The serious misguidance of drug prohibition

I recently watched the video below and felt compelled to respond to it.  The violent statist policies proposed in the video were so far from being viable and moral solutions to the various problems, I really wanted to take a moment to write about it.

Here is my reply to Matt Walsh:

I don't think it is fair to compare adults to your children. I don't like drugs. I don't use any drugs. People who are on drugs and commit crimes or recklessly hurt people should be punished, yes. However, punishing someone "for their own good" like a child...this is not moral. It is utilitarian. It is akin to requiring seatbelts and making it OK to stop someone and take away their freedom because of that. People are entitled to hurt themselves. It is part of natural selection. Nature is tough, but it is hubris to interfere with it.

These people need love and compassion, in the form of competing charitable organizations. They do not need cages and violence. You are not their daddy, and neither is the government.

Building more prisons...that could backfire badly. Those prisons could be used for the wrong people. Solitary confinement is cruel torture, actually.

Drug use has increased despite being illegal everywhere, and the war on drugs. It is a societal problem, not an access to substance problem. People do have a right to ingest substances. They are medicating and need private charitable help. Outlawing drugs has resulted in no-knock raids, murdering people on the roadside, drug-sniffing dogs used against citizens, the planting of evidence on innocent people, and countless other horrors.

You are soooo wrong with this post. I hope you see that. Yes, it failed in Oregon, but other factors are involved. "Public" land that allows homeless to sleep, free handouts that allow people to acquire free necessities with zero basic responsibility attached, soft-on-crime non-punishing of actual crimes with victims, free needles and drugs, secularism and the belief in nothing except the state.

Your solution is more state and more prisons? You're lost on this issue. You are simplifying complex social problems and turning to utilitarianism. While Oregon failed due to many other policies, so has the rest of the country failed with prohibition as well. Organized crime and gang culture...you can thank prohibition.

I'd rather see drugs available in stores, even hard drugs, and stiff penalties for safety violations such as purity, potency, dosage, etc. Close the border and ensure drugs are made and tested here. Have charities compete to provide effective care to people who need it - helping them get on their feet through responsibility - to the best of their ability. Hold bad charities and bad actors accountable - as they are the enablers enabling the addicts. How do we hold these bad actors accountable? Boycott. Boycott their businesses, their investments, their organizations. Buycott the good ones. The free market can provide the solution to virtually every problem.

Government is a gun - violence - and is only needed in the apprehension of criminals who have violated the rights of others. If you want to enjoy a city without homeless, you would need to build a private city. You could also embrace the free market which would help through the competition of private charity these people in the best way possible.

You are seeking solutions from the state. The same state that created the mafia through prohibition, deep state partnered with same mafia, uses the deep state to import and distribute the drugs, gives people free everything so they can be on drugs, kills innocent people, jails nonviolent harmless people, searches and seizes innocent people and their money, raids homes, outlaws guns thanks to the mafia, stops and frisks thanks to gangs thanks to the profitable illicit drug trade and culture. I could continue. The solutions do not lie with the state. They do not lie with mere criminalization.