Last week, I wrote that Governor Pat McCrory should liberalize alcohol laws, ending the prohibition on drinking for young adults. This week, I wonder if McCrory is hostile to the idea of liberalizing any drug laws. In an interview with WITN, the governor shrugged off the idea of marijuana legalization with an appeal to paternalism and the greater good:

Governor McCrory does not support legalizing marijuana, saying, “Recreational use of a drug, to me that’s a term that means addiction. That means destroying our brain. So any media member or proponent of legalization of drugs says this is for recreational use, you’re recreationally destroying the brain power of North Carolina.”

When it comes to marijuana for medical purposes, the governor says it would have to be extremely restricted. He says, “I think the abuse of the so-called medical purposes in other states has been so liberalized that it might as well be legal.”

The governor’s argument for keeping marijuana illegal requires, if he wants to be consistent, that he support new prohibitions on alcohol and nicotine, which are far more addictive than marijuana. Alcohol, at least, is far worse for the brain. Both of those drugs are used recreationally and legally.

We make fun of progressives for taxing cigarettes and criminalizing untaxed sales, but the only real distinction in between the liberal nanny state and the conservative nanny state is each side’s drug of choice. Both sides restrict choice under the notion that individual desires are subordinate to state interests like “the economy” and “public health.”

Why don’t conservatives seize the moral high ground and choose freedom over big government?