Correct. Although I don't subscribe to the notion that substances are evil in an of themselves, drug prohibition simply makes a bad situation much worse. Just like it did with alcohol.
The question was also answered by asking how many people in that auditorium would suddenly become heroin users overnight if it was legalized? Approximately 0. We as a society know the dangers drugs pose, but we can address such problems in much more effective ways than criminalization.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people who claim to love Liberty are so willing to massively expand state power by embracing the concept of essentially arbitrary contraband law.
IMHO, such a philosophy blindly grants the government virtually unlimited power to criminalize its citizenry. Such Tyranny is always wrong, whether it comes from the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen, or the whims of an authoritarian democratic majority.
“It never ceases to amaze me how so many people who claim to love Liberty are so willing to massively expand state power by embracing the concept of essentially arbitrary contraband law.”
Yes, even if we could demonstrate for certain the drug laws were very effective at solving the problem, we’d still want to weigh that benefit very carefully against the liberties we are losing and the increasing state power. Of course, that’s not the case, but many conservatives still don’t seem to bother weighing these costs.