Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market

"My aim" states Szasz, "is to mount a critique of our current drug laws and social policies, based on the fundamental premise that a limited government, epitomized by the U.S., lacks the political legitimacy to deprive competent adults of the right to ingest, inhale, or inject whatever substance they want. . . In summary my argument is that the constraints on the power of the federal government, laid down in the Constitution, have been eroded by a monopolistic medical profession administering a system of prescription laws that, in effect, have removed most of the drugs people want from the free market. Hence, it is futile to debate whether the War on Drugs should be escalated or de-escalated, without first coming to grips with the popular and political mindset concerning the trade in drugs generated by nearly a century of drug prohibitions."