Making the things I don't like illegal

There is no limit to what laws government might pass to 'protect' you

The beautiful thing about my philosophy of government is that I need not twist myself into knots to justify policies that take away freedom. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to decide what plants, products, goods, or services should be legal or illegal and what fines or prison terms should imposed on people who do not conform to my beliefs.

My standard is so simple and never changes: Don’t hurt people or steal their stuff, and we’re golden. If one were to use force against me or others, only then might government involvement be considered, if such were to rise to the level of a crime. For an action to be considered a crime, there must be a victim, and that victim must have directly suffered harm, e.g., loss of life, liberty, or property as a result of a person’s actions.

In this rubric, it’s not what could happen if a person does a thing; it is what did happen and whether there was a direct harm that came from that action.

Accordingly, I spend absolutely no time trying to order society according to my own preferences. I truly wish people would drink less. I’m told that, despite Idaho having government-run liquor stores so as to promote “temperance,” around 50% of Idahoans drink monthly and about 16% binge drink. Some number of those drinkers get into car crashes, get into fights, or are too hung over to go to work.

I also wish people ate better. There’s nothing that stops people from eating fast food, processed lunch meat, refined sugar, energy drinks, sugary cereal, or soda, all of which have demonstrated awful effects on the body, reducing lifespans, increasing employee sick leave, and pushing bad dietary habits onto children. Some 40% of Americans are obese, including 20% of children.

I wish people turned off their devices more. Between streaming, scrolling, or playing video games, Americans spend about eight hours a day in front of phones, TVs, or computer screens. This hurts American productivity, reduces household earnings and savings, contributes to obesity, and contributes to the decline in mental health.

This is a weed. But it isn’t “weed.”

About 310,000 Idahoans take prescription psychotropic drugs in order to cope with the symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other mental health diagnoses. These people rarely get better, only medicated, usually having to add new pills to their routine to deal with side effects. I wish they would try alternatives that could actually help them get better.

With this background, comes now the umpteenth debate over cannabis prohibition, as spelled out in a recent article by Brian Almon. He writes:

Libertarians argue from first principles that one person does not have the right to tell another what he or she can or cannot ingest. They call drug usage a “victimless crime.” Yet a decade and a half into this experiment with [cannabis] legalization has shown that it is not victimless. Rampant drug use has awful second- and third-order effects that destroy families and communities. If marijuana is illegal, some people will still smoke it, but the barriers are much higher than they are now, which means fewer people will destroy their lives with that addiction.

If we’re looking for second- and third-order effects that potentially destroy families and communities, any of the examples above — alcohol, fast food, refined sugar, video games, smart phones — are each addictive (perhaps even more addictive than cannabis) and each could be argued to have downstream victims. Shall the government ban these things, too?

Truly, there’s no end to the list of things the government might argue has victims, because the victims need only be someone or something — the economy, the government, the environment, business, commerce, society — that might be impacted in some way now or in the future. Do you see the danger of accepting the narrative that government exists to stop people from using “bad things”?

Here’s another thing that Almon mentions could have victims:

In my article on vice, I brought up gambling as another of these gray areas. Gambling has always destroyed the lives of a certain percentage of people unable to control themselves, but the barriers to entry were once fairly high. A gambler had to seek out a casino or racetrack to engage in his vice, but today you can throw away your life savings on prop bets via mobile phone apps. Is that good for society?

Where else might one gamble? How about the Idaho Lottery, which is run by the state. Apparently, gambling is a vice, with victims in waiting, but when that vice is run by the government, it’s not vicey enough. The card game at your house? The March Madness pool? All dangerous, all contraband, all worthy of government use of force in the interest of protecting the would-be victims as deemed by the government.

Government — and government defenders — have a huge blind spot when it comes to the examination of second- and third-order effects, especially if they’re directly involved to wit: Politicians get lots of money from Big Pharma. Big Pharma gets lots of money from the government. Governments run medical welfare programs, which make alternatives to Big Pharma a crime.

“But Wayne, what about other states that have legalized cannabis?” Answers, for paid subscribers below: