[Thumper1960]

The one question that has dogged me for years is this: If drugs are so bad and will lead this country to Hell, with a chorus of demons serenading us......why is it that the US was decidedly more free and so very dynamic in the days when "drugs" were legal and Coke had cocaine? I'm talking about up to 80 years or so ago.

Is it really just a popular sentiment, encouraged by the successors to the teetotaling temperance bitty's, that has driven this issue to annoyance?

It seems likely.

[Reagan Man]

......why is it that the US was decidedly more free and so very dynamic in the days when "drugs" were legal and Coke had cocaine?

More free? I think your imagining that's the way it was. Ingesting drugs doesn't mean your more free. America wasn't more free 80 years ago. Women were just given the right to vote and minority voting, especially in the old south, was looked upon in an unfavorable manner. There were a whole lotta poor people living in America, both black and white, and the average America lived to the ripe old age of 50-55. Come on!

I don't think you realize, just how good you have it today. You're living in the greatest nation in world history.

[Libertarian Billy Graham]

Is it really just a popular sentiment, encouraged by the successors to the teetotaling temperance bitty's, that has driven this issue to annoyance?

It would seem as though you have put your finger on it Thumper--but Mrs. Graham has been taking after me lately and insisting that I hold soccer dads and church men equally responsible for the crimes that I normally attribute to evil soccer moms and church ladies. And, as usual, she's right, so I guess I'd say its more like the successors to teetotaling temperance bittys and insane and hypocritical men like Andrew Comstock, Elliot Ness, and Harry Anslinger that are most responsible for these crimes.

To learn about individualist libertarian women who opposed the bittys in the 19th century click here