This question seems really difficult to answer.

Decisions that are made by a person often are as bad

as the ones made by governments. The topic seems also very emotional to me and many
interventions in people’s lifestyle by a government are just not accepted by everybody. Therefore
this interventions need to be enforced by police which is often very costly and hard work.

One example for an intervention by the government is the consumption of diverse substances like
caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, marihuana, cocaine, heroine and various synthetic drugs. While some of
this substances are strictly forbitten others are fully free to buy. Would it be a good idea to people
make their own decisions about this drugs? On one side a free trade of this substances obviously had
some advantages for the society. Probably it would dry out the huge illegal markets quite soon and
also reduce the financial possibilities of criminal organizations. The illegal cannabis consume in
Switzerland is at around 50 tons a year and spoils around 200 Millions of profit into the dealers
hands. Sold legally, in a free market, this would mean about 2000 jobs for the society ore 2000
people more that pay taxes. On the other hand the opening of cannabis markets in some states of
the USA have also caused big social problems. It seems that in a free market people tend to us more
of this substances which is of course not healthy. When people stop working because of drug abuse
the costs for the society are also very high.

For me there is no clear answer to this question. In general it seems to me, that if a government
makes decisions about people’s lifestyle it should be very careful in general an only do it if a large
majority of people is fine with it. If such a decision once is made it seems very important to me that
that the law is implemented very clearly and that to government has to provide enough resources to
enforce such a law.