A liberty right is a right to do as one pleases precisely because one is not under an obligation, grounded in others’ rights, to refrain from so acting.
One does not have a liberty right to steal because it violates someone’s property rights.
The question to ask is what rights of others are being protected by prohibiting the smoking of dope and can those rights be protected by lesser prohibitions, i.e. driving under the influence laws?
If laws and justice are about balancing the rights and claims of individuals equally before the law, then drug prohibition is wrong on basic philosophical grounds that liberties should only be proscribed when they violate the rights of others.
Course, that’s not reality based thinking, since the drug war is about increasing the power of the collective at the expense of the individual, so there is a lot of misinformation and scaremongering going on to frighten the sheeple into acceptance.
If people were executed promptly for driving under the influence there would be very little of it and a great deal more commerce for cab companies.
The truth is most people are willing to trade the liberties of others for what they perceive as safety. Thus they have neither (I’m sure I’m paraphrasing some founding father there).
Nevertheless, I am unwilling to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Humans do not have a property right in themselves (this is the basic assumption of abortion advocates). Abortion is wrong because a woman’s liberty right to be sovereign over herself conflicts with the baby’s right to life. A right to life should trump a liberty right to act as one pleases, even if a fetus is an unwelcome tenant.
Arguing that drug taking is a property right to do as one pleases with ones body puts you in the same camp as slavers and abortionists. I don’t wish to be in the same philosophical swamp with them.
An interesting post. Thank you very much for your thoughts.