Another important example of the rightness of Thomas Szasz, who wrote two brilliant books about drug prohibition: Ceremonial Chemistry and Our Right to Drugs. Drug controls, which began during the Progressive Era, are possible only if one rejects self-ownership as an essential condition for liberty. Both Right and Left fully embrace that a person is owned by “society,” and should be prevented, at all cost, from potentially harming himself. Even many “libertarians” accept the self-abnegating notion that “addiction” cannot be controlled. It is foolhardy to deny agency while demanding freedom.
Jefferey Singer on the CATO daily Podcast from Jan 31,2019 is rightly very critical on the war on drugs generally and says prohibition is the cause of the opoid crisis.See https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/challenge-conventional-narratives-opioid-overdoses
Another important example of the rightness of Thomas Szasz, who wrote two brilliant books about drug prohibition: Ceremonial Chemistry and Our Right to Drugs. Drug controls, which began during the Progressive Era, are possible only if one rejects self-ownership as an essential condition for liberty. Both Right and Left fully embrace that a person is owned by “society,” and should be prevented, at all cost, from potentially harming himself. Even many “libertarians” accept the self-abnegating notion that “addiction” cannot be controlled. It is foolhardy to deny agency while demanding freedom.
ReplyDeleteJefferey Singer on the CATO daily Podcast from Jan 31,2019 is rightly very critical on the war on drugs generally and says prohibition is the cause of the opoid crisis.See https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/challenge-conventional-narratives-opioid-overdoses
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments.
James