7. People want to feel that they are helping to overcome the drug epidemic, regardless of whether the specific policies they support are really effective to that end. To legalize narcotics, they feel, would amount to a moral "sanction" of drug use. In reality, this great problem can be addressed only by addressing its causal roots, a task which will be undertaken in Section 5; prohibitive laws only attempt feebly to treat the symptoms. The argument that legalization constitutes moral "sanction" is an instance of the logical Fallacy of Political Reductionism, which will be discussed in Subsection 3.12, where we shall apply ethical principles to a social context.

The free market, as we have seen, is based on each human being's ownership of his or her life—including his or her mind, body, and labor (pp. 4.5:13-5). The phrase "involuntary servitude" encompasses all attempts—whether by individuals, groups, or governments—to subvert this basic ownership. Here we are considering only the praxeological effects of various kinds of involuntary servitude, not evaluating its basic morality (a topic which will be deferred until Subsection 3.12).     

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