[Antoninus]

Your invideous analogy falls apart immediately. Crimes like rape and theft directly harm others; smoking or using poison, whether it's marijuana, crack or alcohol does not. Collateral damage can be dealt with within the legal system much as we do today with alcohol.

That is a libertarian attitude and has little or nothing to do with real life. You do not have a God given right to do harm to yourself and laws may legitimately be put forward and enforced which prevent such acts in accordance with the cultural norms of our civilization.

Do you consider US a fascist state because cocaine is illegal?

Prohibition does not measurably affect usage; it only increases the cost.

...which affects usage. When something is more expensive, people are much less likely to purchase it. Nice job refuting your own argument.

And guess what? Legalizing drugs will necessarily expand the government because government institutions (and those receiving funds from the government) will be the ones who have to deal with the massive increase in societal problems stemming from increased drug use. And with the government-run healthcare trajectory we're on, this will only get worse.

Tell you what. Let's have this conversation again when we live in a country where taxpayer money is not forcibly extracted from some to pay for the irresponsibility of others. Until then, you're just expanding the power of the "fascists on the left" with this kind of nonsense.

[muir_redwoods]

Please point to the constitutional authority for outlawing a vegetable. The state of Ohio may, at it’s peril, outlaw, say, Hubbard squash; the federal government may not.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

You do not have a God given right to do harm to yourself and laws may legitimately be put forward and enforced which prevent such acts in accordance with the cultural norms of our civilization.

Once you cede to government the power to define and ban "self-harm" you've opened the door to the liberals' food-policing and War On Tobacco. Real conservatives know that government power can easily be used against them and so grant government no more power than absolutely necessary.

the massive increase in societal problems stemming from increased drug use.

There's no reason to expect a "massive increase." Alcohol is a more popular drug than any currently illegal drug would ever be, and we're handling the problems of alcohol use just fine - they are certainly less of a burden than the problems caused or exacerbated by the War On Drugs.

[microgood]

You do not have a God given right to do harm to yourself and laws may legitimately be put forward and enforced which prevent such acts in accordance with the cultural norms of our civilization.

That is the kind of thinking that has transformed this nation from a constitutitional republic based on individual freedom to a democracy based on mob rule.