Steve Kubby 4 POTUS

Steve Kubby is a Libertarian Party presidential candidate. The following is excerpted from his 2008 campaign site.

This is no more about drugs than the Boston Tea Party was about tea. It's about freedom:

Freedom to look after your own health without a bureaucrat snooping around in your medicine cabinet.

Freedom to choose the substances that you're going to eat, drink, smoke or otherwise ingest without having to fear that midnight knock at the door and the shout of "police!"

And, yes, freedom to "get high" without risking arrest and imprisonment.

You may not use drugs. As a matter of fact, I don't care whether or not you use drugs. It's still not about drugs, it's about freedom. Your freedom, whether you use drugs or not.

If you don't think the drug war limits your freedom, it's time to think again.

You may not use drugs, but you shouldn't have to urinate into a cup to prove to the government that you don't ... and neither should your son or daughter.

You may not use drugs, but hundreds have Americans have learned — sometimes at the cost of their very lives — that that doesn't matter when the police break down the wrong door because an informant lied or a typist got the address wrong on the warrant.

You may not use drugs, but your government still spends tens of billions of dollars of your money every year unsuccessfully trying to prevent everyone else from using them.

More than 800,000 Americans were arrested last year for possession of marijuana. Our prisons are filled with individuals convicted of non-violent "drug-related offenses." America, land of the free, now imprisons more of its own people than any other nation on earth. In many American cities, "driving while black" might as well be a crime, because it's nearly certain to get you pulled over so that your car can be searched for drugs. Many of our neighborhoods are free-fire zones where gangs of crooks battle for dominance in a black market that would not exist if anyone could stop by their local drug store and pick up their drug of choice for use in the privacy of their home.

Everywhere you turn, the war on drugs pervades our social fabric. Everywhere, that is, except the one place you'd expect to find it: The Constitution. Go ahead, look. Try to find any authority in the Constitution for this kind of perpetual nationwide dragnet. You can't find it, because it's not there.

If you read the Constitution, you'll see that our politicians realized they had to amend it in order to prohibit alcohol. They did — and they repealed that prohibition after a 15-year national nightmare that included a nationwide rise of organized crime, street violence and ... drinking! Before alcohol Prohibition, less than one in five Americans consumed alcohol. By the end of it, one in three Americans were boozing it up.

Our politicians forgot the lessons of alcohol Prohibition almost immediately as they moved to crack down on other drugs. They also forgot that they needed a constitutional amendment to make that crackdown legal.

We could argue all day long about the virtues and vices of drug use, and you might be surprised at some of the facts that your government doesn't want you to know ... but it really isn't about virtue or vice. It's about the destructive effects — far more destructive than drug use itself — that the drug war has on our society. It's about the wise limits that our forefathers put on the power of government and which are now being ignored. And it's about your freedom to live as you see fit, so long as you refrain from aggression against others.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our own Libertarianz spokesman on drugs is a man of few words.

All adults, as the legitimate owners of their own lives and bodies, have the right to ingest whatever substances they please, on the condition they do not violate the rights of others and they take responsibility for their actions.

Libertarianz will repeal laws prohibiting drug use.

All laws against victimless "crimes" involving consenting adults will be repealed. All people currently incarcerated for victimless "crimes" will be immediately released.