In coming to your conclusion, "This exercise suggests the path to reduced addiction is stronger law enforcement, not less" you acknowledge one of the real problems with effective drug prohibition: "So their best practices should be noted, civil liberties issues engineered around." Not only do we both acknowledge that successful reduction of drug addiction using stronger law enforcement is "a short list, but not zero" but we both recognize the real threat to our precious civil liberties in pursuing that elusive goal.
For about a decade now I've been contributing the occasional reply to the same effect as I have written in this thread. Let me be intellectually honest, too, there might well be downsides and risks in the legalization of hard drugs. Among the several replies I've written over the years, the issues don't change in the dilemma only worsens, let me choose one from 2012 that renders my point of view most vulnerable but which is responsive to your inquiry:
Economics 101 Tells Us That the War on Drugs is a Complete Failure: Prices Are Going Down, Not Up
Sat Jul 07 2012 03:49:46 GMT+0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time) · 36 of 123
nathanbedford to brent13a
We are are pursuing the war on drugs to its tragic conclusion even to the threshold of destroying the Bill of Rights, thoroughly corrupting the administration of justice, over populating our prisons, destroying huge portions of succeeding generations, mortally threatening respect for the rule of law, breaking families apart, engorging government, depleting the treasury, and actually making addiction to drugs more widespread. The idea that taking the profit motive out of drug distribution would not put the cartels out of business is absurd. However, to raise the question as you do whether one is willing to accept open distribution, or very open controlled distribution, of extremely dangerous drugs is legitimate because half measures will not prevail over the drug cartels because they will not eliminate the profit motive.
That means that those of us who advocate the legalization of drugs must be courageous enough to advocate the legalization of the most deadly drugs and the most addictive drugs. It does no good to stand for the legalization of pot only. The profit motive must be withdrawn from the trade and that means the profit motive for all drugs. That implies easy access at reasonable prices below prices which are profitable for cartels to operate for adults of extremely dangerous and extremely addictive drugs. There is no way around that.
The situation we have today is similar: we have easy access at reasonable prices (but prices nevertheless inflated because the drug is illegal so the trade is profitable for cartels) by adults or children to extremely dangerous and extremely addictive drugs.
I want the choice. I am a conservative I want the choice vested in me as an individual and not taken away from me and invested in a government. I want the power to choose to be free of drugs and at the same time to be free of the threat of being mugged so that some addict can pay for his habit by robbing me. I want to be free of the threat of home invasion. I want to be able to enjoy free access to the public square. Therefore, I am willing to tolerate others making the wrong choice and addicting themselves because a dangerous, addictive substance is relatively easy and legal to obtain. My belief is that fewer people will make that choice because there is no incentive for addicts to push drugs to fund their own habits. Presumably, addicts will have access to cheap drugs and will have no need to resort to crime or violence to satisfy their habituation. The government chronically makes the wrong choices for us, it deprives us of freedom of choice, it exposes us to violence, it creates a black market and actually supports prices within that market.
I want to end the moral hazard of drug abuse. If an adult citizen of the United States makes a choice to use hazardous drugs let's him alone bear the consequences as much as possible-to the degree that he alone bears the consequences for abusing alcohol. Let not society, by rendering the choice illegal, shift the costs and unanticipated consequences onto those of us who choose not abuse drugs. Let the government stop making me collateral damage in its war on drugs.
To return to my own comments:
As I noted at the beginning, you are intellectually honest in balancing civil liberties against the presumed values of drug prohibition. But you ask the question in reverse, "So the necessary question becomes: in what places do your own Conservative values overcome Libertarian views?"
My answer: where manifestly intrusive values trample on civil liberties to no successful effect and so disparage respect for the rule of law that other conservative values are damaged thus leading to "national suicide", that is the place where libertarian values overcome conservative values, indeed, that is the place where libertarian values save conservative values.
