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"Morally and legally justified" as in void where prohibited by morally valid laws?

Without the force of criminal law and the assistance of the authorities, just how do you propose that parents would identify, locate, sue, and collect from drug dealers? What about parents without the resources to do that? And might some kids be allowed by their parents to buy and use drugs, notwithstanding the harm to them?

What if experience showed that criminal laws against drugs were needed to protect kids and others who are vulnerable, like patients on operating tables and airline passengers? In the end, might your exceptions lead back to the equivalent of current laws? If so, then what of the main principle?

The closest parallel to your proposal outside of science fiction and libertarian utopianism is Roman and most traditional law in the ancient world. Slavery was a matter of property and legal, fathers had life and death power over their families, and the only criminal penalties for violation of the law were exile or death.

Tort and contract law became highly developed in the ancient world, with admiralty, banking, and commercial finance law having lasting influence. And, to return to the commerce clause, Cicero and other prominent lawyers of the era urged that as to commerce, there could not be one law in Rome and another in Greece, but that the law must be uniform wherever commerce went. Sound familiar?

Without the force of criminal law and the assistance of the authorities, just how do you propose that parents would identify, locate, sue, and collect from drug dealers? What about parents without the resources to do that?

Worse, assume you've overcome those hurdles and successfully sued the local crack dealer for attempting to sell to little Johnny. How do you enforce any judgement obtained against him? After all, he didn't forcibly or fraudulently deprive you or anyone else of life, liberty, or property - he just offered your third grader a big fat rock. So as a practical matter, under such a scheme, neither you nor the state have any legal justification for depriving him of his property, or his liberty. So naturally, he just gives you the finger and heads right back to the playground. Lovely, eh?

If I may interject.

First of all, I see that Zon is now backtracking and not calling for legalization but decriminalization. That would leave the laws on the books. (And he would have answered "yes" to the above survey.)

That aside, I think his point is that the language of the federal laws needs to change -- laws against possession (for example) should reflect the restrictive interstate authority of the federal laws.

That is, the law should read that drug possession while travelling interstate is against the law. Or drug possession with the intent of travelling interstate (about to get on a plane) is against the law. Something like that.

This way, a ~~scumbag drug dealer~~ person gets their day in court -- to say that they were lost and did not know they were driving interstate with 150 pounds of marijuana in the trunk.

Given the fungible nature of marijuana and the way the federal law reads, however, once jerkoff is across the state line he's free and clear. Tee-hee-hee. Isn't the Libertarian world one big wink-wink, nudge-nudge?

Without the force of criminal law and the assistance of the authorities, just how do you propose that parents would identify, locate, sue, and collect from drug dealers? What about parents without the resources to do that?

That straw man won't hunt. There would still be criminal law and police authorities.

And might some kids be allowed by their parents to buy and use drugs, notwithstanding the harm to them?

They may be allowed to use them,. Parents have been known to give their children aspirin, cough medicine, cigarettes, alcohol etc. I think it would be illegal to sell alcohol or drugs to minors. They don't have the maturity to make those informed decisions.

You can argue that the sky is falling endlessly but with the suggested amendment to the constitution noted earlier people and society would even more so increasingly prosper than they are now. In other words, people would more rapidly distance themselves from the people-and-society-will-run-headlong-into-destruction Chicken-Little fallacy that isn't happening now. Conversely it can be argued that parasitical elites are draining, usurping and destroying values earned by the host which they leech on.