July 1, 2019

Political winds have shifted in favor of marijuana legalization

fromTheHill: At the federal level, members of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation halting federal interference in state-specific marijuana laws.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Homelessness and the problem of public space

fromMises: The debate is between leftwing activists and nearly everyone else: namely, that public spaces ought to be opened up for use by anyone wishing to live on it.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Drug warriors peddle fears about cocaine -- again

fromReason: Cocaine offers better value than the market in prohibitionist fears.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

⭐️ VIDEO: In Their Own Words - The Democratic Party's Vision for America

fromConsortiumNews: From the Democratic Party Presidential Candidates Debate (June 26-27, 2019), candidates put forward their vision to transform America into a socialist utopia.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption           Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Kamala Harris is a cop who wants to be president

fromReason: The California senator and former prosecutor has a long record of pushing illiberal policies. 

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption            Police State America

CIA seeking more impunity

fromConsortiumNews: The agency is trying to get a pass on crimes even before they’re committed and it represents a threat to press freedom.

The Government is Not Us

Stephanie Slade: 'Drug Users Need Treatment,' Says President Obama. Not So Fast, Says Dr. Carl Hart

The vast majority of drug users are not addicts.  "For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," President Obama said yesterday at a conference in Atlanta. "The most important thing to do is reduce demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment—to see it as a public health problem and not a  ... MORE

VIDEO: The Drug War, Mandatory Minimums And Reason

Heroin And Prohibition Are A Lethal Combination

by Jacob Sullum.     After the esteemed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died in February 2014, press coverage of the "heroin epidemic" exploded. Mentions of that phrase in the newspaper and wire service articles cataloged by Nexis rose from 681 in 2013 to 3,222 in 2014, an increase of almost 400 percent. Yet Hoffman—who by his own account used ... MORE

J.D. Tuccille: Business Opportunities For Corrupt Cops

Drug laws and gun controls.  Following in the footsteps of so many people before him, Juan Pimentel saw opportunity in restrictive laws. It's an old story; government officials tell people they can't have what they want, and that prohibition creates a lucrative business opportunity for anybody willing to break the law to keep buyers happy. But     ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Prohibition Kills

Government bans make drugs more dangerous.  Remember the guy who bought 80-proof vodka that turned out to be 190-proof Everclear and died from alcohol poisoning? Probably not, because that sort of thing almost never happens in a legal drug market, where merchants or manufacturers who made such a substitution, whether           ... MORE

Jordan Richardson: A Serious Problem In Our Legal System

Justice is a result, not simply a process.       A life sentence. For Sharanda Jones, a first-time, nonviolent cocaine offender, it wasn’t sinking in. “I was numb,” she remembers. “I was thinking about my baby. I thought it can’t be real life in prison.” Having grown up in a disadvantaged family, Sharanda started working at the age of 14, later opening ... MORE

The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered

by Johann Hari.    And, it is not what you think. It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems     ... MORE

Chris Ingraham: Portugal Decriminalized Drugs 14 years Ago – And Now Hardly Anyone Dies From Overdosing

The result of ending the drug war are in. Portugal decriminalised the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it — Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine    ... MORE

VIDEO: 5 Drug PSAs That Tried To Scare The Sh*t Out Of Us

 (But Didn't)

Jacob Sullum: Obama Frees Drug War Prisoners

Credit where credit is due.  On October 31, 1996, the Sanilac County Sheriff's Office, which serves a largely rural area in Michigan's thumb, got a call from a local resident who said he was concerned about his neighbor, Darrell Hayden. No one had heard from Hayden for several days, the man said, and his horses were wandering down Argyle Road. The       ... MORE

VIDEO: Carl Sagan - Drug War Questions

VIDEO: Jeff Berwick - End The Drug War

Son Of Draconian Drug Warrior Fails Drug Test

by Jesse Walker.    Vice President Joe Biden has been one of the most strident drug warriors of my lifetime. Mandatory minimum sentences, the crack/powder disparity, federal asset forfeiture, the RAVE Act—they all have Biden's fingerprints on them. The man may be responsible for the very phrase "drug czar." If the Drug War had its own Mount      ... MORE

VIDEO: What Happens If You Give A Cop Some Coke

America Has A Black-Market Problem, Not A Drug Problem

by Conor Friedersdorf.     General John F. Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he argued, as generals tend to do, that he has inadequate resources to fulfill the missions assigned to him.  Here's how the Associated Press summed up his statement: The U.S.         ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Why Drugs Should Be Legalized

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Radley Balko: Yes, The Drug War Is Pretty Awful

Myth-busting prohibition propaganda.       Last month, I wrote a response to Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in which I laid out many (but by no means all) of the harms caused by the modern-era war on drugs. Now Charles Lane, a columnist and editorial writer here at the Post, has responded to my post. You can read Lane’s response      ... MORE

Stanton Peele: Why We Have Drug Scares

Are there greater social problems we can't face?     How many drug scares can you identify? Jacob Sullum identified these from 2013: marijuana, Salvia divinorum, cocaine,"bath salts," absinthe, Four Loko.  Well, let’s go back a ways.  Of course there was crack.  There were horse tranquilizers.  There was OxyContin.  Before Oxy there were      ... MORE

Scott Shackford: Asset Forfeiture Runs Wild

Case of the coked-up cops.         Asset forfeiture laws give police officers an incentive to bust people with property to seize. But few have taken this practice as far as the police of Sunrise, Florida, who posed as cocaine suppliers to lure targets into town. According to the Broward County Sun Sentinel, which exposed the strategy in October,    ... MORE