I Wanna Be...D.E.A.!

Is there an anarchistic case for keeping drugs illegal? Crispin Sartwell explains:

For one thing, as many have argued, the unenforceable prohibition on drugs brings the law into contempt. When average citizens of your country know they are criminals, they lose respect for law and for the agents of the law.

But contempt for the law is the sure -- indeed really the only -- sign of a free people. People who respect the law simply on the grounds that it is law deserve every nasty little thing that happens to them after that. They ought to spend some time cultivating moral and intellectual autonomy.

This is also a good pair of lines:

If you think we've got a wasteful bureaucracy now, just wait until the American state is the cocaine kingpin. The government can't even deliver hurricane aid, much less heroin to all the Americans who need it.

The whole thing makes me realize how much time I've been spending with Kantians lately.

[via Radley Balko.]