My New Year’s Resolution
If I do it, then it’s my own damned fault.

Now there’s a ban on ephedra. I assume that we can look forward to contraband ephedra being smuggled into the country by herbotraffickers intent on keeping unwitting Americans up all night on their New Year’s resolved crash diets.

I confess: I have taken ephedra. It was many years ago, and I found it a slightly stomach-churning, but potent, alternative to caffeine. You can find its active ingredient at the local pharmacy: it’s useful for colds and asthma, guaranteed to make you jittery and, in enough quantity, keep you awake.

Yes it can be a risk if you have high-blood pressure. That is, if you are an irresponsible idiot who takes medicinal herbs, or medicines in general, without checking such things, called contraindications, first.

I am unsurprised that in this era of no personal responsibility even the relatively benign ephedra would now become an illicit substance…and that a ban would be called for. Tobacco is still legal, alcohol is still legal…and trust me, ephedra is way less dangerous than either of those. But somehow in this new age where what you do to yourself is everyone’s business and never your own responsibility, now ephedra joins the long list of substances a criminal can profit from.

Is it any wonder we have porous borders? When the “liberals” and the “conservatives” join together to take personal responsibility out of the equation, suddenly there are any number of ways to make obscene profits on the poor choices to which mankind (or should I say personkind) is heir to.

In this matter I am a true conservative, a libertarian. If you want to sit in your living room with a machine gun on your lap smoking reefer and sucking down ephedra tea, fine. As long as you harm no one but yourself in the process that is your right, a little thing we like to call freedom.

By slicing and dicing up what can or can’t be done in the privacy of your own home and life we create opportunities for illegality…and profit for criminal enterprises. These enterprises now underwrite the most dangerous and nefarious antidemocratic sectors of our world. They will only be stopped when we determine that the right to ruin your life or health, the right to consume ephedra, or anything else, is your own idiotic fault.

This State paternalism creates bad societal and political side effects. First, it produces the legal fiction that some ephedrahead (or other illicit substance user) ruining his own life and a terrorist ruining yours are equally criminal, which they are not. Second, it is forcing the State to incarcerate millions, wasting billions of dollars.

The price society pays for its lunatic prohibitions (as was discovered during Prohibition), is the financing of organized crime and confusion among the general public as to where the line is between criminal and good citizen. Considering how much of the financing of modern international terrorism comes from so-called “illicit substances,” there has never been a clearer example of the damage caused by this shift from making personal weakness a personal responsibility to making it a matter of law.

Those appalled by this argument say, “what about the victims of drunk drivers? Of families ruined by drugs? What about the children?” I say this: Deal with the crimes that are committed firmly, fairly and severely. The real crimes, like driving when you are under the influence (of anything), or giving such substances to minors.

Let’s be American about this and let the free market determine the price of vice. That would drive it down to the cost of a pack of smokes and a reasonable Chardonnay. Let the market forces work and the criminals will no longer have such a lucrative source of funding for their terrorism…which is what we should really be focusing on here, rather than busting some frat boys who like to get high on weekends.

After all, some of them even clean up their act and go on to become conservative commentators...or President. ¶ 5:58 AM