https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/04/laurence-m-vance/gop-prevaricators/

The Drug War Litmus Test
By Laurence M. Vance
April 7, 2015

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The libertarian view on the drug war is simple and consistent: Since it is not the business of government at any level to prohibit, regulate, restrict, license, criminalize, limit, or otherwise control what someone wants to smoke, snort, sniff, inject, or swallow, then there should be no laws whatsoever regarding the buying, selling, possessing, trafficking, using, growing, cultivating, processing, or manufacturing of any drug for any reason.

Therefore, on both the federal and the state level, all drugs should be legalized, all drug laws and regulations should be repealed, all DEAs should be eliminated, all incarcerated drug offenders should be pardoned and released from jail or prison, and every facet of the drug war should be ended. And because the drug war is such a great injustice, this should all be done immediately.

The drug war is a great libertarian litmus test. No one who supports government at any level having any kind of a war on drugs is even remotely a libertarian. It doesn’t matter what else he believes about foreign policy, the welfare state, the warfare state, or the surveillance state. No one can “lean libertarian” and support such a gross violation of individual liberty, personal freedom, property rights, a free market, and a free society as the war on drugs.

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Of course, the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs” is an easy one.

Shut down the DEA and the FDA. Clear out the prisons of non-violent drug offenders. 

But moving on from that, I’d propose some other “litmus tests”.

(1) The “Crony Capitalist” test to rule out: subsidies, price supports, parity payments, price floors, and any other form of translation of privilege into “campaign contributions”.

(2) The “Welfare” test to rule out: Gooferment handouts of any type that trap people into a cycle of poverty and despair. 

(3) The “Warfare” test to rule out: Gooferment propping up it’s military – industrial complex by failing to MYOB overseas. (Bring all the girls and boys home NOW!)

(4) The “gun” test to rule out opponents of Constitution Carry. Roll back the thousands of laws that only the lawful gun owner obeys anyway. 

This will be my rating system for the next Presidential election — if there is one!

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