On November 15, Star reported that state police are keeping a list of people within state who buy painkillers prescribed by doctors. Yet six days later, paper announced that some of most addictive prescription drugs on market are not monitored at all in Indiana. This means that state is no more protecting us from prescription drug abuse than from illegal kind. And thanks to our misguided drug policies, only black market offers medical privacy.

Also on November 15, Star's web site carried an interview with Lt. Randall West, 31-year police veteran and head of Dangerous Drugs Section of Indianapolis Police Department. Lt. West said almost exactly what I did during my Libertarian campaign for Prosecutor: that "(a)s long as there's a profit in dealing drugs, we're pretty much fighting an uphill battle."

On November 19, Star reported that one Indianapolis pharmacy filled 120 prescriptions of narcotic OxyContin for Colts' owner Jim Irsay. The article said that in one 24-day period last spring, Irsay got 400 tablets of narcotic. This quantity is almost a year's supply for thousands of other chronic pain-sufferers who needlessly struggle to get their needs met through our present system.

The Libertarian solution to our present drug mess is to treat everyone as if they owned an NFL franchise. Return to people freedom to treat their own conditions any way they choose – just like rich Americans can now – with strong doses of expert consultation from doctors, pharmacists, nutritionists, and other health professionals. We shouldn’t have to be rich and fly to a foreign country to get our drug needs met. Advancing freedom of choice and self-responsibility, as opposed to governmental control, will improve health, cut costs and save lives.

November 23 was also a big day in drug news. The Star reported 1) that Damen Lake, a felon caught in a high speed car chase, was a crack addict wanted for robbery, 2) that an Indianapolis drug distribution company was fined $350,000 by DEA because "hundreds of thousands of dosage units of controlled substances, such as hydrocodone and Tylenol with codeine, were missing," and 3) that a prominent Indianapolis plastic surgeon who supplied Irsay surrendered his federal permit to prescribe narcotics.

I have to hand it to Indianapolis Star newspaper and WTHR television. Their reporters definitely give us enough information to make good political decisions. Almost without exception, their numerous drug stories in November 2002 factually demonstrate Libertarian view that drug prohibition cannot succeed and that it does far more harm than good.

I suspect November 2002 is similar in drug news to that of today. I invite you to use your local media to chronicle destructiveness of our drug policies in your community. If it weren’t for prohibition, there would be fewer drug store heists, car thefts, prescription abuses, car chases, murders, and acts of terrorism. There would be less bad news to report.

The solution is political. It means voting against political parties that gave us our dysfunctional and destructive drug policies. The ultimate solution is to free everyone from others' control. That is meaning of liberty. What are we waiting for?

The residential community and its tourist trade support an organic market, restaurants, bars, a newspaper and a radio station. Marijuana and hashish are by far community's biggest trade, with estimated sales of up to $100,000 a day. Only residents of Christiana may purvey pot. Their booths line Pusher Street like a county fair bake competition. New Harmony was everything George Rapp and Robert Owen wanted America to be – egalitarian. Christiana is everything that America once was – relatively free.

As in early libertarian Indiana, when all nonviolent consensual lifestyles were legally protected, there are only three main simple rules that residents of Christiana live by: No theft…no violence and…be true to your word, otherwise be banished. In other Danish words – if you can't be a good neighbor, or you have a drug habit that encourages you to steal, then get hell out!

Even culture among dozens of pot and hash dealers in Christiana is peaceful. Where Afghan marijuana is sold as freely as bananas, pot merchants don't go chasing each other down Pusher Street with machetes. Contrast this with Indianapolis where half of city's homicides are directly connected to drug prohibition. Christiana is proof that free markets are much, much safer than black markets for everyone involved. Christiana's biggest threats are Liberal-Conservatives, who wish to snuff out its alternative lifestyles and commercially develop its 84 acres of riverfront property. If this happens, freedom lovers from around world, but especially from Denmark, will have one less spot to squat. In any case, New Harmony and Christiana are excellent lessons in politics. Lesson one: Most socialistic utopias fail or disband on their own lack of merit. Lesson two: Libertarian utopias, such as Christiana and early America, only fail when taken over or snuffed out by people who practice intolerance or who otherwise turn their backs on utopia's ideals.