drugs and consistency

I'm for the legalization of marijuana, but I'm convinced that when it comes to legal/illegal substances, there are no consistent arguments. that is, divisions between what should be legal and what should be legal appear arbitrary. for instance, if the issue is health (which would be good reason to ban some substances) then there are a lot of substances which are now legal but are incredibly unhealthy, and to ban one substance on that basis demands that you ban others on that basis as well. the same applies for addiction, mind-alteration (caffeine is mildly mind-altering, but obviously the degree to which caffeine is addictive and mind-altering is a lot less than other illegal substances) and damage to society (if drugs cause people to act dangerously, and if drugs mess up families, alcohol does the same). a lot of seems to come down to degrees, but the division among these degrees seem arbitrary. I would hesitate to say that all drugs should be legalized, but I think there are a lot of good arguments for legalization of marijuana especially, and maybe other drugs (including arguments that if marijuana were legalized, taxes could be reduced. less strain on jails, and more...).

but to judge solely on principles might miss the point. to say that ice cream is unhealthy for you is a lot different than saying that heroin is unhealthy for you. to argue that if heroin is illegal (for one reason) because of its harm to the body then ice cream should be as well seems to ignore the fact that people who eat ice cream everyday are probably going to be functioning better than people who shoot up on heroin every day (just a guess). while arguments based on principle are consistent, I'm not sure that they are sufficient. it's like saying that because rapists and kindergarten bullies both use violence, they should either both be locked up, or neither should be locked up. there is obviously something ridiculous about that.

this is the direction I find myself going...away from ideals and principles to what is practical and realistic. I still find libertarian ideas very attractive (it's a libertarian stance that drugs should be legalized), and how I want the world to work, but they also feel insufficient. to some degree, I find myself needing to move from consistency to uncertainty and ambiguity and arbitrary choice.

putting it in those terms seems threatening, because of the idea that consistency is good and inconsistency is bad. I think that the danger of consistency is that it causes people to do bad things for good reasons. the principle becomes so elevated that we ignore the consequences of what we're doing, but are sure on some level that we need to be consistent.

love > consistency