All Posts Tagged With: "War on Drugs"
Politics and Prohibition
Writing in the December 2001 Atlantic Monthly, Judge Richard Posner called for an end to the “war on drugs.” He is among a small but growing number of eminent scholars and officials who openly advocate that the state get out of the drug-prohibition business. Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr. have long pressed for [...]
1Mar2002 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Ten Things You Can’t Say in America by Larry Elder
St. Martin’s Press · 2000 · 367 pages · $23.95 cloth; $14.95 paperback Reviewed by William H. Peterson There is hope yet for America. Larry Elder is a host of a successful talk show on KABC Radio in Los Angeles and a nationally syndicated columnist who wins the imprimatur of a major book publisher to [...]
1Oct2001 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedRacial Profiling and the State
Virtually everyone wants to be on record opposing racial profiling in law enforcement, the use of race or ethnicity to help determine whom the police should suspect of criminal activity. Nothing is easier than opposing it. That is understandable. There is something unseemly about targeting someone for a criminal investigation simply because of his skin [...]
1Jun2001 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedThe War on Drugs Opens a New Front
The capacity for self-aggrandizement by government officials is boundless. Napoleon was not content just to rule over nearly all of Europe. He had to try to expand his power until he ruled all of it. Ultimately, that ambition proved to be his undoing. For our hordes of politicians and government functionaries, however, the quest for [...]
1Apr2001 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Robert Downey Jr. Problem
Drugs can exercise a powerful hold over a human being. What other lesson is possible from the arrest of actor Robert Downey Jr., yet again, on drug charges?
His life is a tragedy: a gifted actor, with access to the sort of money and fame of which most people only dream, succumbs to drugs and ends up in jail. His latest arrest came only three months after being released from prison.
1Mar2001 | Doug Bandow | 1 comment | ContinuedEat, Drink and Be Merry: America’s Doctor Tells You Why the Health Experts Are Wrong by Dean Edell, M.D.
Quill • 2000 • 347 pages • $14.00 paperback Dr. Dean Edell is the host of a widely syndicated radio program. He has distinguished himself in the medical communication profession by providing sound and unbiased medical advice; exposing sloppy, irresponsible, and dangerous health reporting; revealing the downfalls of government regulation; and crusading against the politicization [...]
1Feb2001 | Charles Stampul | 0 comments | ContinuedThe End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy
The first sentence of this provocative book reads: “Money—as we know it—is coming to an end.” Money “as we know it” consists of cash (notes and coins) issued by government and checkable deposits issued by regulated banks. Paying with cash preserves your privacy, but is inconvenient for many transactions. Paying by check or debit card [...]
1Oct2000 | Lawrence H. White | 0 comments | ContinuedProperty and Liberty
Property is “the guardian of all other rights,” as Arthur Lee of Virginia wrote in 1775.[1] The Supreme Court declared in 1897: “In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.”[2] Unfortunately, legislators, judges, and political philosophers in the twentieth century [...]
1Sep2000 | James Bovard | 5 comments | ContinuedProgress in Pain Relief
“Among the remedies which it has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.” —Thomas Sydenham, M.D. (1680) The authors of the textbook of pharmacology used when I was a medical student (during World War II) stated: “The opium alkaloids have no [...]
1Sep2000 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedThe War Against Drug-Speech
The “thought police” are back, and with a vengeance. Pending congressional legislation casts politicians and law enforcement as modern-day book burners. Legislators have their pick of three separate bills that would impose a ten-year felony sentence on anyone who communicates, by any means, “information pertaining to the . . . manufacture of a controlled substance,” [...]
1Jun2000 | Paul Armentano | 1 comment | ContinuedShattered Lives: Portraits From America’s Drug War by Mikki Norris, Chris Conrad, and Virginia Resner
Creative Xpressions Press • 1998 • 118 pages • $19.95 paperback Although many writers criticize the drug war, few, if any, more poignantly illustrate its human casualties than the authors of Shattered Lives: Portraits From America’s Drug War. Mikki Norris, Chris Conrad, and Virginia Resner paint a human face on the thousands of incarcerated Americans [...]
1Feb2000 | Paul Armentano | 0 comments | ContinuedBought and Sold: Drug Warriors and the Media
Americans pride themselves on their independent press. Yet some media outlets and networks are compromising their autonomy and objectivity by welcoming the federal government as a major paying advertiser. This alarming union is the latest outgrowth of the “war on drugs,” and the launch of a new $775 million White House campaign to promote its [...]
1Oct1999 | Paul Armentano | 1 comment | ContinuedBreak This Vile Addiction
Janneral Denson, who is black, was seven-months pregnant when she returned to her home in Florida after visiting Jamaica. U.S. Customs agents at the Fort Lauderdale airport greeted her with accusations that she had swallowed packets of drugs to smuggle them into the United States. Ignoring a physician’s opinion that Ms. Denson’s stomach contained no [...]
1Sep1999 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 4 comments | ContinuedAsset Forfeiture Run Amok
Based on the word of an “informant,” who was a self-confessed addict with two prior felony convictions, the Oakland County, Michigan, police searched all the buildings for evidence of drug dealing. They found no drugs, no drug paraphernalia, no records of drug transactions, and no other evidence of drug dealing. They did find one small plastic bag of powder, which on examination, turned out to be Slim Fast.
1Nov1998 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedTaxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination
Roy Cordato is Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina. As faith in big government programs has waned in the past two decades so has the ability of the government to raise revenues through income-tax increases. Until recently, deficit spending has been the route around the public’s resistance, but the people [...]
1Nov1998 | Roy Cordato | 1 comment | ContinuedMedicine for the Sick
Mr. Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. The Drug War: seldom has so much harm been done to so many for so little purpose. Among the most tragic victims [...]
1Oct1997 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Big Government Is All About
This article is excerpted from Libertarianism: A Primer. Government has an important role to play in a free society. It is supposed to protect our rights, creating a society in which people can live their lives and undertake projects reasonably secure from the threat of murder, assault, theft, or foreign invasion. By the standards of [...]
1Apr1997 | David Boaz | 1 comment | Continued-
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