My liberty train of thought is one of those ones that stops short of legalizing MJ. It isn't on a whim or some misguided perception of reefer madness. Living north of San Francisco in the heart of the emerald triangle gives me a different perspective on all of this and changed my views on the war on drugs. This has nothing to do with PTK and every thing to do with seeing the social cost of MJ up close and personal. So please don't color all of us with that same "liberty train of thought" brush.
You just said that your idea of liberty stops short, and give personal reasons similar to those given earlier. You want conditional liberty - I say, you are one and the same with the others. You may not like it, you most likely don't like being lumped in with them, but alas, you have similar views, similar reasons for those views, and want similar conditional liberty.
You are, indeed, the same as those others. Don't think yourself above being painted with the same brush.
EDIT: In discussing my frustrations over pro-firearms anti-drug folks thinking themselves pro-liberty, I came up with an appropriate way of phrasing this.
Liberty is not a salad bar of freedoms, nor a buffet of choices. You either accept that liberty is for all free members of society and is present in all aspects of life, or you are stating that you have no issues whatsoever about trampling
some freedoms, as long as you still get your choice of freedoms. The latter choice, of course, is no different than entirely removing all freedoms. This is absolutely no different than those who don't care what happens to most firearms freedoms as long as they can hunt once a year with a bolt-action. Similarly, anti-gun/pro-drug folks who say that drugs are harmless but guns are the bane of society have everything in common with you folks - keep what you agree with, ban the rest.
The phrase "we must hang together or we will surely hang separately" comes to mind.
Can anyone, at all, point to any letters between Founders or books from the 1770s, or a relevant section of the Constitution that allows the Federal government to ban substances to be ingested? Until then, I say this - those of you who wish to continue a ban on drugs are no different than anti-gunners, those against freedom of religion, or those who would turn these United States into a police state.
As a good friend of mine puts it, personal liberty ends only when it causes physical or financial harm to another person. Emotion is not part of the equation.