No, that's not what I was saying. If the moral maxim of a government is to ensure maximum stability and health for its citizens, then of course it has the right to dictate what substances people must or must not put in their bodies and it would have the right to do so quite invasively.
If the moral maxim is individual liberty at all costs, then it doesn't.
I would imagine that most government are formed on much more complex maxims than either of those two simple ones. The US government is ostensibly founded with the purpose of the Preamble of the Constitution in mind (though of course this has no bearing on actual legal rights granted, then again, we're not really debating laws in this discussion):
> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That's quite a few overarching principles and I'm sure you could imagine situations in which attending to one concept would impede or cause the regression of another. Now of course, we could be talking about different governments and establishing different guiding principles for each, but I was just bringing up this one as an example.
If the moral maxim is individual liberty at all costs, then it doesn't.
I would imagine that most government are formed on much more complex maxims than either of those two simple ones. The US government is ostensibly founded with the purpose of the Preamble of the Constitution in mind (though of course this has no bearing on actual legal rights granted, then again, we're not really debating laws in this discussion):
> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That's quite a few overarching principles and I'm sure you could imagine situations in which attending to one concept would impede or cause the regression of another. Now of course, we could be talking about different governments and establishing different guiding principles for each, but I was just bringing up this one as an example.