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Well that’s what we all have to hope for isn’t it!!?

That people, given Liberty, will invariatably choose the best path? Isn’t that what we all believe?

At least most will, and we’ll be the better people for what the best give, not for what the worst don’t. That doesn’t mean that the majority will go in the ‘worst’ direction, does it? Drugs are illegal now, and many millions are apt to abuse them anyway. Studies in human nature have proven that many people will gravitate toward something strictly because it IS illicit.

The problem with that ol’ slippery slope is that the Government has already created a cottage industry with the WoSD. Paramilitary gear for cops, no knock raids, and civil asset forfeiture laws have been used to give law enforcement a horrible incentive to absolutely rape the Liberty of thousands, unjustly and without any due process.

Just as we argue now against Government creating it’s own cottage healtcare industry, in the same breath many can happily support another...the War on Some Drugs.

That people, given Liberty, will invariatably choose the best path? Isn’t that what we all believe?

Well now that's where we part ways, because what I see throughout history is just the opposite. As Thomas Paine put it:

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

I'll grant you that at certain times and places there've been Mayberry RFDs with little need for government interference beyond deciding what color to paint the schoolhouse. But quite often people do what they think they could get by with. They might not go in "the worst direction"; they'll go in whatever direction they please, and I wouldn't bet money that it'll be the best either. This is why democracies fail.

People make their own community, laws or no laws. And they always end up with laws, because "fundamental goodness" is fundamentally unreliable - as the commune experiments demonstrate time and again.

That said, it puts me in the position of having to try to convince you (my neighbors, actually) that our community will be better off if we don't allow drugs here. (I'm also in the unenviable position of being a smoker, and having to convince my neighbors that banning tobacco is undesirable.) Madison admitted that in democratic America, the will of the majority rules, but also restricted it by saying that "the will of the majority, in order to rule, must also be right."

The question in every case is whether the majority is right in restricting this or that liberty. The smaller the community, the less important (and enforceable) that question by nature becomes - as in "small-town justice". And the more desperate the situation, the less weight the answer carries - as in the Constitution's provision for the suspension of habeas corpus, i.e. the Japanese internment case.

If the majority is right in outlawing my smoking, I'm obliged to comply. And if they're right in outlawing your drugs - and if they vote to do so - you're obliged to comply as well. Them's the rules.

In our current circumstances, however, which you describe so well, these ideal rules for majority will vs. individual liberty are rapidly becoming moot. Mexico's decision was an act of self-preservation, not liberty. They have street battles with submachine guns and grenade launchers.