From The Machinery of Freedom
"If almost everyone believes strongly that heroin addiction is so horrible that it should not be permitted anywhere under any circumstances, anarcho-capitalist institutions will produce laws against heroin. Laws are being produced for a market, and that is what the market wants.
But market demands are in dollars, not votes. The legality of heroin will be determined, not by how many are for or against but by how high a cost each side is willing to bear in order to get its way. People who want to control other people's lives are rarely eager to pay for the privilege; they usually expect to be paid for the 'services' they provide for their victims. And those on the receiving end— whether of laws against drugs, laws against pornography, or laws against sex—get a lot more pain out of the oppression than their oppressors get pleasure. They are willing to pay a much higher price to be left alone than anyone is willing to pay to push them around. For that reason the laws of an anarcho-capitalist society should be heavily biased toward freedom."
But wouldn't hard drug users just form their own protection agency (agency X)? That way, no one else would be directly bidding against them to criminalize hard drugs, provided they were only sold to customers of agency X. Internal disputes between customers of agency X would be irrelevant to outside parties.
Suppose Bill, a customer of agency Y, bought hard drugs from James, a customer of agency X. Agency Y would punish Bill, but they could also demand that James be punished as well. Therefore, agency X would probably have a law against selling drugs to customers of othe agencies, and James would have to accept whatever punishment arose from the bargaining mechanism between agency X and Y.
Assume the rest of society was bitterly opposed to hard drug use; would they succeed in ostracizing the 1% of users? The hard drug users would be paying customers of supermarkets, power companies, roads, etc, so there would be a disincentive for property owners to exclude them. Some firms would put signs up similar to "We cater to white patrons only", but a few firms would gain a competitive advantage by accepting hard drug users.
"If almost everyone believes strongly that heroin addiction is so horrible that it should not be permitted anywhere under any circumstances, anarcho-capitalist institutions will produce laws against heroin."
I can't imagine how there could be "laws against heroin" that didn't vigorously violate the NAP.
If you mean there would be creeping statism, I don't disagree.
People want to live where people don't shoot up heroin on the streets. That's not the same as not allowed to shoot heroin on the streets.
Assume the rest of society was bitterly opposed to hard drug use Why? In reality, an ancap society will only ever exist when conditions determined by prior and current events permit its existence. Technology is arguably the primary determining condition. It's more likely that by the time an ancap society is permitted to exist, people will live in a world where pleasure is much easier to come by, or where heroin doesn't need to be injected, or where drugs with better effects and less side effects outperform heroin as the drug of choice, or where the effects of heroin use may be limited by technology, or where A, B, C...X, Y, and Z.
If people started with a more realistic outlook, there would be much less absurd "what if" scenarios flying around. When liberty is permitted, it will be because technology has covered all the bases. There won't be any absurd scenarios about heroin because in such a world where that is an issue, liberty will never exist.
New technology didn't lead to legalized prostitution, or legalized alcohol or marijuana (in certain parts of the world).
I think the question of how effective social ostracism would be is very important, especially if society is bitterly against some victimless crime.
What ancap society exists where technology didn't play the major role in permitting legalized prostitution, alcohol, or marijuana?
Speaking of social ostracism, how are all these people going to communicate the most effectively? Oh yes...with technology. Since politics relies on manipulation and misinformation, then the capacity of society to spread relevant objective information will play a major role in discrediting politics to a point where it is socially unacceptable.
It is possible that society may never advance technologically to such a point. We may instead face diminishing returns. This reminded me of an article I read in the guardian:
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Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, co-founders of PayPal, said last year that innovation in the US was "somewhere between dire straits and dead". In his book Rise of the Creative Class (2002), Richard Florida of Toronto University argued that, while a time traveller from 1900 arriving in 1950 would be astonished by phones, planes, cars, electricity, fridges, radio, TV, penicillin and so on, a traveller from 1950 to the present would find little to amaze beyond the internet, PCs, mobile phones and, perhaps, how old technologies had become infinitely more reliable. The US economist Tyler Cowen made a similar point last year in The Great Stagnation: innovation slowed after the 1970s, he argued, and failed to create jobs. No development of the past 50 years, he could have added, bestowed benefits comparable to what washing machines and vacuum cleaners did to liberate women from drudgery."
Furthermore, technology depends on market demand. It could be said that we already have the capacity to spread relevant objective information; but few people actually want it. But I see your general point that if we do advance technologically, then old needs such as injecting heroin would be substituted for better things.
That's more of a subpoint, because my main point is the silliness of talking about ancient problems in an unimaginably advanced world.
It like the silliness of Transformers—ridiculously advanced beings who can warp about the universe—still using swords and karate and shooting bullets (and, more importantly, being able to be damaged by bullets).