I really couldn't agree more. People often want to tar us "legalize, tax, and regulate" types as being unpragmatic ideological libertarian drug pushers. In fact, the legalize, tax, and regulate position is inherently pragmatic and non-threatening. The status quo, which keeps thousands of people living outside the law, at risk from abuse and sex slavery, is threatening. The status quo gives us a position where the IMF estimates that 15-20% of global GDP is orginised crime. A phenomenal level. If drugs were brought above board it would be taken out of the hands of the gangsters and out into the open. This is the pragmatic position.

Oh come on. Stop being so disingenuous. Sean Gabb has gone online saying that the viewing of Child Pornography should not be considered a crime. On the very grounds I have stated above.

It is also fairly clear that the concept of "Consensual Paedophilia" and the eventual abolition of the age of consent is part of the libertarian agenda. You just need to google around a bit. (The Communist party also favour abolishing the age of consent on the same grounds. Something which makes me think that social class rather than political leaning colours such opinions.)

I am not focussing only on drugs. The main question is whether Prohibition works or not. If it works for child pornography it works for drugs.

The major differerence between Adam Smith, Richard Cobden and the original free market advocates were that they were focussing on essentials like bread, not entertainment product for the bored and unimaginative. So wheras i have a great deal of admiration for both of them, their contemporaries are simply trying to extend corporate influence and fill coffers rather than benefit the greater majority.

Alan Page: "I do find it rather ironic that for somebody to oppose childporn on one hand is perfectly aufait with the idea of children growing up with either addicts for parents or as addicts themselves. The idea that drugs only harm the user is a pernicious piece of corporate PR that people who have lived with the results know to be untrue."

It can be just as harmful for a child to grow up with alcoholic parents, but that's never resulted in the prohibition of alcohol in the UK.

It's easy to find a way of using a good or service in a way that harms others and try to use that as an excuse for a complete ban. The problem is that it is so easy, that if you accepted it as a sufficient argument, you'd ban pretty much everything - cars, mobile phones, the internet, speaking,...

A sensible legal system has to be built on the principle of people making their own lifestyle choices, with the law intervening at the point when those choices present harm to others, rather than pursuing the extreme precautionary principle.

And so the only way to combat the "protected" economic interests of "Alcohol Pushers" is to reopen the Opium Trade. How can you possibly argue that this isn't pure market expansionism? That the interest is in purely generating profits for corporate interests rather than the greater good of society. That the way to deal with the health service being crowded up with liver damage is to hurl heroin and crack at people for the sake of profit?

What is this? A competition to see who can can inflict the most damage onto a society's members? The solution is absurd, ludicrous and ethically indefensible.

The only point at which I can find any point of contact with the absurdity and breathtaking stupidity of such a position is in the idea that people should be shown that there are more long term satisfying things they can do with their brains than fry them. As with your project involving bring online computer access to council estates, that is probably the only sensible and worthwhile part of your position. And yes, I include alcohol and consumerism in general in my equation as well.

As for the point about having children bought up by addicts, perhaps you should check out a biography of Robert Southey. He was left carrying the financial can for Coleridge whilst the latter self centredly spent all his money on "recreational opium". His children were left fatherless for very long periods. If that is the kind of world you wish to inhabit, feel free. Don't expect the rest of us to follow you, we have more respect for the rights of children than Libertarians would appear to have.

I suppose the real crux of the issue is that I find the writings of Herbert Spencer to be ethically obscene in their outlook. A real profits before people advocate.

As he opposed the kind of late 19th century reforms I am refferring to, it is little wonder that his disciples seek to abolish and overturn them.

I also tend towards the idea of positive and negative freedoms, and a freedom that "would hopefully wipe out a large number of the chavvy underclass so the rest of us can get on with our lives without having to worry about them" is about as negative as it gets.

I have no doubt, however, that corporate interests will triumph and that, with your support, we will eventually have free markets in both drugs and child pornography.

It is not a utopia I particularly want to be a part of, but money talks and the mindless pursuit of profit must not be denied. Even by pseudo anarchists.