Amnesia and the War on Drugs

by Myles Kantor

Our guardians in the District of Columbia criminalize the consumption of particular substances.  Endorsement of this policy is commonplace among Democrats and Republicans alike. 

Why is this so?  I’m convinced the sine qua non of supporting the War on Drugs is amnesia. 

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget Reverend Elisha Williams in 1744: “As reason tells us, all are born thus naturally equal, i.e., with an equal right to their persons, so also with an equal right to their preservation…and every man having a property in his own person, the labour of his body and the work of his hands are properly his own, to which no one has right but himself...”

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget James Madison in Federalist No. 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget Thomas Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolution:

…if those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence…

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget Frederick Douglass in 1852: “It is a fundamental truth that every man is the rightful owner of his own body.”

To support the War on Drugs, a congressman has to forget Lysander Spooner in 1875: “Vices Are Not Crimes.”

To support the War on Drugs, in other words, a congressman has to forget America. 

Drug war advocates can claim to support individual liberty and states’ rights, just as one can claim that idolatry and murder are compatible with the Decalogue.  Logic compels critical assessments of these claims.

Hopefully America will be remembered again.

April 25, 2002

Myles Kantor [send him mail] is a columnist for FrontPageMagazine.com and director of the Center for Free Emigration, which agrees with Frederick Douglass that "It is a fundamental truth that every man is the rightful owner of his own body."

Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com

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