PrintSeptember 19, 2013
3D Printers and Drug Legalization
In a recent American Thinker article, I wrote on some of the problems surrounding calls for legalizing the drug ecstasy. In general, my view is that the traditional libertarian perspectives on this topic are naive, and not grounded in a proper analysis of the complex negative externalities that arise from drug legalization.
In both the comments to this article, and in a recent piece from the National Post in Canada, drug legalization proponents have raised the issue of 3D printing, and how this possible future technology revolution "will have rendered the drug war obsolete."
There is some confusion in these arguments that needs to be addressed, in large part from a failure by some to understand how synthetic chemistry works.
Jesse Kline states that 3D printers "could also be used by party-goers to print their own ecstasy, or hippies who want to synthesize LSD in their basements... If people were able to download an open-source design for a molecule that they knew was tested and pure,...(Read Full Article)
