Drug War

Republican Politicians Are Incorrigible Drug Warriors

by Laurence M. Vance March 15, 2021

The federal government considers growing, distributing, buying, selling, possessing, or using marijuana to be a criminal offense, punishable by fines and imprisonment. Possession of marijuana will get you a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a minimum fine of $1,000 for a first conviction. Yet there are fourteen states (plus the District of Columbia) where the recreational use ...

Marijuana Wins

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2021

Who really won the 2020 election? Was it Donald J. Trump or Joseph R. Biden? This is a question that will be argued for years to come. And because it is a highly partisan political question, it may never result in a satisfactory answer. There was one clear winner in the 2020 election, though, and it wasn’t Trump or ...

A Catastrophic Misconception and Omission

by Laurence M. Vance September 2, 2020

“Legalizing pot is a catastrophic mistake,” says self-proclaimed marijuana expert Kevin Sabet in an opinion piece in Newsweek. The fact that thirty-three states have legalized the medical use of marijuana and eleven states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, all without catastrophic results, says otherwise. The only thing catastrophic is the misconception and omission in Sabet’s article. Sabet ...

The Police State’s War on Weed and Backyard Gardens

by John W. Whitehead August 27, 2020

They came again this morning at about 8:00 o’clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened … I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a ...

Magic Mushrooms

by Laurence M. Vance August 21, 2020

Scientifically speaking, mushrooms are said to be the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Typical are the button or common mushrooms classified as agaricus bisporus that are widely cultivated for food around the world. Governments don’t care how many of these mushrooms that ...

Defund the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance July 13, 2020

Is it possible to defund the police without causing crime to increase and anarchy to ensue? Certainly. Just defund the drug war. After the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, a movement was started to defund the Minneapolis Police Department. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in 2020, ...

The Wisconsin Model

by Laurence M. Vance June 8, 2020

A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision should serve as a model for transforming the United States into a free society. Here is what led to it. On March 24, the Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, a Democrat, directed state health officials to issue a stay-at-home order for Wisconsin prohibiting non-essential travel in order to slow the spread ...

Drugs, Dogs, and Democrats

by Laurence M. Vance November 25, 2019

Although the word federalism does not appear in the Constitution, it is one of the most important and innovative concepts in it. The states of the United States of America created the national government in 1789. The states had been in existence as independent, sovereign colonies for many, many years. Only Georgia (1732) among the original thirteen colonies was not ...

Oklahoma Frees Some of Its Political Prisoners

by Laurence M. Vance November 15, 2019

Communist and other authoritarian and totalitarian governments around the world have always, throughout history and at this very time, arrested (or sometimes just simply seized) and jailed (or sometimes just killed) political dissidents and other nonconformists whom they considered to be “enemies of the state” whose only crime was disagreeing with some government law or policy. Those so horribly ...

Why I Am So Passionate about Ending the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2019

Since 2009, I have written about ninety articles on the subject of the drug war, many of them for the Future of Freedom Foundation, and some of them for this very publication. I have maintained throughout these articles that the war on drugs is a monstrous evil that has ruined more lives than drugs themselves; that the war on ...

What Robert Reich Failed to Say about Marijuana Legalization

by Laurence M. Vance June 20, 2019

Professor, economist, author, and political commentator Robert Reich is best known for being President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. Before that he held positions in the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was a professor at Harvard. After leaving the Labor Department he taught at Brandeis University, ran for ...

Asking the Wrong Question about Marijuana

by Laurence M. Vance February 11, 2019

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby recently announced that her office will no longer prosecute any marijuana possession cases “because prosecuting these cases no public safety value, disproportionately impacts communities of color and erodes public trust, and is a costly and counterproductive use of limited resources.” “We need to get serious about prioritizing what actually makes us ...