Men of good will might have disagreed back in 1972, particularly those who lacked the philosophical instinct to intuit the predictable consequences of outlawing strongly desired substances that have been used for millennia by humankind, but it is impossible for "men of good will" to support the Drug War today.
Would men of good will prohibit philosophers from following up the work of William James, whose use of laughing gas changed his entire view of reality?
Would men of good will withhold morphine 1 from children in hospice based on the superstitious drug-war doctrine that morphine 2 is bad "in and of itself," without regard for how or why it is used?
Would men of good will suppress religious liberty by arresting those who use time-honored sacred medicine for religious purposes?
Would men of good will support an outlay of 51 billion dollars a year for punishing Americans who use substances of which racist politicians disapprove?
Would men of good will support a prohibition policy that has led to the presence of Mexican drug cartels in over a thousand American cities?
Would men of good will support a policy that has destroyed the Mexican judicial system and led to the corruption of countless officials, including the nation's top anti-drug official, Noe Ramirez, in 2008?
Would men of good will support a policy that, in just 50 years, has resulted in a 400% increase in the cocaine 34 supply in America?
Would men of good will support a policy that has given Big Pharma 56 a monopoly on mind medicine thanks to which 1 in 4 American women must now take tranquilizing medicine every single day of their life?
Would men of good will support a policy that has led to an opiate epidemic in America in which 1 user died every 16 minutes in 2016?
Would men of good will support a policy that has disenfranchised millions of Blacks and thereby led to the election of racist traitors and insurrectionists like Donald Trump?
Would men of good will remove young people from the American work force because they used medicines that, in the past, had inspired entire religions?
No, Milton. Drug Warriors are not "men of good will," or even "people of good will," as we would phrase it today. The very best thing that we can say about Milton's "men of good will" today is that they have been brainwashed, like Milton himself, in the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, which feeds us the unscientific lie that "drugs" have no positive uses, ever, for anyone, at any time, in any dosage whatsoever.
True, many of these downsides took time to develop and were not apparent in the 1970s (though they might have been predicted by a somewhat shrewder philosopher than Milton), but Libertarians today continue to accept Milton's analysis uncritically, as Doug Bandow does in the article cited above. They continue to ignore the 'good' uses of drugs, in fealty to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, and they have yet to admit, let alone protest, the way the Drug War shuts down free scientific inquiry and debate.
As just one example of the self-censorship that the Drug War encourages, take the fact that Britain is getting ready to outlaw laughing gas 7 , for the usual purblind reason that it could be dangerous to young people (the young people whom we have doggedly refused to educate about safe use). While there are many people who are protesting this upcoming prohibition, I am the only one in the world, to my knowledge, who is protesting the ban on the grounds of intellectual freedom, thereby standing up for William James and the right to free philosophical inquiry. This can only be because the Drug Warrior has, for the most part, convinced everybody on planet earth that 'drugs' are truly bad -- and this is, in fact, the impression one gets from reading libertarians like Friedman on this topic: they do not like prohibition, but that's only because they think that we should all have the right to 'go to the devil' in our own way.
Author's Follow-up: January 28, 2023
Not only are Drug Warriors not "men of good will," but they may well be just the opposite. Julian Buchanan argues that the Drug War is a great success, not because it is cutting down on "drug" use but because it is accomplishing the goals of the Drug Warriors: namely, to militarize police forces, disenfranchise minorities, and keep America's eyes off the prize when it comes to achieving social reforms.
Actually, I'm too easy on Milton Friedman. Even in 1972, he should have known that the outlawing of Mother Nature's plant medicines is an obvious violation of the Natural Law upon which America was founded. Surely a libertarian of all people should acknowledge that, concerned as they are about government overreach. I can scarcely imagine a greater case of government overreach than the government telling its citizens which plants and fungi they are allowed to access. I have a right to those medicines as an inhabitant of Planet Earth! John Locke said so in his Second Treatise on Government, that we have a right to the use of the land and all that lies therein. Not that we need a 17th-century philosopher to convince us of such a SELF-EVIDENT truth.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
America is an "arrestocracy" thanks to the war on drugs.
Timothy Leary's wife wrote: "We went to Puerto Rico and all we did was take cocaine and read Faust to one another." And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that!!! The drug war is all about scaring us and making illegal drug use as dangerous as possible.
Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.
Aleister Crowley actually TRIED to get addicted to drugs and found he could not. These things are not inevitable. The fact that there are town drunkards does not mean that we should outlaw alcohol.
Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.
Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.
My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
