Drugs

Legalizing cannabis is one of my short-term priorities. But in the long term, I'd like all drugs to be legal, including addictive drugs such as fentanyl.

That's not to say that I promote drug use. Quite the contrary: I don't use any recreational drugs myself, and I encourage everyone to be very careful with narcotics, definitely avoiding those that are dangerously addictive. But making drugs illegal is the wrong approach, both because it goes against the Libertarian principle of self-ownership, and because historically prohibition has been quite ineffective.

Keeping drugs legal will reduce the perception among impressionable teens that it's cool to be rebellious and try them. But parents can reinforce the message by saying something like this: Drugs are legal here, but no matter what your friends might say, taking fentanyl is a very bad idea. There's absolutely nothing cool about dying of an opioid overdose.

Still, the reality is that some people will become addicted to drugs. The free market could offer a variety of harm reduction services like these:

• Opiod agonist therapy, which helps people manage their withdrawal from fentanyl addiction, in some cases by replacing it with a less dangerous opioid such as methadone.
• Supervised injection sites, which allow people to receive the drug they crave, but in a controlled environment that keeps them safe, specifically avoiding an overdose.
• Needle exchange, which simply provides people with clean hypodermic needles so that when they take drugs, the risk of blood-borne diseases is minimized.