David Sternlight wrote:
"Your honor, I don't know who flushed it. I have many visitors to my home." is rather different than being caught with a large stash of cocaine on your night table.
It is not surprising that after the society decided to label natural economic activities (drug dealing) as crimes, it has to resort to unnatural methods of enforcing the unnatural legislation. Drug consumption (just as alcohol consumption) may be bad for the individual consumers. But it is a matter of individual informed choice. If the government (or society, to be more exact) decides to take away a natural right to consume whatever one pleases, it has no choice but to go farther and to take away more rights, for example rights to privacy and safety in their own homes. The problem is not the drug dealers (and not alcohol traffickers in the thirties), the problem is lack of respect for the freedom of individual consumers, which transforms itself into abolition of other rights. Here's what milton friedman said: ``restrictions on economic freedom inevitably affect freedom in general'' (Free to Choose). It's basically right. It is the same as the wisdom that bad deeds that one commits inevitably lead to more bad deeds. - Igor.