It doesn’t matter if you’re a cosmopolitan sipping a martini after a day at the office or a gourmet tasting only half a serving of dessert, you must exercise self-control. Adults can’t stuff their face without getting fat, and an adult can’t spend an evening chugging beer without getting drunk. Self-control is a critical component of good health.

So it should come as no surprise that heroin users must practice self-control.

The best research confronts the obvious truth that people all over the world get high and that those foolish moralists who would ban drugs and alcohol use cause harm and threaten the liberty of our citizens.

Carl Hart, a Columbia professor who spent years doing biased research to prove that marijuana and other drugs were harmful until he reached a conclusion that a fair reading of the evidence demonstrates that using the illegal drugs with the same self-control that we promote for drinking and eating poses no danger to health and may in fact be a sensible part of a healthy life.

My father died at 91. He had his last martini on a Thursday and died on Saturday. Drinking was one of his great pleasures, and like many of his generation that lived through alcohol prohibition, he was convinced that marijuana and even heroin used judiciously were pleasures that any adult should be free to choose. What he knew from experience, scientists have supported with research.

Professor Hart is just one of a growing chorus of reformers who believe adults should be free to choose their pleasures. It is a well-known fact that moderate consumption of alcohol reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. Professor Hart extends this same principle to heroin. He uses it. But quite reasonably insists that the user should be prudent and exercise self-control. In his book Drug Use for Grown-ups, based on his research and his personal habits, he demonstrates that using heroin with self-control is fun and can be part of a happy life.

The research is extensive and available to those doubters who want scientific affirmation for what other people discover while growing up. If you aren’t self-aware and don’t control your use, all of these substances can cause substantial harm. But in fact the greatest harm is caused by the government and law enforcement programs to stop illegal drug use.

Perhaps the most important proof and one of the key points that another researcher, Dr. Peter Grinspoon, makes in his book Seeing Through the Smoke is that overeating can be an addiction. That is, what should be a pleasure, when used judiciously, can be life threatening if the eater insists on experiencing the pleasure of food to excess.

Without a doubt, obesity causes more premature deaths than fentanyl, alcohol, and car accidents. A study in the distinguished New England Journal of Medicine, concluded, “We are also simply eating more calories per person: Portion sizes have gone up, and eating outside of the home often means heavier, unhealthier foods, and sugary drinks to wash them down.” According to the researchers, a high body weight contributed to 4 million deaths globally — or 7 percent of the deaths from any cause — in 2015.

Eating unhealthy foods causes more deaths than fentanyl or car accidents. This is a worldwide problem. It is worst in the United States. Put bluntly, Coca-Cola and soft drinks kill more people than any of the illegal drugs. This is of course not a plea to make sugary foods illegal. In terms of policy, it is a plea to give public health officials more authority over the habits of U.S. residents.

Anybody my age, 82, has watched as public health techniques dramatically reduce cigarette smoking. When I was growing up, every house had ashtrays on most tabletops. A fun evening with guests would probably lead to the smoking of almost a pack of 20 cigarettes. Nobody went outside to smoke; it happened in the living room with everybody present. Public health messages, over decades, made smoking uncomfortable, a bad habit. Cigarettes are still with us, but their use is dramatically lower than it was in 1950. The discomfort with smoking is widespread. Among young people, who quite commonly decline not only tobacco but marijuana to protect their lungs. Without arresting anybody, public health policy changed our national habits.

In one of his most arresting passages, Carl Hart argues that the illegal drugs don’t follow this public health impulse because of racism.

Controlling illegal drug use costs billions that pay the salaries of police, judges, prison guards, and even drug treatment programs. The police prison industrial complex is uniformly racist, and encourages public fear, and its arrests threaten personal freedoms. It continues the U.S. history of applying terrorism against black and brown communities. Almost uniformly, white people who use the illegal drugs are given more compassion. They have a problem. Those with a different skin color are dubbed criminals, burdened with a record, and even imprisonment for their supposed moral failings. Sheepishly, Professor Hart admits that at the start of his drug research he believed drug use caused poverty and antisocial behavior in his communities. He has freed himself from these racist delusions.

The simple truth is some of the people who use drugs harm themselves; others, quite possibly a large number of others, get pleasure and relaxation from their drug use. It contributes to their sense of well-being. The drug war and its billions of dollars threaten all users. Public health measures would dramatically reduce the number of people earning good wages to fight the drug war, but will be more effective. Without burdening the taxpayers, public health measures would solve most of the problems associated with drug use, just as it has reduced but not ended the health problems associated with smoking. And cause no threat to our freedoms.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of this approach would be the increase in freedom in the United States. Police intrusions into the lives of our citizens are prompted all too often by suspicions that an otherwise law-abiding citizen may be involved with illegal drug use. At its most extreme, hundreds of Americans have been shot and killed by police officers enforcing the drug laws. Freedom Democrats would end this threat to our liberties.