drug legalization

Common sense on drugs

June 15, 2009

  Drugs won the war Good medical decision making requires that we balance risks and benefits.  We ask questions about new drugs, are the risk worth the potential benefits. I have maintained for the life of this blog that the "war on drugs" caused more problems than benefits.  If you look to the right, I [...]

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Some thoughts about illegal drugs

February 13, 2008

The immense popularity of Barack Obama despite his admitted adolescent drug experimentation raises some observations.  As recently as 16 years ago, Bill Clinton claimed that he "didn’t inhale."  I guess he (and most experts) thought that adolescent drug experimentation would disqualify a candidate from serious consideration.  As recently as 8 years ago, George W. Bush [...]

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Considering the war on drugs

February 22, 2007

Long time readers may remember that I would decriminalize all drugs. My thought process in this seemingly radical statement comes from my perception that the "war on drugs" creates more innocent causalities (collateral damage) than do the drugs themselves. This blog entry makes the argument from an economic viewpoint – The Failure of the War [...]

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WSJ on decriminalizing drugs

February 26, 2006

My last rant on this subject: An economic look at medical marijuana Today’s Opinion Journal features this article – Musings About the Drug War Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, [...]

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An economic look at medical marijuana

November 22, 2005

The case for legal pot use A Harvard University professor of economics, Jeffrey Miron, has crunched the numbers, and he’s determined that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion annually in money spent on enforcing dope laws. That breaks down to $5.3 billion in savings for state and local governments, and $2.4 billion in cost reductions [...]

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One of my causes endorsed by Chicago mayor

October 4, 2004

Daley Hints at Change for Ill. Drug Laws "This is absolutely a big deal," said Andy Ko, director of the Drug Policy Reform Project for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state. "You’ve got a mayor in a major American city … coming out in favor of a smart and fair and just drug [...]

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On drug legalization

June 1, 2004

Trent over at Proximal Tubule has ranted today on drug prohibition. He did not realize that I had blogged on this issue last year. Here is his take – Paternalism In Medicine – Part III: The War On Drugs and one of my many posts – Canada providing safe sites of IV drug users First [...]

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