David Boaz on Ending Drug Prohibition

David Boaz

David Boaz was a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute and played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He was the author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom and the editor of The Libertarian Reader.

Boaz was a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism. Boaz was the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981. The earlier edition of The Libertarian Mind, titled Libertarianism: A Primer, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “a well-​researched manifesto of libertarian ideas.” His other books include The Politics of Freedom and the Cato Handbook for Policymakers.

His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate, and he wrote the entry on libertarianism for Encyclopedia Britannica. He was a frequent guest on national television and radio shows and has appeared on ABC’s Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, CNN’s Crossfire, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, The McLaughlin Group, Stossel, The Independents, Fox News, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media.

Editor’s Note
G

Grant Babcock

Philosophy and Policy Editor

This speech is about the freedom to use drugs—but it’s really about importance of individual autonomy, a central theme in Boaz’s conception of libertarianism, one he positions at the intersection of arguments for human freedom grounded in ethics, economics, and jurisprudence. Boaz gives examples of the way individual autonomy is under intellectual assault from the left and the right, and the way it is infringed by the state’s violence against peaceful people. He emphasizes the importance of enumerated powers under the Constitution, the role of federalism, and the consequences of the erosion of those protections.

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David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and the author of Libertarianism: A Primer (1997). Here he speaks at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ (NORML’s) National Convention in 2000 on the failure of drug prohibition in America and more broadly about why enumerating and thus limiting the powers of the federal government is so important generally.