Libertarian support for Drug Legalisation is dangerous

The argument

Libertarian's pro-drug stance goes against their fundamental belief that the government has a responsibility to protect a person's freedom and prevent them from harm. To have personal freedom, you must have rationality. It is impossible to make a rational choice if a person's cognitive faculties are compromised. Drugs comprise a person's ability to think clearly, which means they are unable to act freely. People on drugs can cause harm to themselves and others. There is a correlation between drug use and social and economic failure, domestic violence, criminal activity, and destructive parenting. A person's freedom to consume drugs affects not only the person's safety but also their liberty and community. Drugs are addictive, and addictions impair the freedom of a drug addict because they control their lives. For those who are physically and psychologically dependent on drugs, drug use can lead to destructive behavior and loss of self-control. Addiction can impact all aspects of an addict's life and affect their ability to work or study, care for themselves, and form and maintain relationships. Addiction affects not only the freedom of the individual but the freedom of others. This argument believes drug prohibition, not drug decriminalization, is more compatible with a libertarian's vision of a freedom-respecting state.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Libertarians believe everyone has the right to bodily autonomy and it is up to the individual to decide what they choose or do not choose to consume. They feel if someone decides to take recreational drugs, no one has the authority to stop them. Additionally, there is an argument that alcohol can be more harmful and addictive than hard drugs, so it is only fair that drugs are legalized too. Legalizing drugs would make it easier for addicts to get treatment. If addicts were treated instead of criminalized, it would reduce the pressure on prison services. If drugs were legalized, they can be regulated to ensure they are not dangerously tainted by the black market, and their potency could be decreased which would help to prevent overdoses. A legalized drug market also means governments could profit from tax revenue.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise misstates the position it argues from. Libertarianism holds that the state should protect people from harm by others, not from themselves, and paternalism is among the things it most consistently rejects. Making rationality a precondition of the freedom the state must secure would license intervention wherever judgement is impaired — by alcohol, exhaustion, grief, conviction or advertising — a conclusion no libertarian account accepts. [Rejecting P2] Temporary impairment during use is not incapacity to choose. The decision to take a substance is made beforehand, by a person whose faculties are intact, and that is the moment the freedom claim concerns. The same reasoning would prohibit alcohol, which is more strongly associated with violence than most of the drugs at issue. [Rejecting P3] The correlations are real but the causal direction is unsettled, and prohibition is implicated in much of what the premise counts. Criminalisation supplies the illicit market, the unregulated potency, the violence attached to its trade and the criminal record that follows conviction — which is why the counter-argument's route, regulation paired with treatment, addresses the third-party harm the premise names. Addiction impairing autonomy also argues for making treatment accessible, not for making its subject a criminal.