This blogger says my post about Dope Sick Love is “rote nonsense” and he sent me the link with the subject header “you’re dead wrong.” He writes:

As for Goldberg and his rote nonsense: I would remind him that even in the political/legal climate as it is now, with all attendant corrosion of American culture beyond the immediate circle of this sort of thing (let’s see who can distinguish between the actual dopers and everybody else who has to live with the widespread destruction of liberty that the War on Drugs has wrought), people still choose this way of death, and there is nothing on earth that he or anyone else can do about it when they do.
Suppress your liberal impulse, Jonah. Stop trying to save everyone. You can’t, and you certainly have no right to attempt it at my expense.

Me:I find this not only to be childish table pounding, but completely off-point. When did I say we could “save” everyone? When did I suggest such was my goal? In fact, which of my points is this guy actually refuting? Or even trying to refute? The fact that these people are drug addicts despite the War on Drugs is a point I would make for my case. That some water makes it over the dam is not an argument against having the dam. That some people choose this “way of death” despite all of the barriers we throw up, does not demonstrate that there would not be many, many more people like this if we took those barriers down. Easier access to cheaper drugs would not create fewer addicts — at least not in the short run (I am open to the argument that in the long run society might find an equilibrium). There are some people who become slaves to drugs very quickly and the only reason many do not become so enslaved is that it is a relative hassle to get them and use them in the open. Take away the hassle factor — i.e. lower the price — and you will increase the consumption.

And, as this documentary demonstrates, for some irreducible percentage of the population once they are addicted they cannot be un-addicted.

I have had this argument too many times to count now. I don’t dispute that some people are simply self-destructive (I’ve known more than my share). But drugs like crack and heroin — but not pot, which I favor decriminalizing — make some people self-destructive who otherwise might not be. The economic model so many legalizers emphasize assumes people are rational actors without accepting that drugs by definition transform you into an irrational actor — some permanently, others just for an evening. I’m not being “liberal” in pointing out that there are costs and benefits for both policy options. Legalization will have horrible costs in my opinion. Mature advocates of legalization admit this. They simply think the current costs of the drug war are greater and the benefits of ending it would outweigh the downside. All I disagree with is their accounting.