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Let me start off by saying this: you accused me a couple of posts ago of being overly emotional, and I guess that to some degree, the shoe fits. We're both intelligent people and should be able to discuss this calmly and rationally, and to the extent that I haven't, I apologize. By way of explanation if not justification, I'll say that I believe to the core of my being that the War on Drugs is the single most misguided, harmful, and counterproductive domestic policy since slavery, and the fact that it shows no signs of ending or even waning sometimes drives me to frustration.

Now, on to substance (and I hope you don't mind if I skip around a little bit):

Geez Louise. You're all over the place.

This is true, so let me try to organize my arguments a bit.

There are many good arguments against the War on Drugs, but they all tend to fall into one of two broader classes: the ethical arguments and the practical arguments. I've been guilty of conflating them, so let me lay them out individually.

The ethical argument is based on rights: people have the freedom to do as they wish (other than harming nonconsenting others), and any law that abridges this freedom is a violation of a fundamental human right. As far as I'm concerned, there is one and only one true human right. We talk about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of religion, right to life, right to liberty, right to pursue happiness, but all of these are merely specializations of the single true right: the right to be left alone. The right not to have other people (singly or in groups) exert force or commit fraud against you without your consent, so long as you do not initiate force or fraud against them. The fundamental axiom of a free society is Mind your own business!.

Rights are not subject to majority vote. Government, in the form of a dictator, a monarch, or a republican legislature, may choose to abridge certain rights, but that doesn't make it ethical. It is not right for a group to do that which it wouldn't be right for members of that group to do as individuals. Just as it would be wrong for you to march into a tavern and force the proprietor to shut down at the point of a shotgun, it's just as wrong for a whole group of people (perhaps constituting a majority) to use force to shut down that same tavern. Or that opium den. Might does not make right, and majorities are not freed from their ethical obligations.

It happens to have an effect on the rest of society.

Everything has an effect on the rest of society. That doesn't give society the moral authority to interfere.

And our right to live how we want to live, our right to raise children in an environment we desire, trumps your right to engage in selfish, immoral hedonistic behavior.

You have the right to live how you want to live, but not to tell other people how to live. As for raising your children in an environment you desire... you certainly don't have that right. Would you say that if a majority wanted to raise their children in an environment in which Christianity (or Islam, or Discordianism) were the state religion, it would be proper for them to make it so? If people wanted to raise their children in an environment in which slaves cared for their needs, would they have that right?

Why must we protect your right to engage in this self centered activity?

I'm not asking you to protect my right, I'm asking you not to infringe it. Actually, "asking" is too mild a word; I'm telling you that your infringement of the rights of others is an abhorrent violation.

(I don't mean you, personally.)

I know you don't, and thanks for saying so. Too often, in these kinds of debates, the pro-prohibition side demands to know whether I myself am a drug user, as if that sort of ad hominem proves anything. (If it did prove something, I'd wonder why the trusting the opinions of abstainers from drugs on drug use makes any more sense than, say, trusting the opinions of virgins on sex... but it doesn't.)

I've got more to say but I have to get to work for now... will write more tonight.

"The right not to have other people (singly or in groups) exert force or commit fraud against you without your consent, so long as you do not initiate force or fraud against them."

If our laws were based on this principle, then what you're saying makes total sense. They're not today and they never were.

If fact, no nation or society in the history of the world has ever restricted their laws to activities that initiate force or fraud. To take, for example, our drug laws and hold them to this standard (asking, where's the harm?) is neither fair nor warranted.

Under your philosophy, what about behavior which may harm others or has the potential of harming others (eg., speeding or DUI)? Can we write laws against that or must we wait until actual harm has been done?

Can't I say a drug user may harm others (via violence when using, or stealing to buy drugs, or health concerns, or reckless behavior) and write laws against drug use because of that?

"Rights are not subject to majority vote."

When rights conflict, it's either that or a court ruling.