• 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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