It seems to me that lots of people advocate the legalization of all drugs–not just marijuana but cocaine and heroine and every other drug–without feeling at all compelled to defend those drugs as harmless.  They don’t argue that injecting heroine is completely safe, let alone healthy.  They simply defend the right of people to make their own decisions and enhance or degrade their lives as they see fit.  Doctors who report on the adverse health consequences of smoking crack are not often mocked as politically-motivated hacks, even when they are attempting to defend the current policy of prohibition (the one exception to all this might be marijuana, where there are arguments about the claims which led it to be listed as a controlled substance).

But when it comes to porn, everything is different.  Even people who favor legalized porn get angrily attacked simply for not liking the effects that they argue have followed from its widespread use.  Anyone who claims that porn is addictive is ridiculed as a psuedoscientist.  All links between continual consumption of porn and other wrong behaviors are all assumed to be based on delusions.

It seems like the libertarian position on porn doesn’t even exist in the population.  Either porn is harmless and even healthy or else you must believe in destroying the First Amendment which our forefathers wisely crafted to protect the rights of teenagers to download hardcore movies over P2P networks.  You would think that someone somewhere would figure out that this stance is actually going to produce more opposition to legalized porn.

If the only alternative to drug criminalization was to teach that cocaine is good for everyone, then I would expect fewer people to favor legalization.