Baker Institute Blog


Civil liberties erode when drug use widens

BI-image-Viewpoints-CivilLibertiesLegal scholars, activists, academics and law enforcement have all questioned the impact of the drug war on civil liberties. Many argue that like the prohibition of alcohol, the drug war has diminished civil liberties, particularly in the areas of search and seizure and the right to privacy. These issues could not be more timely given the changing landscape of drug policy in America. Pew and Gallup polls have indicated, for the first time, that a majority of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal. This change in public opinion is no doubt related to medical marijuana laws in 18 states and the District of Columbia and the legalization of marijuana for recreational uses by popular referendums in Colorado and Washington.

In the final post of a four-part Baker Institute Viewpoints series, we ask: Will legalizing marijuana improve civil liberties?

More from this series:

May 20, 2013 — “Restoring civil liberties through sensible marijuana policies

May 17, 2013 — “How the war on drugs has infringed on U.S. civil liberties

May 16, 2013 — “Will legalizing marijuana improve civil liberties?

“Would marijuana legalization improve civil liberties?” At first, the answer might appear obvious. Legalization would improve civil liberties, the argument goes, simply because it would necessitate less government intrusion on individual choices.

A fact often left out of this discussion is the practical reality that today the private, personal use of marijuana is rarely pursued by law enforcement. Indeed the answer to the above question is more nuanced than advocates might lead us to believe.

The argument that legalization would improve civil liberties rests on the notion that if marijuana was legal, there would be less of a need for the criminal justice system intruding on the lives of otherwise peaceful marijuana smokers. But it is unclear that legalization would greatly reduce criminal justice (specifically law enforcement) involvement in society. Already, only about two-tenths of 1 percent of all prison inmates appear to be incarcerated in prison simply for marijuana use.[i] Data from the “Survey of Inmates in Federal and Correctional Facilities” finds that the “number of marijuana users in prison [only] for their use is perhaps 800-2,300 individuals or on the order of 0.1-0.2 percent of all prison inmates.”[ii] Researchers estimated that the resulting expected time served in prison per year of use for marijuana was .04 days. And federal prisons certainly do not focus on simple users — the median amount of marijuana for those convicted of marijuana possession is 115 pounds (or 156,000 marijuana cigarettes).[iii] Of course, prison is not the only measure of law enforcement activity. About 700,000 arrests are made yearly for marijuana possession. Some of those arrests result in jailing. Put in context of overall use, however, the chance for arrest is one in every 11,000 to 12,000 joints smoked. The probability of being arrested during a year of monthly consumption rises to about 3 percent for adults and 6 percent for adolescents.[iv] Many of these arrests are made in the context of traffic stops or public use. Under most legalization proposals, driving with marijuana in the car or smoking in public would remain illegal.

From a macro perspective, regulations governing legal alcohol result in more criminal justice involvement than marijuana. Over 2.3 million arrests are made annually for alcohol regulation violations (e.g., public use or selling to minors) — far more arrests than for all illegal drugs combined. That is because so many more people use substances when they are legal, widely available, accepted, and normalized.

Since legalization would increase use, it is important to briefly dwell on the possibility that legalization might decrease civil liberties, especially for vulnerable populations like children. Marijuana smoking during pregnancy has been shown to decrease birth weight, most likely due to the effects of carbon monoxide on the developing fetus.[v] Marijuana addicts 1 out of every 6 children who ever try the drug.[vi] Marijuana affects the developing brain in acute ways; one recent study found that persistent, heavy young users had on average 6-8 lower IQ points by age 38 relative to non-users (even if heavy use stopped in adulthood)[vii]. Additionally, a number of studies have found that people who use marijuana are more likely to drop out of school, and subsequently face unemployment, be dependent on social welfare, and experience a lower self-reported quality of life than people who don’t use marijuana.[viii] An exhaustive meta-analysis examining four-dozen different studies by Macleod and colleagues who found that marijuana use is consistently associated with reduced grades and a lower chance of graduating from school.[ix]

Marijuana’s harm extends beyond that done to the individual. Marijuana intoxication at least doubles the risk of getting into a car accident[x]; costs from marijuana-related hospital stays are substantial[ii]; marijuana addiction costs the state money for treatment; etc.

John Stuart Mill famously wrote that “… over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” Mill argued that “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of the community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”  Since marijuana can cause addiction, forcing people to lose control over their own self and in the process inflict harms onto others, its use can decrease overall civil liberties. And since legalization would undoubtedly increase marijuana use in society, we might expect a reduction, not increase, in civil liberties if marijuana was legalized.

[i] Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004. Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities, Special Tabulations. Data collected from

[ii] Caulkins and Sevigny. “How many people does the U.S. imprison for drug use, and who are they?” Contemporary Drug Problems.

[iii] U.S. Sentencing Commission (2011). Annual Report. Accessed at

[iv] Kilmer, B. et al. “Altered State? Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets.” RAND Drug Policy Research Center, 2010.

[v] Hall W & Degenhard L (2009). Adverse health effects of non-medical marijuana use.  Lancet, 374:1383-1391.

[vi] Anthony JC, Warner LA, Kessler RC (1994): Comparative epidemiology of dependence on tobacco, alcohol, controlled substances, and inhalants: Basic findings from the National Comorbidity Survey. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2: 244 – 268

[vii] Meier et al. (2012). Persistent marijuana users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[viii] Fergusson, D. M. and Boden, J. M. (2008), Marijuana use and later life outcomes. Addiction, 103: 969–976.

[ix] Macleod, J.; Oakes, R.; Copello, A.; Crome, I.; Egger, M.; Hickman, M.; Oppenkowski, T.; Stokes-Lampard, H.; and Davey Smith, G. Psychological and social sequelae of cannabis and other illicit drug use by young people: A systematic review of longitudinal, general population studies. Lancet 363(9421):1579-1588, 2004.

[x] Marijuana impaired driving twice as likely to crash (Britain Medical Journal) found at:

[ii] Pacula, et al. “An Examination of the Nature and Cost of Marijuana Treatment Episodes.” RAND Working Paper presented at the American Society for Health Economics Annual Meeting, Durham, N.C., June 2008.


 Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., has worked on drug policy issues for more than 18 years. He, is currently director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida and an assistant professor in the university’s College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. He is the founder, with Patrick J. Kennedy, of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). From 2009-2011, he served in the Obama administration as the senior adviser to Director R. Gil Kerlikowske at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He is also the president of Policy Solutions Lab, a consulting firm that works with numerous domestic and international organizations.



Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy

17 Responses

  1. claygooding says:

    Your entire fear of marijuana is based on it’s “addictive” rate,,which is the same as coffee,according to the NIDA and with less severe withdrawel effects than caffiene addiction.

    Your “fears for the children” is hypocrisy at it’s worst,,prohibition puts the market in criminals control and legalization puts it in our control where it can be sold to ADULTS by ADULTS beacause we are trying to legalize marijuana for adults,,not children. You want to keep it available on every street corner and we want it in stores,,now who is endangering “the children”?

  2. allan says:

    Mr Sabet continues to hawk the “but hardly anyone goes to prison for pot” meme as if it means something.

    When Kevin discusses the death of Peter McWilliams or the imprisonment of McWilliams’ friend Tod McCormick, or the deaths of Patrick Dorismond, Kathryn Johnston, Donald Scott(!) and the too many more drug war caused deaths (homicide committed by the criminal justice system), I may start taking him seriously.

    When one is at the receiving end of the war on pot, it’s a lot more personal and far, far less about statistics. Like… my friends here in Eugene in a well publicized case who were raided by a SWAT team consisting of 49 officers with body armor, automatic weapons and an armored personnel carrier… and came away with less than 1/8 of an ounce of pot.

    Or how about the raid in Columbia, MO where officers shoot the family dog in front of a little boy? I mean really? A grown man, armed, armored and probably around 200 pounds has to shoot a Corgy? A Corgy’s legs are only 3″ long and they are hardly a vicious breed:

    And goodness knows, Kevin won’t talk about the Catch-22 of marijuana research in the US. I mean the lack thereof. An atmosphere that even had the government bury a study done back in ’74 that showed cannabis has extremely positive potential as a cancer-fighting agent. I mean if you take all the people that have died from cancer since 1974 and asked their surviving family members what they thought, probably most wouldn’t look favorably upon such behavior by government.

    Cannabis has the addiction potential of caffeine. To say that 1 in 6 kids who try it will become addicted to pot is laughable considering that 2/3 of those entering addiction treatment for pot do so because of law enforcement referral or pressure.

    Neither will Kevin talk about the foundations of pot prohibition. How the laws against pot are founded on racist lies and perjury before the Congress of the United States.

    And… as pot is provably far, far safer than alcohol why do we ban the safer substance? Because basically we’re providing alcohol (and the producers of) a monopoly on legal intoxication.

    Legalization isn’t isn’t an “option,” it is the only logical course.

  3. Steve Rolles says:

    I dont think you can make the claim that legalisation will increase use with such certainty. The drivers of levels of use are primarily social cultural and economic. Evidence that there is a significant deterent effect associated with user level enforcement or that supply side enforcement prevents availability once demand is established is sorely lacking. Cannabis use in the Netherlands is no higher than in neighbouring countries that do not have defacto legalisation – and considerably lower than the US.

    There are, ofcourse, factors that could increase use in a legalised scenario – a dramatic fall in price, and increase in profit seeking marketing and promotions are perhaps the two most obvious ones. However – these risks can be anticipated and mitigated through effective regulation (price controls and advertising bans for example) and redirecting enforcement spending into proven public health programs – prevention, education, treatment etc. It is demonstably the case that use of legal and illegal drugs goes both up and down. Tobacco use has gone down substantially through more effective regulation (including price controls and ad bans) combined with health education: without resorting to absolutist prohibitions or criminalisation of users.

    From your initial over-reaching assumption you then list a whole series of health harms you propose would get worse. You ignore any potential reinvestment into proven health interventions (either of diverted CJS spend or potential tax revenue) and also the fact that illegal supply only serves to increase harms associated with use (unknown stregth and purity, contaminants, lack of info on packaging, use in unsupervised marginal environments etc). Instead it then turns into a familiar list of cannabis health harms – with little to do civil rights.

    You have also omitted to consider any likely displacement effect which, even if cannabis use did increase, would likely see alcohol use fall. Given relative harms this would likey lead to net health benefits – presumably undermining your central premise.

    Finally there are an array of human/civil rights costs associated with drug law enforcement that you have failed to mention instead establishing a straw mand that it is purely about the state intrusion on individual choices. It is much much more than that – see here:

  4. Chad says:

    Its interesting how he only calculates individuals in prison due to a marijuana offense. Its a clever point for discussion, however, our civil rights are also violated when an offender is merely detained. Albeit the consequence is not as devastating as a multiple year sentence, a 12, 24, or 48 hour detention can impact someone’s life traumatically.

    I know this because I was arrested for a minor marijuana offense (under 2oz located in the trunk of my car). The officer pulled me over for speeding, but did not catch me on radar or pace my vehicle. I was searched by a drug-sniffing dog without consent. I was arrested and spent the night in a scummy jail, surrounded by society’s worst…

    I was forced to get naked. I was “searched” for dangerous objects like I wasn’t a person at all…

    Finally, I resolved my class B misdemeanor through deferred adjudication because settling for $300 was way better of a deal than spending tens of thousands to challenge the charges.

    And on top of that, I had to endure scrutiny from the Texas Board of Law Examiners to keep my law license. This was all for a victimless crime.

    Kevin Sabet needs to stop his propaganda.

  5. Malcolm Kyle says:

    “Drug Policy and the incarceration of low-level drug offenders is the primary cause of mass incarceration in the United States. 40% of drug arrests are for simple possession of marijuana. There is also evidence that drug enforcement has diverted resources from law enforcement of violent crimes and other threats to public safety” – page 2

    “Criminalization has resulted in increased use of harsh punitive sanctions imposed on drug offenders and dramatic increases in rates of incarceration. These policies have had limited impact on eliminating or reducing illegal drug use and may have resulted in adverse consequences for social and community health” – page 2

    “Criminalization of possession and illegal use of drugs compounded by mandatory sentencing and lengthy prison sanctions for low-level drug use has become the primary cause of mass incarceration. The global prison population has skyrocketed in the last three decades with ten million people worldwide now in jails and prisons. The extraordinary increase in the number of people now incarcerated has had tremendous implications for state and national governments dealing with global recession and a range of economic, social and political challenges. Research indicates that resources that would otherwise be spent on development, infrastructure, education and health care have been redirected over the last two decades to incarcerating drug offenders, many of whom are low-level users.” – page 3

    “Sociologists have also recently observed that the widespread incarceration of men in low-income communities has had a profound negative impact on social and cultural norms relating to family and opportunity. Increases in the imprisonment of poor and minority women with children have now been linked with rising numbers of displaced children and dependents. Drug policy and the over-reliance on incarceration is seen by many experts as contributing to increased rates of chronic unemployment, destabilization of families and increased risk of reincarceration for the formerly incarcerated.” – page 3

    “In the United States, drug arrests have tripled in the last 25 years, however most of these arrests have been for simple possession of low-level drugs. In 2005, nearly 43% of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses. Marijuana possession arrests accounted for 79% of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s. Nearly a half million people are in state or federal prisons or a local jail for a drug offense, compared to 41,000 in 1980. Most of these people have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity” – page 4

    “With over 5 million people on probation or parole in the United States, drug use on parole or probation has become the primary basis by which thousands of people are returned to prison. These technical violations of parole or probation account for as many as 40% of new prison admissions in some jurisdictions.” – page 6


    “The war on drugs has also generated indirect costs that many researchers contend have undermined public safety. The federal government has prioritized spending and grants for drug task forces and widespread drug interdiction efforts that often target low-level drug dealing. These highly organized and coordinated efforts have been very labor intensive for local law enforcement agencies with some unanticipated consequences for investigation of other crimes. The focus on drugs is believed to have redirected law enforcement resources that have resulted in more drunk driving, and decreased investigation and enforcement of violent crime laws. In Illinois, a 47% increase in drug arrests corresponded with a 22% decrease in arrests for drunk driving. Florida researchers have similarly linked the focus on low level drug arrests with an increase in the serious crime index.”

    –Drug Policy, Criminal Justice and Mass Imprisonment, by Bryan Stevenson

  6. Dean Becker says:


    … Such blantant lies Kevin, I wonder how you sleep.

    750,000 arrests in 2012, just for possession of minor amounts of cannabis. Over the last 40 years, more than 20 million US citizens have been busted for minor amounts of cannabis. Over 3 million arrests in Texas alone over that timeframe.

    You are right that very few go to prison for very long, true enough. However you skip right over the fact that for each arrest there comes a lifetime of cultural baggage that means zero or at least diminished chances of obtaining credit, housing, educational grants, certain state licenses or in too many cases near zero chance at getting a job.

    Mr. Sabet, your stance is just a tiny, incremental step away from the hysteria and propaganda of Harry Anslinger, Hamilton Wright and all the lying weasel pioneers of drug prohibition.

    If you are so certain of your stance, will you please join us on my radio show to clarify the need for an eternal war on a green plant that has never killed even one human being?

    dean at drugtruth dot net

  7. forkup says:

    Your game is over the public has caught on. You sir are nothing more than a paid shill spewing half truths and lies. Better find another job.

  8. NotYourObot says:

    Mr Sabet, You twist the truth & reality in the finest tradition of prohibitionists. I’d say you’re a professional apologist who’s sad job is trying to justify, “The need for prohibition”. In the simplest terms possible I’ll try to reach you by say, “government intrusion into private matters concerning use of the non-lethal cannabis plant is Unconstitutional”. The CSA was claimed to made cannabis as a class 1 drug only until it’s proper classification could be determined. Cannabis has never killed a user, & is less addictive than caffeine (NIDA). If alcohol, or tobacco were introduced today they’d be class 1 drugs, & rightly so. They kill, & are highly addictive. Yet, as much as i detest how alcohol use has killed so many loved ones, it’s prohibition is far more destructive to society. Cannabis prohibition is responsible for the murders of many people, while cannabis itself is relatively harmless. In fact, much research shows cannabis may cure many forms of cancer. Mr Sabet, please stop aiding & abetting agents who promote the evils of cannabis prohibition.

  9. NotYourObot says:

    OMG! I just realized the connection Mr Sabet has with this news agency. It’s owned by Hearst Newspapers. Please, Goggle search the words, Hearst, Marihuana Tax Stamp Act, Mellon, Anslinger. You’ll be shocked how the historically well known & highly regarded cannabis plant was renamed the alien & scary drug, “Marihuana”, & how it would make you into an Axe murderer who’d cut off your own brother’s arm. Later, cannabis criminalization was justified as it’s use was counter productive military operations due to it’s tendency to make people passive. You prohibitionists have tried it every way. Nut, you can’t have it both ways. Cannabis is labeled a Class 1 drug with no safe use even under a doctors care, yet the US Govt took out patents on cannabinoids for their medicinal properties. Please, get out of our lives, & take your Alphabet Agencies with you. Thank you very much.

  10. Bo says:


    What does he mean by ‘lose control over their own self and in the process inflict harms onto others’?

    Does he mean that the person who’s ‘addicted’ to pot is going to run out into the streets and rob people in order to get their ‘fix’? Because I’ve known many people who smoke pot regularly. I’m assuming that because they smoke it regularly, they are ‘addicted’. But I’ve never heard of it making anyone violent or ‘hooking’ someone so badly that they have to go out and harm others to get it.

    Seems to me that alcohol is FAR more likely to ‘lose control over their own self and in the process inflict harm onto others’. It happens every day, in every city, in every state with alcohol. But not with marijuana.

    Also, if no one is going to prison for mere possession, why is mere possession illegal? Again, compare it to alcohol. In many states, it’s illegal to make and sell your own alcohol. But possessing it is just fine. There is no double-standard with alcohol like their is with pot. With pot, you’re basically telling Americans “oh, we don’t actually send anyone to prison for this, but we certainly can if we want to”.

    And lastly, the numbers the author mentions is undoubtedly FEDERAL numbers. And in that case, what he’s saying is true. There are VERY FEW federal cases where people are sent to prison for mere possession. That’s because the vast majority of the time when someone is arrested for possession, it’s LOCAL law enforcement that’s doing the incarcerating. When looking at the same numbers in local arrests for mere possession, the numbers are staggering. 800,000 people per year are arrested for marijuana related charges! MOST of them for mere possession.

    This politician has an agenda, to push his SAM (smarter approaches to marijuana). He would like to see a day where everyone who’s arrested for marijuana is forced into court-ordered rehab instead of going directly to jail. So instead of saving the taxpayers money, he wants to spend more of it by sending peaceful, non-criminals to rehab. Look into who owns the rehab clinics and drug testing companies, and things start to become very clear. Ex drug czars are among the CEOs of these companies!

    With current policy, law enforcement can just come in and take everything you own if they find some pot in your house. They take it all, give it to the federal government, who, in turn, gives 80% of it back to the local law enforcement. It’s a racket! They know they’ll never make as much money on taxes from the sale of marijuana than they’ll make seizing property, forcing people to pay fines, forcing people to enter rehab, and forcing people to pay for ongoing drug testing.

  11. Servetus says:

    Studies in addictionology invariably point to marijuana having a nocebo effect, the opposite of a placebo effect. With the nocebo effect, a person who believes in the indications of marijuana withdrawal will experience those symptoms as if they were undergoing a real, physical, drug withdrawal. The nocebo effect has been known since the late 1930s, based on pioneering research done on addictions by Alfred Lindesmith.

    The nocebo effect has been getting more attention lately: and

    According to the nocebo effect, all that’s necessary to stop feelings of withdrawal from marijuana is to stop believing it has withdrawal symptoms. What this means is that forced treatments for non-existent marijuana withdrawal symptoms will someday cease. Science is currently on track to put a major dent in the ever-profitable drug treatment industry, which relies heavily on marijuana conviction diversions to drug treatment, and which can be seen fighting tooth-and-nail to get the public to believe marijuana addiction is a real thing.

    Also, Dr. Sabet fails to disclose that the data that correlates marijuana with automobile accidents never confirmed a causal relationship:

  12. Hey Kevin,

    I’m sure it was the fault of these two women that law enforcement conducted a road side body cavity search based on the alleged smell of marijuana violating and eroding their civil liberties.

    Or maybe its the enforcement of the law which has not made us any safer nor achieved that ideological goal that Project SAM and the ONDCP support of attaining a “drug-free America.”

    Maybe the public polls have shifted so significantly because American’s recognize that your rhetoric and double speak has contributed too so many of the economic and social justice issues in America.

    You may have a public policy background but you have no practical application from your ivory tower. Having been a career police officer I saw the first hand results of enforcing our drug laws on our communities. Quite frankly the law helped perpetuate the significant corruption and abuses that are widespread in the criminal justice system.

    Both political philosophers and our founding fathers understood the nexus between the morality of the “rule of law” and the philosophical intent and purpose of the law. Americans today must make a choice between injustice, and tyranny that is created by valuing security over our core values, and demand that our government return to upholding the principles of what so many Americans have lived and died for.

    But you leave out Mill’s true meaning when he states states that “the argument that a certain law or public opinion might be for an individual’s own good or welfare does not suffice to justify that law or public opinion as a coercive force; coercion by the many toward the individual is only acceptable when an individual poses a threat to others. It is fine to argue with a person about his actions, but not to compel him. Mill writes, “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

  13. War Vet says:

    You have robbed me of my civil liberties in the name of keeping drugs illegal for the terrorists to be financed so they could attack my nation and then attack me in Iraq. You advocated for keeping drugs illegal so my friends could be killed fighting drug money in Afghanistan or Iraq. When drugs are kept illegal, non-drug users get killed in places like Baghdad or Mexico . . . Mali or Afghanistan . . . New York City or Boston. You helped protect and promote illegal drug money and terrorism by not advocating drugs to be sold legally. You cannot get the people to stop using drugs when the law is hypocritical. If drugs are illegal, then everything possibly dangerous should be illegal and you should promote and boycott everything that has a potential harm to society and individual, i.e.: driving, climbing ladders, working with saws, hiking around rocks, building construction, welding, oil rigs, unhealthy foods/snacks, airplanes, sugary drinks etc. If you cannot boycott the above activities (like driving, eating at a buffet, drinking soda or mowing the lawn etc), then you are impure and hypocritical and you are thus a negation of logic and reality. I’d have respect for you if you advocated (and practiced) a ‘War on Driving, McDonalds, using power tools, using non-biodegradable plastics etc’. You really should advocate legalizing marijuana for non-marijuana users who will never try it . . . legalizing drugs for the people who will never use drugs regardless. You owe me that. It is the drug users fault as to why they use drugs, but it is your fault that they use illegal drugs. Should not America have implemented the War on Drugs at around 10,000 B.C. or earlier (regardless if we were not a nation)? You cannot stop a slightly popular group of substances that have thousands of years of being bought and used legally and even responsibly (are you going to blame the fall of Rome on a flower and a plant . . . did King George outlaw alcohol, opium and hash because he lost his lands in America?).

  14. Hey Kevin, you and I could appear on Mr. Becker’s show together. How about it? What a great show that would be. Would that be OK with you Mr. Becker?

  15. Diane Goldstein says:

    Here is the link to the Texas Public Safety debacle surrounding the road-side body cavity search!

  16. Junk E-Life says:

    It is apparent that Kevin Sabet has no idea what the words “civil rights” mean. He seems to think that civil rights mean being free from possible negative effects from consuming certain drugs. There is to right to be free from self-harm.

    How about right to not be locked in a cage for enjoying substances on the government’s naughty list? The right to be free from harassment from drug courts and rehabs (profiteers) who do not approve of my alternative lifestyle? The right to privacy as in unreasonable search and seizure? The right to practice my religion, whose sacrament is not wine but another natural intoxicant? The right to self-medicate without being beholden to big pharma?

    Civil liberties erode when drug use is prohibited. While it is true that I use illicit drugs and thus am a criminal, I don’t commit any victim crimes (theft, assault, ect). In my life I’ve been beaten by police, arrested and locked in a cage twice, been kicked out of college (loss of financial aid), and live every day knowing that I may be locked in a cell simply for the substances I use. I don’t do the government dope, I do dope dope. And for that I am treated like a second class citizen. But I guess the right to be free from police brutality, being locked in a cell and ostracized from the community is less important than the supposed negative effects of certain drugs. That is after all the argument Sabet is making, since he didn’t deem it worthy to mention a single example of how drug prohibition erodes civil liberties.

  17. Bob Broadfoot says:

    It’s very peculiar that you cite JS Mill to argue against marijuana legalization. In On Liberty, Mill explicitly argued that opium prohibition was an objectionable infringement of liberty.

    In Mill’s own words:

    “there are questions relating to
    interference with trade, which are essentially questions of liberty;
    impossible or difficult to obtain a particular commodity. These
    interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the liberty of
    the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.”

    It seems pretty clear that the Mill argument in the above article is bogus.