It's April 20th, AKA 4/20, AKA Pot Day. Washington's marijuana dispensaries have been running numerous commercials promoting 4/20 sales and celebrations on the radio.

Now, I don't consume marijuana, and I don't particularly approve of recreational marijuana use, but I live by this craaaaaazy idea that I don't own other people. If they don't trespass against the life, liberty, or property of others, what they do is none of my business.

However, police who enforce arbitrary laws against potheads necessarily do violate the natural rights of others. I'm reasonably sure Idaho cops are eager to catch lots of people who dare take a "legal" good across an imaginary line where it is suddenly "illegal," rendering them suddenly "criminals." It 's even "criminal" to transport Marijuana from Washington into Oregon even though recreational marijuana is "legal" in both states, because "federal law" declares transporting marijuana across state likes is "illegal." As they say in Minnesota, Uffda.

Sorry about all the quotation marks in the preceding paragraph, but legality does not define morality. Vices are not crimes. Government boundaries are not analogous to property lines. I am hardly the first person to observe this. So, to take a break from posting sections of Lysander Spooner's letter to Grover Cleveland, I'll instead post some excerpts from his essay Vices Are Not Crimes. He was writing in response to alcohol prohibition programs that were proposed in the late 18th century, but the same arguments apply to the modern War on Drugs today, so I highly recommend it.

Click here for the full essay along with an in-depth introduction.

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Vices Are Not Crimes

by Lysander Spooner

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.

Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.

It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.

Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property — no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

[. . . ]

It is a natural impossibility that a government should have a right to punish men for their vices; because it is impossible that a government should have any rights except such as the individuals composing it had previously had as individuals. They could not delegate to a government any rights they did not themselves possess. They could not contribute to the government any rights, except such as they themselves possessed as individuals.

Now, nobody but a fool or an impostor pretends that he, as an individual, has a right to punish other men for their vices. But anybody and everybody have a natural right, as individuals, to punish other men for their crimes; for everybody has a natural right, not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defense of everybody else whose person or property is invaded.

The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defense of everyone else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on the earth. And government has no rightful existence, except in so far as it embodies, and is limited by, this natural right of individuals.

But the idea that each man has a natural right to decide what are virtues, and what are vices — that is, what contributes to that neighbor's happiness, and what do not — and to punish him for all that do not contribute to it, is what no one ever had the impudence or folly to assert. It is only those who claim that government has some rightful power,which no individual or individuals ever did, or could, delegate to it, that claim that government has any rightful power to punish vices.

[. . . ]

Finally, on this point of individual liberty, every man must necessarily judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive and necessary to, and what is destructive of, his own well-being; because, if he omits to perform this task for himself, nobody else can perform it for him. And nobody else will even attempt to perform it for him, except in very few cases. Popes, and priests, and kings will assume to perform it for him, in certain cases, if permitted to do so. But they will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can minister to their own vices and crimes by doing it. They will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can make him their fool and their slave.

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