Soros and Co. are practically salivating at the opportunity to enforce their version of the social order. I don’t see that their vision differs from the author’s in any respect that I would consider important.

But of all the ridiculous ideas expressed here, perhaps the most absurd is the notion that in order to protect our freedoms the government must “enforce social order”—by preventing people from smoking a plant that makes them inclined to sit around, laugh, and eat junk food. Do I need to point out the irony here? You talk about the left’s dream of a nation of zombies, so drug-addled that they’re unable to resist indoctrination. But what’s the right’s dream? A nation of bright-eyed, enthusiastic drones eager to put the shackles on themselves?

The latter scenario sounds a bit scarier to me. Almost enough to make me want to roll up a doob and take a few tokes of the daemon weed.

Should we condone female genital mutilation in parts of Africa simply because it’s their tradition? Condoning locking people in cages because they choose to put a substance in their body that is not supported by cultural consensus is no different.

Aside from the moral argument, prohibition simply doesn’t work. The War on Drugs is only costlier, more violent, and less practical today than it was 30 years ago.

Your examples of the “disasters” that would ensue following legalization are asinine and based on the idea that every other government intervention is OK. Employers should be able to use any standards they want for screening employees. They should be free to test them for grape lollipop use if they want and bar all grape eaters from employment. It’s their business, their money, and they can use whatever arbitrary (if bad for business) criteria they want.

As for stoners eating up welfare, that’s just silly. Aside from the fact that the majority of marijuana users are perfectly productive people, welfare is nearly as an egregious offense as locking up drug users. Nobody should have money forcibly taken from them to be given to someone else.

In a modern, secular, pluralistic democracy, we ought to take into account all peaceful religious practices, regardless of origin. Many of the world’s religions (including those from small-scale societies) recognize that plants are a gift from the gods, the Tao, or whatever. The use of plants for spiritual practices is *documented* over 7000 years ago, and no doubt goes back much, much further.

As a practicing Taoist, I am offended that anyone would attempt to restrict access to plants. Attempts to justify such a restriction based on an interpretation of the Bible makes equally as much sense as using the Koran to support alcohol prohibition. Sorry, those particular books carry no authority for me.

BTW those of us who propagate classical Chinese medicine are constantly encountering similar attempts to restrict other traditional, healing herbs. In many cases, the justification is “scientific” as opposed to “Christian”. The fact is that scientific method has evolved more than once in human history, and the ancient Taoists had an effective scientific method at least 5000 years ago. Without their empiricism, it would have been impossible to have developed Chinese medicine. The difference between Taoist science and Western science lies mainly in the rules of evidence, which explains why the two methods have slightly different capabilities.

Really we are talking about culture clash here. Christians tend to exclude other religions from consideration, even going so far as to classify them as occult. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that is an ignorant attitude, and has absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism.

When considering which “other drugs” we should legalize, let’s remember that what we often call “drugs” are really very useful, culturally relevant plants with a beneficial medicinal and social use which goes back into pre-history, well before the Bible and even alcohol.

Coca leaf, opium poppy, cannabis flowers and peyote cactus all have a long history of beneficial social and medicinal use. The idea that we need to ban these natural plant medicines is absurd and a violation of the liberty of the individual.

No plant should ever be illegal! Anyone who believes that a human being should not be allowed to grow any plant they desire in their own garden is absolutely not a libertarian in any sense of the word.