted. If there was a drug dealer in my neighborhood who was causing problems for everyone, I (and many other people) would want the police to do something. And in such case, they should act because the behavior is causing bona fide complaints. But if there's a drug dealer in the neighborhood and nobody is the wiser (other than those who know how to seek and use drugs discretely), what's the problem?

If there is a problem worth complaining about, then the police should do something. But if there isn't any problem, why should the police do anything?

You are trying to define away the problems of drug use and drug dealing by claiming that the law is the problem instead of the destructiveness of drug-taking and the behaviors associated with them.

Assume, for purposes of discussion, that all illegal drugs were legal, cheap, and easily available, would you willingly live among coke and heroin addicts, PCP heads, and meth users?

Would you permit your children to take up drugs? If not, would you forbid them to associate with drug users? How would you enforce any such a ban as a parent? Would you expect the help of others or the state in such an effort?

Of course, your vision of a radically libertarian but oddly law abiding and well-behaved society is a fantasy as much as Erewhon or Utopia. Americans have never adopted a full drug legalization program by vote.

The closest examples are corrupt and lawless Indian reservations, which are squalid and miserable places with the many pathologies of drug abuse in full bloom. They are not a recommendation for the program that you urge.

So you and your children would voluntarily live in a neighborhood surrounded by liquor stores, porno stores, tattoo parlors, and drug dealers, and only object if they "caused trouble" for everyone.

Un-fricken-believable. Do you realize there are hunderds of thousands of people trapped in such neighborhoods that would give their soul to get their children out?

(Mojave, check this out -- my candidate for the contest of What-I-am-willing-to-do-just-so-people-can-legally-smoke-dope.)