AS a net importer of political debates, Australia has enthusiastically embraced the war on drugs since Richard Nixon declared it in 1971.

Drugs have been back in the headlines of late with the release of the Australian Crime Commission’s annual report on drug seizures and the news of former Olympic swimmer Geoff Huegill being charged with possession of a small amount of cocaine at the races.

The arguments against the war on drugs remain as relevant as ever. We know prohibition doesn’t work. We know policing drug policy is a tremendous waste of resources. We know the victimless crime of possession of drugs puts many people in jail and helps turn them into hardened criminals.

Compounding the farce that is our drugs policy, Tony Abbott himself this week acknowledged: “It’s not a war we will ever finally win.”

While bouts of hedonism are illegal, it is rarely considered why they are viewed as immoral. What is immoral is others telling us what we may put in our bodies, or how we should chose to spend our time.

“The children” are the standard invocation to end the argument, as though teenagers lack ingenuity or are deferential to authority. It’s easier to induce moral panic and dispatch with personal choice and personal responsibility than it is to accept that we have the right to make our own decisions, with which others may disagree.

Humans are fallible and mistakes can be made — this is a fact of existence that is certainly not unique to the use of a select group of illegal substances.

Conversely, advocates for ending the war on drugs so often tell us “it’s not a law and order issue, it’s a health issue”.

It is a concession we have bloodlessly granted the wowser-class: many advocates for drug reform have accepted the prohibitionists’ rhetoric that drugs are, in and of themselves, bad.

In the case of a minority of people who abuse or have debilitating addictions to drugs, harm minimisation is a worthwhile policy. But what on earth is wrong with getting high?

Recreational drug use is stigmatised as a choice between abstinence and addiction. The silent majority of people who safely and occasionally use illicit substances are ordinary people, living balanced lives.

This is part of a broader tendency we see to pathologise everything that is seen as “wrong” — as evidenced in the release of the psychology diagnostic bible DSM-IV last year, where character traits such as nonconformity, arrogance, and above-average creativity are now classed as diseases which can successfully be treated.

After the gay marriage debate is inevitably won, it’s conceivable that the next great social cause will be drug decriminalisation or legalisation. A good starting point would be subverting the self-censorship that goes with recreational drug use.

It is up to those of us in favour of civil liberties to loudly refuse to have our choices dictated to us, and to disprove the unfair stigma that has been given to certain indulgences.