The Puritans Have Resurfaced

"My right to swing my fist ends at your nose", said, I think, by Mark Twain, is a good statement of the rights and responsibilies in a maximally free society. I should be able to do what I want, but with due regard to the rights of others. The First Amendment expresses the same idea in relationship to verbal utterances. I have the absolute right to say whatever I want to say, short of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. These laws express the obvious truth that my rights are limited by my responsibility to others.

Two days ago the owners and employees of a locally owned heat-and-air business were arrested for selling oxycodone, an addictive and popular substance. In fact, 44 people were arrested, and presumably many of them will go to jail. They are accused of providing substances that the law prohibits. It's unlikely that anybody was forced to take the drugs. In fact, it seems pretty likely that the people who did the buying did so voluntarily.

So whose nose is hit? Who is harmed? At least, harmed to any degree at all greater than those who provide alcohol to voluntary buyers? Clearly we don't want people who are stoned on oxycodone driving our streets, but neither do we want drunks doing the same. Where did we get the idea that it was in our interest to prohibit voluntary actions that do not threaten us? Where did we get the idea that we even have a right to make such laws?

I don't take drugs, because I personally don't like them. I add this disclaimer to avoid sounding like an apologist for drug use. I do, however, feel strongly about the issues of governmental restrictions based primarily on a puritanical fear that somewhere, somehow, somebody is voluntarily impaired. We gave in to this idea during the era of Prohibition (of alcohol). This was an equally puritanical and stupid law that served only to fund criminal organizations and was ultimately abandoned because it was impractical. It was also out of place in a society that originally aimed at providing maximal individual freedom.

I would like to hear from anyone how I am being harmed by someone else's use of drugs in any way that does not apply to alcohol use. Clearly there are issues of lost work or harm to families, but these issues apply equally to alcohol. I would prefer that people don't use drugs or excessive alcohol, but that's a purely personal preference. I do NOT believe that there should be laws against it; I strongly favor the rights of individuals to go to hell in any way they choose that does not harm me. I think that the limiting of individual freedoms ought to have a consistent and compelling rationale.