On April 1st, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill into law that ended her state’s more than three-year-long experiment with legalization of so-called hard drugs. The choice of day notwithstanding, her decision to sign the bill that reintroduced criminal penalties for the use of those drugs was no joke. It was a badly needed end to a reckless experiment in childish libertarianism with humans as guinea pigs.
Fox News referred to Governor Kotek’s decision as a “U-turn on a short-lived liberal policy,” which is a fair description insofar as the policy move is concerned. However, the big losers here are the libertarians who wanted legalization in the first place. As far as they are concerned, the Oregon reversal raises an existential question for their very ideology.
