I'll challenge anybody in the Esmay household to any debate in which underwear references are not allowed. Outlawing underwear references is like kryptonite to an Esmay.

Heh.

Actually, your rebuttal doesn't seem to be there, Dean - I got a 404 eror on the link to your response.

I'm going to have to say, just from reading the Libertarian's post, that the libertarian is correct.

Keep in mind: I'm coming to the "War on Drugs" question from the perspective of someone who once fought on the Other Side - between the ages of 17 and 19, and then later until I became clean in 1983, I was a professional dealer. I made roughly $75 grand in my 18th year selling weed, speed, and opium. It's a qualified opinion, and not based solely on Libertarian principles.

Prohibition of drugs does absolutely nothing to stop the drug trade at either the street level or at the manufacturing level. I've seen both ends: including the exporters end in Columbia and Mexico. What prohibition does do is 1) drive the drug trade exclusively into the hands of the underworld, and 2) in conjunction with confiscatory property laws, it creates a symbiotic law enforcement industry that's designed solely to self perpetuate. 3) It makes the income and power consolidation potential for both underworld *and* LE agencies extremely lucrative.

No lucrative underground market for drugs would have made for very little incentive for people like me to get into the trade way back when. The risks invloved did nothing to drive me out of it - they only made me extremely careful and gave me a rather ruthless sense of pragmatism. Looks to me, based on the available evidence, that that's still the case today for people attracted to the trade, twenty years later. Risks are higher, but the money's gotten bigger also.

A solution to the problem would be nice - but the War on Drugs isn't it. What we're doing isn't working.

The broken link is a problem with BlogSpot. I've updated the link, it should work now.

If you read my rebuttal, you'll see that most of your arguments are sort of moot as far as I'm concerned. Your position that the War On Drugs is counterproductive may well be correct. It doesn't matter; victimless crimes are still not victimless, and the people have a right to regulate these vices if they want to, whether you or I think said regulations are wise or not.

As it happens, I think our War On Drugs is quite counterproductive and that we need fundamental reform on all levels.

The problem is that, apparently, some people can't separate their desire to reform the system from the arguments. This isn't an argument about whether to reform the system. It's about whether these "victimless" crimes are truly victimless--clearly, they are not--and whether drugs, prostitution, and gambling are "rights" in the same sense as free speech or the right to vote--which clearly they are not.