Scenes from a Moral Panic

From Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine (1997), The Crack Attack: Politics and Media in the Crack Scare. On September 5, 1989, President Bush, speaking from the presidential desk in the Oval Office, announced his plan for achieving “victory over drugs” in his first major prime-time address to the nation, broadcast on all three national [...]

Drug Deaths vs Media Coverage

From the Guardian’s Data Blog comes this neat visualization of poisoning deaths from various drugs and compared to press coverage thereof. The at the comparison for pot in particular. I think this image, which shows the deaths as a proportion of users is probably more relevant when considering the likely social consequences of media bias.

Prohibition Cartoon of the Day

  By Winsor McCay, courtesy of DrugSenseBot. For a few of the victims of contemporary prohibition, see here.

Glenn Beck Suggests Liberalized Medical Marijuana is a Tool of Tyranny

Skip to about the 4-minute mark. What a dick:

Women and Drug Legalization

At the risk of reviving the libertarian misogyny bogeyman, I’ll quote an interesting post from Laura Greenback on why women are on average more opposed to the legalization of marijuana: What could it be? Why would women shy away from this cause? Do men use marijuana more? Do women just hide it better? When I [...]

Selling Weed on Twitter

It is state-sanctioned medical weed, though (Hat tip: @goodiemonster): California won’t let the gays marry but it does let people micro-blog (medical) drug deals. Meet former Northwestern J-school student Dann Halem, who is building an online business selling weed on Twitter. How is this possible you ask? (…) The @artistscollctve Twitter account went up last week and, in [...]

Man Smokes Joint in Parliament

From the New Zealand Herald: A man briefly lit up a cannabis joint in Parliament before being nabbed by security yesterday. The man lit the joint in the public gallery about 5.30pm during the second reading of the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. He was quickly grabbed by security and removed. There was no [...]

Libertarian Music Friday: Black Markets Increase Transaction Costs Edition

Lou Reed and John Cale perform Waiting for the Man. If Lou Reed came up with this song while waiting to buy smack, his time was well spent. I suspect, though, that the net effect of wating for drug dealers (they’re never early, they’re always late) is hugely wasteful.

A Lesson in Comparative Advantage and Liberal Tolerance from Star Trek: TNG

In S01E21 – Symbiosis, we are introduced to a planet which specializes completely in the manufacture of a single drug, all of which is exported to a neighbouring planet. The relevant part is about 6 minutes into this video: The lesson continues in the following video. There is then a discussion of liberal tolerance. Dr Crusher [...]

Alcohol vs. Marijuana Prohibition

Those who favour legalizing marijuana often point out that both the personal and social costs of alcohol are much higher, and argue that it is inconsistent to prohibit pot but not booze on conventional ‘public health’ grounds. That’s fairly difficult to deny, but the further step is often made that it would be preferable to [...]