NCJ Number
172380
Date Published
1998
Length
28 pages
Annotation
Because both people bodies and drugs are types of property, producing, trading, and using drugs are subject to property rights; and drug prohibitions constitute a deprivation of basic constitutional rights.
Abstract
James Madison wrote that "In its larger and juster meaning, it (property) embraces everything to which a man may attach a value...(and includes that) which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their passions, and their faculties." Under Madison's perspective, every object in the universe can be treated as property. The right to property constitutes "a kind of 'early warning system' to invasions of life and liberty." Americans ought to heed their loss of the right to drugs as just such a warning. On no other front have the American people been subjected to so relentless a state pressure against their constitutional rights as on the issue of the right to drugs; and on no other front have the American people yielded their rights to encroachments by the Federal Government so readily, willingly, and eagerly. The government can call a drug dangerous and remove it from the market, and there is nothing the general public can do about it. Further, those who possess or trade in the drug as property are sought out through various invasive means and punished. 54 notes