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Is everyone reasonably sane? No. Some people will always become drug addicts just as some people will always become alcoholics, and it is just too bad. Every man, however, has the power (and should have the legal right) to kill himself if he chooses. But since most men don't, they won't be mainliners either. Nevertheless, forbidding people things they like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more. This psychological insight is, for some mysterious reason, always denied our governors.
每个人都能做到理智且清醒吗？不。就像有些人总要成为嗜酒者一样，有些人总会成为瘾君子的，这很可悲。但每个人都可以（应该拥有这种法定权利）结束自己的生命，假如他愿意这样做。不过，既然多数人不会选择这样做，他们也绝不会成为静脉注射吸毒者。可是，禁止人们去做他们喜欢做或者认为他们可能喜欢做的事情，只能使他们更加热衷于这些事情。出于某些神秘的原因，我们的领导者们似乎总是否认心理学给我们提供的这种启示。
It is a lucky thing for the American moralist that we have no public memory of anything that happened last Tuesday. No one in Washington today recalls what happened during the years alcohol was forbidden to the people by a Congress that thought it had a divine mission to stamp out Demon Rum—launching, in the process, the greatest crime wave in the country's history, causing thousands of deaths from bad alcohol, and creating a general (and persisting) contempt among the citizenry for laws of the United States.
对于美国道德学家来说，值得庆幸的是，我们的公众连上星期二发生的事情都不记得了。如今，在华盛顿，没有人还会记得国会颁布禁酒令的年代所发生的事情了。当时国会认为自己肩负着铲除“恶魔”朗姆酒的神圣使命。但在禁酒过程中，引发了这个国家历史上空前的犯罪浪潮，几千人死于劣质酒，公众由此普遍（而且持续很长时间）鄙视美国法律。
The same thing is happening today. But the government has learned nothing from past attempts at prohibition.
类似的情形如今还在发生，不过政府并没有从过去的禁酒尝试中吸取任何教训。
Last year when the supply of marijuana was slightly reduced by the Feds, the pushers got the kids hooked on heroin and deaths increased dramatically. Whose fault? I think the Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths.
去年，联邦调查局对大麻的供给稍加限制，毒贩便诱使小孩子们迷上海洛因，死亡人数因而急剧上升。这是谁的过错？我认为，美国政府应该对这些人的死亡负责。
