The government has had a very hard time classifying what type of crime drug dealing is. First they said it was a tax crime (well before that, an import or tariff crime). Then the 10th amendment was basically gutted, and it became a crime where all the facts could be identical to a pharmacy dispensing a script, but sans paying for a DEA license.

It is definitely a very strange one. The classical liberalism argument is that the most prominent aspect remains essentially a financial crime of failure to pay the licensing tax.

>and it became a crime where all the facts could be identical to a pharmacy dispensing a script, but sans paying for a DEA license.

That describes a bunch of crimes? If you raid a drug dealer's house and kill a bunch of people in the process, you'll go to jail. If it's the police doing it with a "license" (ie. a warrant), it's suddenly fine. More banal is you driving along, following all applicable laws and causing no issues, but if you're doing it without a license or insurance, it's suddenly illegal.

Yes of course. All of this seems to me totally psychotic and not at all a dystopia I want to live in. Which is why I lived in an area with almost no government, very weak police services, little to no code/zone enforcement, weak environmental controls, etc etc.

I pointed it out largely because I find the drug laws to be particularly strange.