Drug War - ILANA MERCER

“Cannabis: The reason it’s not in the Constitution is because letting states and individuals decide is in the Constitution. That thing of beauty is called the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”—ILANA MERCER, “Whodunit? Who Meddled With Out Democracy?” February 8, 2018, The Unz Review.
“Like no other, drug legalization is a proxy black issue, worthy of the endorsement of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.”—ILANA (August 7, 2015)
“By all means, argue against laws that prohibit victimless ‘crimes’ on the ground that these disproportionally ensnare blacks. But do not err in accusing all cops of targeting blacks, when the former are entrusted with enforcing the law, and the latter violate the law in disproportion to their numbers in the general population.”—ILANA (August 29, 2014)
“From dwarf tossing to drug taking: The legislator has no place in voluntary exchanges between consenting adults, as dodgy and as dangerous as these might be.”—ILANA (November 11, 2011)
“There will always be meddling third parties who’ll seek to circumscribe and circumvent a voluntary activity not to their liking. Some feminists want to stop pornographers from making or consuming the stuff. Other busybodies would like to coerce adults to quit gambling. These third parties have no place in transactions between consenting adults, unless these trades infringe directly—not foreseeably—on their property or person. Ultimately any transaction that was at the time of occurrence voluntary, and hence beneficial to the participants, can, retrospectively, be denounced as harmful and regrettable.”—ILANA (November 11, 2011)
“If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he was never free in the first place.”—ILANA (March 6, 2009)
“Incarcerating people for their [drug] consumption choices has the consistency of arresting a survivor of suicide for attempted murder.”—ILANA (May 8, 2002)
“If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”—ILANA (May 8, 2002)
“Policy wonks have arbitrarily decided that heroin consumption is potentially worse for individual and society than compulsive eating, bunjie jumping, gambling, alcohol consumption, fatty foods, or tobacco.—ILANA (December 28, 2001)
“The U.S. has been able to make prohibition piety an integral part of its foreign policy.”—ILANA (December 28, 2001)
“The brutal punishing of adults for the substances they ought to be able to ingest, inhale, or inject at their own peril is based on a parochial prior restraint argument.”—ILANA (December 28, 2001)

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