John Stuart Mills

Those who think drugs should be legalised — “only the soft ones, of course, we’re not crazy” — come over all John Stuart Mill. Consenting adults in a free country should be able to do to themselves whatever harm they choose. The State may rightly limit our freedom to prevent us from harming others, but not to prevent us from harming ourselves.

Mill was probably right. But the argument is not entirely helpful because it tacitly accepts that people harm themselves by taking drugs. And we live in an age where welfare trumps liberty every time. Modern politicians like to say that it is their very difficult job to find the balance between welfare and liberty. But it is not the least bit difficult to predict on which side their scales will always fall. So, to win our liberty, we must get legislators to see that drugs are in fact good for their users.