You're right that it's not absurd, and that scares me. By the same logic it wouldn't be absurd to limit people's right to go ice climbing or paragliding. Down a different path of rationalizing, it would also make sense to limit low-income earners or unhealthy people's entry into the state.

These are the downsides to welfare programs that people should really be focusing on. It's not the cost in terms of dollars, but in freedoms that it calls into question.

Currently driving functions as a kind of risk tolerance anchor. "Sure, it's dangerous, but no more so than commuting."

If the campaign to eliminate driving from most people's lives is successful (whether through autonomous vehicles or public transit), I expect activists will move on to the next most dangerous activity. Something will always be the leading cause of preventable injury/death and certain people will always be enthusiastic about banning whatever it is.

I definitely agree that in practice it basically works this way. Though I'd expand on it by saying that driving functions as a risk-tolerance + prevalence + utility anchor, as all three of those variables factor into whether society will attempt to limit something.

I think involving prevalence in the equation is ethically inconsistent. A society that bans drugs on the grounds that they incur a medical cost and provide limited utility should clearly ban base jumping as well.

Policymaking and enforcement resources are limited; it might make sense to triage according to absolute harm.

This logic came up a lot in discussions of a soda tax. In a world of government mandated (if not provided) healthcare, one argument in favor of the tax is the government has a right to your health and can therefore discourage or outright forbid unhealthy behaviors.

If you go climbing or paragliding you probably have a good insurance coverage. search and rescue is usually not covered by taxpayers.

Insurance coverage covering drug use in a world where it is legal seems like it would clearly exist and many would take advantage of it. And I don't see why climbers would be any more or less likely to be covered than recreational drug users. Even if there was a statistical difference, that's a practical concern not an ethical one.

Search and rescue is just one element of saving somebody who has hurt themselves climbing or base jumping. If I understand the policy GP described correctly, if the participant were poor enough, their physical therapy might be covered. Certainly surgery would be.

Differences between how we treat adrenaline junkies and drug users today are really just details. The broader moral question remains: Does a society that has committed to providing medical assistance to those who cannot afford it not tend towards limiting behaviors that tend to cause unusually high medical bills?

Who is limiting my right to go ice climbing or paragliding? There's no government ban on those activities?

The previous comment was hypothetical. Allow me to explain:

These activities are hazardous. In a scenario where the government manages health hazards as a consequence of managing health, government regulation of ice climbing or paragliding is logical.

Again, this was hypothetical, not extant.

Here's the parallel I'm attempting to draw:

Society must pay for drug rehabilitation -> society should consider banning drugs.

Society must pay for medical bills -> society should consider limiting behaviors that have a high probability of incurring medical expenses.

Out of interest (and personal ignorance), is is possible to lawfully do those things without someone causing you to be insured?

That argument is valid, but has simple counter-argument. We help each other on moral grounds. You pay for treatment of drug addict because of humanitarian reasons, not because of good it will bring back to you or anyone.

I completely and actively disagree. To establish my relationship on the matter, I am a USMC combat vet who never did any drugs for clearance reasons, who after I got out was saved by cannabis from being an alcoholic.

We are a nation of sovereign individuals. That is the entire foundation of the American governmental system which was founded upon the enlightenment idea that we each have unalienable rights, and that the main purpose of government is to protect those rights, and that the government does not grant rights! That the government derives it's power from the people is a huge reason America is, as the British defector Christopher Hitchen's called it, "the last revolution that stands a chance"[1]

I cannot stand this "social contract" approach to rights. In almost every area it is used to abuse the people, not to actually protect them, it is an abrogation of the fundamental principles of the American system, and if we truly adopted it we would only be increasing the speed of decent into authoritarian totalitarianism.

If we were to allow for that approach, there is literally nothing the government couldn't regulate as long as they decided it was in the "interest of the public health". Do you not see the slippery slope of your approach?

Not to mention the fact that the drug war was never actually about protecting the people in the first place, when we have the former aide to Nixon openly admitting that it was essentially the new version of Jim Crow laws. Beyond that, all the evidence shows that prohibition doesn't work, and is impossible to enforce, and it does nothing but enrich and empower the worst kind of people (like cartels and their CIA black-budget drug-gun running butt-buddies)

Furthermore, this approach is essentially an endorsement of thoughtcrime enforcement. By declaring that people who do drugs do crime, and therefor drugs = for criminals in the future, the establishment has essentially codified thoughtcrime into the system via bad law and precedent.

Let me say this absolutely clearly: The government has absolutely no right to tell me what I can and can't put in my body. I and I alone can make that determination. Whether that's lettuce, or sodas, or cannabis, it doesn't matter.

Now having said that, I think the majority of the debate about the drug war is actually a great opportunity to teach the Constitution. So if you look into it, it is mostly the abuse of the Commerce clause that congress has used to get legislation like this passed, but when talking about the health justification position it is worth remember that is a states level issue not a federal one for the most part, and it is actually the states that claim "health" reasons for their drug policies, even though as said before health wasn't the actual reason at all. So to me it is a great opportunity to talk about states rights vs federalism in a modern context. (Such as can the states pass laws that are in opposition the the Constitution? There is actually a lot more debate on this subject than you might expect. One particular writer who takes a position on that I disagree with but find well put and worthy of understanding is Kevin Gutzman. [2])

So in essence, I vehemently reject almost every sentence you just posted, and I strongly warn other Americans against so quickly acquiescing to such an egregiously Un-American position.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-GZo5Yqlss

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmC1t3F7OJA

As you recognize, the Commerce Clause argument is a bit of a distraction--at most, it tells you that the states, rather than the federal government, are the right level to regulate drugs. The states, moreover, are not governments of limited, enumerated powers. They have general police powers. And indeed, as originally conceived, the states' exercise of those powers was not even subject to the Constitution. It was only 20th-century Supreme Court cases, interpreting the effect of the Civil War era amendments, that determined that the Bill of Rights applied to the states by way of the 14th amendment.

States have the general powers to regulate both the public health and public morality. Regulation of socially-harmful vices was always understood to be within the scope of state regulatory power. Adultery, for example, was uniformly illegal in colonial America, because of the potential threat to the social order. There is nothing that suggests the Constitution intended to deprive states of that traditional power. (To the contrary, those powers are expressly reserved to the states.) Regulating the ingestion of psychoactive substances falls squarely within that power.

I happen to agree with you to a degree--I don't think the Commerce Clause permits the federal government to make drugs illegal. (Indeed, I think the whole scheme of federal systems for public health are constitutionally questionable, since that is something historically committed to the states.) But the state governments inherited all the powers of the British sovereign, save for those delegated to the federal government, and subject only to peoples' individual rights. While those individual rights aren't necessarily enumerated in the Constitution, they must exist and be recognized. Nobody has ever recognized a general right of individuals to "do what they want with their own bodies." Drug prohibition is fair game for the states.