Alcohol can and has been used for centuries as a food without being used to impair judgment and ability even if often abused.
Illicit drugs have no appeal unless they are used to impair judgment and ability. Some of these drugs can be used for medical reasons, cocaine, barbiturates, meth, opium, perhaps even pot but no heroine user would shoot up without experiencing the “mind altering” effects except to prevent withdrawal.
No, I don't favor a Prohibition Era style ban on alcohol for the reasons above but I have no trouble at all with tightening restrictions on it far more than what exists.
“Yet you support our surrender in the war on the addictive mind-altering drug alcohol, which is very often used to impair mental ability and judgment”
I support no such surrender at all. Getting high, getting drunk, getting “buzzed”, whatever term is used, is manifestly a lack of self control and an unwillingness to adhere to accepted social norms in all areas of life.
The so-called libertarians are mostly just libertines under the skin.
My rights? I have a right to work beside someone who is not shaking and sweating from the meth he took so he could work eighteen hours straight, I have a right to use the city park I've paid for without having to step around used needles and condoms. I have a right not to have my neighborhood turned into a cesspool like parts of San Francisco is.
And I also have a right to expect my fellow citizens to obey even unpopular laws even those that appear “victimless” on the surface.
“What other obligations do you claim that free men have?”
Only two very broad obligations: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
If you want to claim that the mind-altering properties of alcohol are closer to those of a hot meal than of illegal drugs, you go ahead and look silly; any reader who's ever drunk enough alcohol to impair judgment and ability knows how presposterous your claim is.
Alcohol can and has been used for centuries as a food without being used to impair judgment and ability even if often abused.
Alcohol can and has been used for centuries without being used to impair judgment and ability, sure - but as a food?! Please provide evidence for a tradition of using alcohol to meet dietary caloric requirements.
And the fact that alcohol is often used to impair judgment and ability leaves you with a very thin reed on which to hang your claimed distinction from other drugs - particularly when one notes that impairment was the whole purpose of alcohol use when that mind-altering drug was illegal. (Or do you think many patrons of illegal speakeasies were there only to drink ceremonial toasts?)
No, I don't favor a Prohibition Era style ban on alcohol for the reasons above but I have no trouble at all with tightening restrictions on it far more than what exists.
What further restrictions do you support?
I have a right to work beside someone who is not shaking and sweating from the meth he took so he could work eighteen hours straight,
You fabricate "rights" as well as any liberal - your employer may hire whoever they choose, and you have the right to work beside them or quit, period.
I have a right to use the city park I've paid for without having to step around used needles and condoms.
It'll be much easier to eliminate drug use in parks if users have someplace legal to use.
I have a right not to have my neighborhood turned into a cesspool like parts of San Francisco is.
Depends what you mean by "cesspool" - I support local ordinances against public intoxication, loitering, and eyesore properties.
What other obligations do you claim that free men have?
Only two very broad obligations: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Government may require citizens to love God?!