> First, this shouldn't be a "sometimes" thing, it should be a "never" thing. You get convicted for drugs, regardless of how much, and your life is forever changed.
Communities have the right to declare certain things unacceptable and police their citizens accordingly. The regulation of vice and harmful substances is one of the core functions of state and local governments. In a country of 330 million people, that means that "sometimes" people will exercise that right in a way that you or I think is undesirable or even unjust. But the self-determination of communities is a more fundamental right than the right to consume whatever substances you want.
> Communities have the right to declare certain things unacceptable and police their citizens accordingly.
No, they don't; communities don't have rights, individuals do. Communities have the legitimate power to do what you describe so long as no individual rights are violated.
> The regulation of vice and harmful substances is one of the core functions of state and local governments.
No, it's not. It may in some cases be an aspect of a legitimate core function (the protection of public health, for instance) so long as the manner of regulation is actually consistent with that function and with individual rights.
The idea that rights are the sole domain of individuals and that groups (whether constituted as states or otherwise) have powers, but not rights (powers which are legitimate only so far as they extend from and do not contradict individual rights), is fundamental to classical liberalism, not a belief unique to those “sympathetic to ancap philosophy”.
No, you said "Communities have the legitimate power to do what you describe so long as no individual rights are violated." That is not in fact a principle of classical liberalism, which favors individual rights but is not controlled by them. American conservatism draws from classical liberalism, for instance.
> No, you said "Communities have the legitimate power to do what you describe so long as no individual rights are violated." That is not in fact a principle of classical liberalism, which favors individual rights but is not controlled by them.
You missed a “not”, and yes it is a core principle of classical liberalism; indeed, classical liberals tended to see powers of government as legitimate exactly to the extent they served individual rights, as they perceived those rights. Locke, for instance saw the realization of the rights to life, liberty, and estate (which he collectively labeled as “property”, thought that term often is used equivalently to how Locke used the “estate”) as both the motivation for entering into government by the people and the function whose service defined the legitimate role of government.
> American conservatism draws from classical liberalism, for instance.
Both Americans conservatism and American liberalism draw from classical liberalism, without being entirely within it, but I'm not sure what your point is in raising that about American conservatives, since explicitly echoing Locke’s position on the legitimate role of government (with perhaps a narrower understanding of property and thus individual rights than Locke stated) is a central refrain of American conservatives, especially those most likely to explicitly cite continuity with classical liberalism.
Communities have the right to declare certain things unacceptable and police their citizens accordingly. The regulation of vice and harmful substances is one of the core functions of state and local governments. In a country of 330 million people, that means that "sometimes" people will exercise that right in a way that you or I think is undesirable or even unjust. But the self-determination of communities is a more fundamental right than the right to consume whatever substances you want.