All Posts Tagged With: "prohibition"
How to End Mexico’s Deadly Drug War
Albert Einstein declared, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” He wasn’t describing the federal government’s nearly century-long war on drugs but he might as well have been.
Despite ample lip-service for “hope” and “change,” the Obama administration’s cynical response to the escalating drug prohibition-related violence [...]
What The Drug Warriors Have Given Us
Does anyone still think the “war on drugs” is a good idea?
That may strike some people as an odd question under the circumstances, so let’s take it from another direction. Have you seen the news stories about the violence on the border being perpetrated by the Mexican whiskey and cigarette cartels?
No? That’s probably because there was no such violence and are no such cartels.
So why are there violent cartels in marijuana, cocaine, and heroin but not in whiskey and cigarettes?
All together now: prohibition.
17Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 8 comments | ContinuedVermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
Timothy Brook has written a fascinating work on the pivotal seventeenth century, one that defies neat categorization. It isn’t a history per se, although it is about a crucial period of history. It isn’t really about economics, but it conveys a considerable amount of economic understanding. Nor is it a work on philosophy, even though [...]
11Jun2009 | George Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedOpening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Law
In recent years there have been numerous highly publicized federal raids against companies that had violated the law by employing illegal aliens. The hapless people were deported and the companies slapped with stiff penalties. Generally, the reaction has been, “Well, it’s about time the government got tough!”
For the most part, the strident voices of the [...]
Alcohol, Prohibition, and the Revenuers
The standard account of America’s experience with alcohol Prohibition centers on ideology. This account states that citizens were so infused with Progressive hubris that they set forth in 1919 on a futile quest to mandate morality by banning the manufacture and sale of liquor. But when they recognized that Prohibition was failing, Americans abandoned the [...]
1Jan2008 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedTrans-Fattened Government
So people dining out in New York City will be protected from unwittingly—or even wittingly—consuming foods containing trans fats. Trans fats are what you get with partially hydrogenated oils and shortenings, which keep foods like French fries from getting soggy and margarine solid at room temperature.
Trans fats will be banned in the city’s restaurants and [...]
The WHO Global Treaty on Tobacco: A Smokescreen for More Government Control
Richard Ebeling is president of FEE.
On May 10 the U.S. government signed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global treaty on tobacco control. While the treaty still has to be ratified by the Senate before it becomes the law of the land, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson declared at the signing: “President [...]
Oh, What a Piece of Work Is a Man
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues.
Will, the manager of the new Globe Theater in London, was frustrated. Tickets were priced alluringly cheap, but he made a nice profit on ale at 2 shillings a mug. However, the customers insisted on smuggling in their own ale, a [...]
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
