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On 2016-05-08 18:35, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAO+xQEZA4fELz32bQNOZg=0VHMhV23DD5Jjaiz_cEJn9-E+cZw@mail.gmail.com"
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans
ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">I
want to end and utterly oppose the government telling anyone
what they can and cannot put in their own body. That is the
core principle, not whether e-cigs are bad or as bad as
tobacco or not.</span><br
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">
<br
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<span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">-
samantha</span></div>
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ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-size:12.8px">I used
to agree with that. Heroin, cocaine, crack, anything. Make
it all legal. Take the high profits out it. Then I find
things like one puff of a cigarette changes your brain
permanently. I kicked alcohol and tobacco cold turkey, but
other members of my family have found it much harder to do.
Most people are not good at moderating their intake of
things that make them very happy - I wasn't either. But I
was an excellent quitter.</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Just
too many people would ruin their lives and put great burdens
of society by legal everything. I have worked in several
mental hospitals and can assert that the craziest people I
saw were those on amphetamines - very psychotic. (Heroin,
by contrast is a far easier habit to kick.)</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-size:12.8px">I am a
libertarian but there just has be lines drawn.</span><br>
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<br>
This is bound to become an endless thread on this list. I'll get in
early so I can go on holiday :-)<br>
<br>
My own libertarian position is what I call "Bayesian
libertarianism": for any question I start out with the prior
assumption that letting people do what they want as long as they do
not harm each other and that centralized government interventions
often are unjust, costly or go wrong, and then see if there is
evidence that forces me to refine my views into posterior views. <br>
<br>
So the basic approach I would take is to ask, "In what ways would
allowing people take whatever they want go wrong, and what is the
least imposition needed to produce a decent outcome?"<br>
<br>
The problem with seriously addictive drugs is that they *in some
people, in some situations* overrule their ability to control their
behavior. This ability is the basis for most of the rights
frameworks libertarianism use to build their proposals. Hence some
form of harm reduction is needed. However, the evidence that
government drug policy banning drugs is an effective form of harm
reduction is clearly not there: countries with harsh policies do not
seem to reduce drug use significantly, and there are clear costs and
harms induced by the policies. <br>
<br>
As I argue in<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/strange-brew-opiates-from-yeast/">http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/strange-brew-opiates-from-yeast/</a><br>
there are anyway significant harms from use of opioids, alcohol and
other hard drugs. But the evidence seems to point at
decriminalisation with improved addiction treatment as being both
more effective and cheaper. So the real libertarian issue might be
what forms improved addiction treatment should take. Maybe this is a
legitimate function of a minarchist state, or maybe there are
smarter ways of producing it privately?<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
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