ABSTRACT
Virtually everyone now believes that certain drugs are “dangerous” and that it is the duty of the state to protect people from using them. However, drug prohibition is also dangerous. In addition, it deprives Americans of the right to put into their bodies what they choose, a freedom they enjoyed from the founding of the Colonies until 1914. Prohibition means being prevented from learning to cope with certain dangers intrinsic to life. The prohibitionists’ scare-scenario of drug dealers plying their trade legally in the school-yard is objectionable because it obfuscates that most of our rights — for example, where to live, what religion if any to profess, and so forth — are contingent on these choices being denied to children. Today, the person who opposes drug prohibition commits a similar offense, threatening the Therapeutic State’s sacrosanct monopoly over the pharmacopeia.
