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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.

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.)

It also puts you in the unenviable position of being a hypocrite. How can you convince us, your neighbors, that our community will be better off if we don't allow drugs you don't like and don't use, but do allow drugs you do like and do use?

United States Surgeon General Richard Carmona told a House subcommittee Wednesday he would support a ban on tobacco products. Carmona's comments marked the first time a surgeon general, the federal government's top public health advocate, had gone so far on the politically sensitive topic.
Asked if he would "support the abolition of all tobacco products," Carmona told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigating smokeless tobacco and other reduced risk tobacco products, "I would support banning or abolishing tobacco products." Carmona equivocated when asked if he would support a law to ban tobacco, saying "legislation is not my field," but then reiterated his support for criminalizing tobacco. "If Congress chose to go that way, that would be up to them," he said, "but I see no need for any tobacco products in society."

You see "no need" for pot or other illegal drugs, and General Carmona sees "no need" for tobacco.

Why is banning tobacco "undesirable," as you put it? How do you explain that? Do you use the same arguments we've been using with you here about other kinds of drugs?