• Woman kills son whilst stoned but drugs are a victimless crime

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The NZ Herald and Stuff have both reported the case of Wendy-May Connon who, according to the crown prosecutor, drove after smoking cannabis. She travelled at excessive speed*, crashed and killed her son Konrad Truger.

Then on Kiwiblog Bok said in reference to this case

Yep Libertarians.. it is a victimless crime….

And Angus added

Bok, true. Much of the libertarian doctrine only applies in a Robinson Crusoe type situation. (before companion Friday shows up at least]

Do they also think that alcohol should be illegal because people drive whilst drunk and kill children? If not they are exercising a double standard.

Back to the Connon case: with all due respect to Bok and Angus, they are mistaken and have conflated (joined together) two separate things.

Wendy-May Connon did not harm anyone when she smoked marijuana. She did harm someone when she drove whilst under the influence of that marijuana. Her smoking was victimless, her driving under the influence was not, and they are two separate actions because smoking marijuana does not inevitably lead to driving under the influence of that marijuana.

To put it another way, taking drugs only harms the person who takes the drugs. If a person does something stupid whilst under the influence of drugs that is something else entirely, and if a person commits a crime in order to obtain drugs that is something else entirely.

If you are going to take alcohol and/or marijuana you know that you are likely to do stupid, dangerous things whilst under the influence, so please, please, please ensure that a sober person is around to stop you from doing those stupid, dangerous things. That person must be willing and able to use physical force to restrain you if necessary; if Connon had had a sober protector her son would still be alive. Also, if you drink yourself to the point of sleep or unconsciousness you are very likely to vomit and inhale that vomit so that you drown: it happens all the time. This can be avoided if you have a sober person around who knows how to put every sleeping and unconscious drunk into the recovery position, so that your mates don’t wake up and find you dead on the sofa with a pool of vomit around your head.

Drugs are a victimless crime: Wendy-May Connon did not harm anyone when she smoked marijuana. She did harm someone when she drove whilst under the influence of that marijuana. They are two separate actions.

What are your thoughts regarding this case and the legalisation of drugs?

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Related posts:

The pointless death of an undercover policeman (my arguments for drug legalisation)

Was Pablo Escobar a danger to the public?

Drink-driving should be legalised

* Marijuana is a sedative, so I was surprised that someone would drive at excessive speed after taking it. However, according to an abstract on Medscape “Marijuana use also directly increases risk-taking behavior in some settings”.

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• Was Pablo Escobar a danger to the public?

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Stuff has an article that begins thus:

Drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hippo died the same way he did, hunted down and shot by the authorities for posing a danger to the public.

I do get tired of seeing state propaganda delivered by the media. Escobar may have been a danger to the public when he ordered murders and the like, but that isn’t what the article is referring to: rather, the article means that he was a danger to the public because he supplied drugs. That is dung of bull.

Escobar simply supplied a product that people wanted, just as a baker supplies bread that people want. Yes, the cocaine that Escobar supplied was harmful, but people freely chose to put it into their bodies so Escobar was not responsible for that harm. Each person who freely chose to harm their body with cocaine was responsible for that harm. It’s all about personal responsibility.

I believe that drugs should be legalised because the state has no right to control what people put into their bodies. You can read my full argument in my post titled The pointless death of an undercover policeman.

Related post:

The NZ Herald delivers state propaganda

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Who wants the army on the streets of New Zealand?

I support some of the policies of the Family Party (those that are a step in the right direction for classical liberalists), but their latest press release in response to the murder of an undercover policeman on a drugs case is inviting abuse of power by the State.

It is written by Richard Lewis, the party leader and a former police sergeant. In part it says:

The solution: It’s time to draw the line in the sand. Drug dealing is the soft-underbelly of organised crime and that’s where law enforcement needs to aim their sights. Give the police what they need to fight the war on gangs and drugs, which is the people, tools and laws to do it. Partnering police with army could be one way to achieve the numbers and the muscle. After all, this is a war we are fighting in our own back yard. And we’re losing badly. [emphasis added]

This is an extremely dangerous methodology at any time, more so at a time when Samuel Dennis, one of the Family Party candidates, is talking about ominous constitutional changes and Helen Clark seizing more power over the police.

Richard, with respect, you are inviting the government to bring in a police state and this is a dangerous and harebrained proposition. Do you really trust politicians like Helen Clark to have the power to deploy the army against citizens? How long before she is using the army to scare people away from marches protesting against the Electoral Finance Act, or to physically break up a supposed unlawful assembly*?

The police are are now controlled by the Prime Minister, so giving the police more “numbers” and “muscle” is giving the PM more numbers and muscle. As for giving police the “tools and laws to do it” they already have those.

As I said my earlier post, the quickest and simplest way to give gangs a kick in the family jewels is to make drugs legal.

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*Unlawful assembly is defined in s86 of the Crimes Act and it is a broad definition: all Helen has to do is put a bunch of her commie friends into the area of a march, provoke a bit of push and shove, then get the commies to say that they fear violence from the protestors. Presto, you have an unlawful assembly. Variations on this technique have been used many times over the course of history.

• The pointless death of an undercover policeman

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Yesterday an undercover police officer on a drugs case was murdered in Mangere, and the saddest thing about this is that it is an utterly pointless death, suffered in the enforcement of an utterly pointless law. Allow me to explain.

Drugs and alcohol are essentially the same thing, i.e. both are psychoactive substances (something that affects the mind). It is illogical and hypocritical for the government to make one psychoactive substance legal – alcohol – and outlaw other psychoactive substances – drugs. Why don’t they also make other psychoactive substances  illegal while they’re at it? There’s coffee, tea, cigarettes, cheese, cola drinks, and others; turkey has a small psychoactive effect. Why are psychoactive pills like antidepressants and sedatives legal when “recreational” drugs are illegal? There is no rational defence for arbitrarily making certain drugs illegal.

Arbitrarily making certain drugs illegal also harms society, just as the US Prohibition did. Making something illegal increases the price of it, and the gangs  that the government bleats about get a huge amount of their power and money through the sale of drugs. The quickest and simplest way to give gangs a kick in the family jewels is to make drugs legal. Just as in the Prohibition, the gangs flourish because they can supply something that people want and are prepared to live outside the law: ironically, the law of supply and demand is proven right due to Socialist laws. If drugs were legal, anyone could sell them and there would be competition: prices would come down and the gangs would find something else to occupy themselves in between benefit days because there wasn’t any serious money to be made in drugs.

Then there is the fact that taxpayers are wearing the huge cost of the enforcement of drug laws, and of the imprisonment of offenders for committing a victimless crime.

“Drugs are harmful” you say. Yes, drugs are harmful, but that is not a rational reason for making them illegal. Cigarettes are harmful, and no one seriously proposes making them illegal; it is a double standard to support the illegalisation of drugs because they are harmful unless you also support making everything else that is harmful illegal. If you support making everything that is harmful illegal, you have to answer this question: what is the definition of ‘harmful’? There is nowhere you can go to find an objective definition, thus any definition is subjective and simply an arbitrary decision: now that you’ve made an arbitrary decision about what is harmful you’ve arrived at the point that the State is at, so you should re-read the second paragraph of this post.

“Drug dealers are harming drug users” you say. If a drug dealer holds someone down and injects drugs into them, then he is harming someone. If someone buys drugs of their own free will and injects them, then the seller of the drugs is no more harming the user than the seller of cigarettes is harming the smoker. The key here is ‘free will’: the drug user and the smoker are only harming themselves. If you support the illegalisation of drugs because “drug dealers are harming others” then you should also support the illegalisation of the sale of icecream to obese persons, otherwise you are exercising a double standard.

I could go on about the harms and illogicalities inherent in making drugs illegal, but that is ignoring the transcendent issue. What is the transcendent issue? It is this: the government is telling you what you can and cannot put into your body. Nanny State says “Tut, tut, drugs are bad for and you’re not allowed to have them”, like a parent talking to a child. The state has the temerity and the utter arrogance to tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, which is a highly intimate invasion of personal freedoms.

I am reminded of the book ’1984′, where citizens were forced to do exercises every morning in their apartments, and the instructors ensured compliance by watching the citizens through a video camera. That government was also telling people what was acceptable treatment of their bodies.

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♦A good article on the issue can be found here, and after you’ve read that my post here will have relevance.

♦Some people will be thinking “This blogger is just a pot head trying to justify his habit”. I have never tried any illegal drugs; my only in interest in this matter is one of principles.

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