Jim Davies for President

Drugs

Drugs come in two flavors:

• Legal ones, that government makes horribly expensive; and
• Illegal onces, that government makes even more horribly expensive

Legal Drugs

Some people don't touch them, preferring natural, traditional remedies; fine. But I would certainly not wish to deny modern pharmaceuticals to those who want to try them.

Yet that's exactly what government now does; for many years, and sometimes for ever. The FDA requires immensely expensive research and testing before it will certify a drug as "safe", and by that time its capital development costs have priced it out of range of most people - hence the current screeching for taxpayers to be forced to provide them "free" or at least with subsidies. There will be no tax available, so that won't happen.

Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died while waiting, endlessly, for promising new drugs to be allowed on the market. The FDA is well motivated to prevent a single death from taking a new drug, but those who die waiting for it never even appear in the statistics. Death by government!

Instead, the FDA and its murderous delays will be abolished; again, no tax will be available to pay those bureaucrats' salaries and I'll fire them anyway.

Will there therefore be greater risk? Yes, perhaps! It's your life; you choose! With freedom comes responsibility. But the increased risk will be very small. Pharmaceutical manufacturers covet the good reputation that comes from saving lives, not the bad one that comes from ending them. And free-market courts would exist to order damages in any case of clear negligence.

Illegal Drugs

Recreational use of drugs now illegal has remained steady at about 8% of the population for over 100 years; the government's much-hyped "war on drugs" has been a total and expensive failure. Under my Presidency, it will end.

Consistent with the Libertarian Principle, every person is his or her self-owner and so has the absolute right to ingest anything at all into his or her own body. That right will no longer be violated.

I will achieve it, once again, by zeroizing the tax that pays the salaries of the drugbusters, and by firing them.

The result will be that a few extra people will kill themselves by overdose, and that will be their right - however foolishly exercised. The number will be small because, as noted, despite steadily increasing government savagery in enforcing restrictions, usage has been unaffected at about 8% of the population; when the restrictions are removed, there is therefore no rationale for supposing that it will signifcantly increase and if someone was going to overdose, he'd probably have done it anyway under the present régime.

The other results will be enormously beneficial. Some wish to ease pain (for example, that of a terminal illness) by smoking marijuana. Under President Davies, they will be entirely free to do so. Some just want to relax with cocaine instead of Bourbon; they too will have the freedom. There will be a net increase in the enjoyment of life and the terror of violent home invasions by drugbusters will appear only in movies about a dark and ugly phase in American history. Prohibition, at last, will be over and so will the street crime it spawns.

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