How the Drug War Killed Liberty

 By Matthew Hayward

10/25/2025

When the State Declares War on Behavior

Earlier this month, President Trump ordered United States military strikes off the coast of Venezuela, killing alleged “narcoterrorists.” He later boasted, “We’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.” Those words should chill every American who believes in liberty.

Fifty years after Nixon declared his war on drugs, it has evolved from domestic raids to international executions, all under the same failed philosophy that government violence can cure human vice.

When the state declares war on human behavior, it always loses and takes the people down with it. Every prison cell, every overdose, every cartel bullet is a monument to the arrogance of government trying to legislate morality.

        Back in 1988, Ron Paul said it best on The Morton Downey Jr. Show:

“You can’t legislate morality. You can’t force people to be better by passing laws. If you want to solve moral and social problems, you have to change hearts, not make more criminals.”

        Moments later, he expanded on the true alternative:

“What we give up on is a tyrannical approach to solving a social and medical problem. … We endorse the idea of voluntarism, self responsibility, family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It’s a preposterous notion, it never worked, it never will.”
— Ron Paul, The Morton Downey Jr. Show, 1988 (source)

        That warning aged perfectly. The War on Drugs proves it every single day.

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The Immorality of America’s Drug War

The War on Drugs is not moral. It is coercion disguised as protection. The government claims to safeguard citizens yet punishes peaceful behavior. Criminalizing what adults ingest violates the core principle of self ownership, the foundation of liberty.

According to the Cato Institute, drug prohibition “replaces personal responsibility with criminal sanction and erodes respect for law.”¹ When the state outlaws choice, it breeds dependence, not virtue.

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Freedom Means Self-Ownership, Not State Permission

If individuals own their bodies, they own the right to decide what goes into them. Yet the state approves nicotine and alcohol, two of the most lethal substances on earth, while jailing people for a plant. The inconsistency exposes that this is not about safety but control.

The National Bureau of Economic Research found no measurable decline in drug use from criminal penalties but a strong correlation between prohibition and incarceration rates.² Government did not stop behavior; it just changed who got arrested.

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A States’ Rights Issue, Not a Federal Crusade

Nothing in the Constitution authorizes Washington to wage moral wars. Under the Tenth Amendment, criminal law and public health fall under state authority. The Brookings Institution notes that drug enforcement became federal only after the political expansion of the Commerce Clause, “untethered from original constitutional design.”³

When the federal government took control, experimentation ended. States like Colorado and nations like Portugal proved that decriminalization reduces overdose deaths and frees police to fight real crime.⁴

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Prohibition Creates the Violence

When voluntary exchange becomes illegal, force replaces contract.
When someone Iknew was robbed of $100,000 in marijuana. Because his business was illegal, he could not call the police. He instead settled it with guns instead of lawyers.

That is what prohibition does. It forces citizens into violent systems. The RAND Corporation found that 40 to 50 percent of drug trade violence stems from black market enforcement, not use.⁵

Street purity is unknown, disputes are handled with bullets, and deaths follow scarcity, not the drugs, but the laws.

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The War That Lost Itself

After fifty years and over a trillion dollars spent, the United States still leads the developed world in overdose deaths.⁶ Cocaine and heroin are purer, cheaper, and more available than ever.

Trump’s latest “anti-drug” strikes prove the lesson we refuse to learn. Every administration, left or right, ends up using the same hammer of coercion. The target changes, inner cities, Mexico, now Venezuela, but the result never does: more death, more bureaucracy, and less freedom. The War on Drugs didn’t end. It went global.

The American Journal of Public Health concluded that “prohibition has failed to achieve its goals while exacerbating the very harms it sought to prevent.”⁷
We did not eliminate the problem; we industrialized it.

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Answering the Myths of Legalization

“Legalization will overwhelm emergency responders.”
Wrong cause, wrong effect. Most overdose calls result from unregulated street drugs, not regulated substances. Portugal’s overdose deaths dropped by over 80 percent after decriminalization.⁸ Regulation brings purity, dosage, and accountability, not chaos.

Bottom line: Prohibition fills prisons. Regulation funds recovery.

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“Legalization increases theft, assault, and homelessness.”
No, criminalization creates desperation. Legal access lowers prices and removes black market exploitation. A Journal of Economic Perspectives study found that crime declined in United States counties after cannabis legalization because illicit markets collapsed.⁹

Bottom line: When drugs stop being contraband, they stop being currency.

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“Seattle and Portland prove it does not work.”
False equivalence. They stopped prosecuting but never legalized or regulated.
Decriminalization without structure leaves users buying from the same dealers.
Legalization means controlled production, safety testing, taxation, and treatment funding.

Bottom line: Seattle decriminalized chaos. Legalization organizes it.

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“We will see addicts everywhere.”
You already do, they are just hiding. Legalization brings addiction into the open where treatment replaces punishment. You cannot save people you are hunting.

Bottom line: Criminalization hides the problem. Legalization confronts it.

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The Moral Bottom Line

Liberty means tolerating the choices we dislike. The government’s role is to prevent force and fraud, not to police sin.

A free citizen owns his body. If the state can dictate what enters your bloodstream, freedom is already an illusion.

Prohibition is not protection; it is possession.

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Closing

So when a president stands at a podium and cheers the killing of “drug dealers,” he isn’t fighting crime, he’s repeating the oldest moral failure in American politics: believing that government bullets can enforce personal virtue.

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Sources

1. Miron, Jeffrey A. “Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs.” Cato Institute, 2017.

2. Owens, Emily et al. “The War on Drugs and Incarceration.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018.

3. Hudak, John. “Marijuana Federalism.” Brookings Institution, 2020.

4. Hughes, Caitlin and Stevens, Alex. “What Can We Learn From the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?” British Journal of Criminology, 2010.

5. Kilmer, Beau et al. “Reducing Drug Trafficking Violence in Mexico.” RAND Corporation, 2010.

6. United States Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy, 2023.

7. Reuter, Peter and Pollack, Harold. “How to End the War on Drugs.” American Journal of Public Health, 2012.

8. Greenwald, Glenn. “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal.” Cato Institute, 2009.

9. Dragone, Davide et al. “Crime and the Legalization of Marijuana.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2019.