But we didn't ban shipbuilding nor prohibit sailing. We built lighthouses and mapped the globe to make sailors' lives safer. We should be making it safer for those of our citizens who will use drugs. The curiosity shown by Havelock Ellis would have cast him into prison today. It is inconceivable that a free society would wish to crush these essentially human drives in its citizens.
Gangsters thus have a vested interest in the return of prohibitionist governments.
If only for the selfish reason of preserving our own civilized discourse and secure, free societies we should take seriously the enormous financial muscle the drug Prohibition gives to international organized crime. It is destroying Colombia, Italy and America and we would be foolish to assume we were immune. All this because we forbid a man to smoke opium rather than tobacco or forbid him to drink coca rather than wine. It is as arbitrary as Lilliput's war with Blefuscu over which end to open a boiled egg. Any hardware store has more dangerous items for sale than drugs.