A friend of mine who has long argued that all drugs should be legalized said to me in a recent email: “We put people in cages for doing things to themselves.” Yes, we do, and it’s crazy. No user of alcohol is put into a cage (unless they’re guilty of manslaughter because of drunk driving, to cite one obvious exception), so why should any user of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin be put in a cage simply for using these drugs? Even President Biden said recently: “No one should go to jail for the use of a drug.” However, he believes that drugs users should be subject to “rehabilitation.” I have a better solution: How about leaving these people alone until they seek out counseling (“rehabilitation”)? This idea that all users of cocaine or heroin or marijuana are in need of “rehabilitation” is nonsense. It’s also insulting.

You wrote that there should be “zero endorsement of drug abuse.” I’m not sure why you felt the need to state that, as I’m not aware of anyone who endorses drug abuse. Alcohol is a drug and everyone agrees that it should not be misused (“abused”). As for drug use (not misuse), we should leave people alone. We leave responsible alcohol users alone, which means society can also learn to leave responsible users of other drugs alone.

I’m not in favor of banning drugs. We should have, at the very least, injection centers for heroin users. Maybe heroin could even be given away for free but it has to be injected on site (such a policy might seem a bit condescending, but I would endorse it). As for cocaine, any nonincarcerated adult should be able to go to a drugstore and purchase a vial of cocaine without a prescription. You may point out the perennial problems of misuse and that people might kill themselves from such misuse just as many people kill themselves by misusing alcohol. I understand that concern, but I see it as a secondary concern. The primary concern is to rid the world of the murderous illegal drug trade. This means ending the drug war in toto and thereby forcing all drug cartels to go out of business (after all, I’m not aware of any thriving illegal alcohol cartel).