with his life--as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness. Vidal takes this to mean that people have the power and the legal right to kill themselves--by taking dangerous drugs if they should so choose.
Gore Vidal cites the Prohibition era, a time when Congress tried to legislate morality, as a period having the greatest crime wave in the history of the country--and one causing many deaths from bad alcohol. It also created a general and persisting contempt for the laws of the country (Vidal 384).
According to Vidal, during a more recent time when the U.S. government curtailed the supply of Mexican marijuana, drug dealers got kids hooked on heroin and deaths increased dramatically. Vidal blames the government for those deaths--and rightly so. Both the government and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs, because if drugs were sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone. If there was no money in it for the Mafia, there would be no neighborhood drug dealers and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for their habit. Furthermore, if there was no money in drugs, the Bureau of Narcotics would have to be eliminated--something which the Bureau would not allow without a struggle (Vidal 384).
Recently, Joycelyn Elders, the surgeon-general, took a similar position by stating that the legalization of drugs should be studie
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