I don’t think you can compare cellphones to pot, for example. Pot is a drug. And though soda has caffeine, a drug, in it, it’s generally not known to cause erratic driving, resulting in car accidents, or work accidents, decreased productivity, or any of the other side effects of pot.
We've already seen Bloomberg try to regulate the size of soft drinks in New York City.
I think it's quite possible to argue for the legality of something based on the irrational reasons it is criminalized.
Well said.
Note how the goalposts tend to move. Instead of acknowledging the hypocrisy—and even the unconstitutionality—of contraband law, the debate inevitably shifts to DUI/workplace problems/health impacts/"what about the children", etc.—complaints which are already associated with legal drugs like alcohol.
Alcohol is the worst drug on the face of the earth—worse than all other drugs combined, whether illegal or not. The only consistent position for a Prohibitionist would be to support re-criminalizing alcohol as well—which, let's remember, required the Constitution to be amended. We all know the situation that created—and the same factors still apply today.
As soon as you start rationalizing arbitrary law—which seeks to preemptively control behavior by criminalizing it in the total absence of infringing on anyone's rights—you've opened the floodgates to Tyranny, and nanny-state authoritarians of all stripes will take advantage of that, just like we can see everywhere we look. You can't hold a position like that—declaring things to be a crime which don't infringe on anyone's rights—and claim to be a "minimal government" conservative. The concepts are mutually exclusive.