ObamaCare’s ‘Sweetheart Deal’ for PhRMA
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn reports that back in March, IMS Health projected slightly negative revenue growth for the pharmaceutical industry but recently changed that projection to 3.5-percent annual growth from 2008 through 2013.
“What changed?” Cohn asks. “A major factor, according to IMS, was the emerging details of health care reform . . . Put it all together, and you have more demand for name-brand drugs . . . enough to boost revenue significantly.” And:
“If this bill is implemented,” the report concludes on page 138, “an increase in prices on new drugs can be expected.”
How could this be happening? Oh yeah:
That brings us back to the deal that the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, which represents those companies, made with the White House and Senate Finance Committee . . .
The industry agreed to embrace health care reform and, later on, launched a massive advertising campaign to promote the cause. In exchange, the White House and Senate Finance–which had been asking various industries to pledge concessions that would help pay for the cost of coverage expansions–promised not to seek more than $80 in reduced payments to drug makers.
To an industry as big and profitable as the drug makers, giving up $80 billion over ten years wouldn’t seem like much of a sacrifice–a point critics started making right away. But if IMS is right, the drug industry wouldn’t even be giving up $80 billion, in any meaningful sense of the term. If anything, it’d be making more money. Maybe quite a lot of it.
Which is what I predicted, both here and here.
Cohn concludes, “the drug industry has enormous leverage in Congress.” But Cohn still supports the president’s health care takeover. Or is it PhRMA’s health care takeover?
Filed under: General; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
CBS News Reports on Prospects for Drug Policy Reform
CBS News has a good report out on recent developments in drug policy, including extensive coverage of the Cato report, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal. Here’s an excerpt:
Portugal’s case is important, Greenwald says, because it provides hard evidence that removes the debate from the realm of speculation.
“If you’re the first state to do it, there’s really no way you can point to evidence of what will or will not happen. … It’s just theory and it’s very abstract,” he said. “The more examples that arise and the more that you can prove that the sky doesn’t fall in,” he said, the more politically feasible drug liberalization will become in the U.S.
So far, Portugal has largely flown under the radar, even in drug policy circles. But Greenwald says that, six months after his paper was released, he’s getting more invitations than ever to present it. In August, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof cited it in a column praising Webb’s reform push.
Read the whole thing. For more Cato scholarship on drug policy, go here.
George Will and Drug Decriminalization
George Will’s latest column takes a look a drug policy and the views of the new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowski. Notably, Will mentions Portugal’s experience with decriminalization of all drugs since 2001 and says Kerlikowski is aware of the Portuguese policy as well. Cato published a report on Portugal’s drug policy in April and the author, Glenn Greenwald, discussed his findings at a Cato policy forum here. George Will’s shifting views on drug policy (toward liberalization) reflect the shifting views of other conservative pundits and the public more generally.
Will appeared on ABC on Sunday, and discussed his views on drug policy. Watch:
For more Cato work on drug policy, go here, here, and here.
‘Reefer Sanity’
Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:
Arguments for and against decriminalization of some or all drugs are familiar by now. Distilled to the basics, the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens and wasted billions that could have been better spent on education and rehabilitation.
By ever-greater numbers, Americans support decriminalizing at least marijuana, which millions admit to having used, including a couple of presidents and a Supreme Court justice. A recent Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor legalization for any purpose, not just medical, up from 31 percent in 2000.
Read the whole thing. For more Cato work, go here.
Good News on Medical Marijuana
The Department of Justice is changing its long-standing policy of ignoring state laws that allow marijuana use for medicinal purposes. This federalism question played out several years ago in the Supreme Court in the Raich case; Cato’s amicus brief is available here.
Cato hosted Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project in March, and you can view the event here. Glenn Greenwald wrote an influential study for Cato on the successful decriminalization of drugs in Portugal. Greenwald notes that he gets more invitations to speak on the subject now than he did when it was published.
A good first step. Fourteen states permit medical marijuana dispensaries; I suspect more are on the way now that this hurdle has been cleared.
Why Is Marijuana Still Illegal?
According to Rasmussen Reports, a majority of Americans believe that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana:
Pot or not, that is the question.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of American adults say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 19% disagree and say pot is worse.
But 25% say both are equally dangerous. Just two percent (2%) say neither is dangerous.
Younger adults are more likely than their elders to view alcohol as the more dangerous of the two.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of women say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, compared to 48% of men. Men by a two-to-one margin over women say pot is riskier, but women are more inclined to say both are dangerous.
Unmarried adults are more critical of alcohol than those who are married. Those with children at home think alcohol is more dangerous than those without kids living with them.
So why are pot users still being tossed into jail?
There are lots of good reasons why people shouldn’t use drugs. But making drug use illegal only compounds the social consequences, turning a moral and health problem into a legal and criminal problem. The result is the worst of both worlds: all of the problems of drug use plus all of the problems of prohibition. Unfortunately, those consequences flow overseas, further undermining fragile societies such as Afghanistan, Colombia, and Mexico and ultimately American security objectives as well.
It’s time to call off the Drug War.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
Argentina Decriminalizes Personal Drug Consumption
Following in Mexico’s footsteps last week, the Supreme Court of Argentina has unanimously ruled today on decriminalizing the possession of drugs for personal consumption.
For those who might be concerned with the idea of an “activist judiciary,” the Court’s decision was based on a case brought by a 19 year-old who was arrested in the street for possession of two grams of marijuana. He was convicted and sentenced to a month and a half in prison, but challenged the constitutionality of the drug law based on Article 19 of the Argentine Constitution:
The private actions of men which in no way offend public order or morality, nor injure a third party, are only reserved to God and are exempted from the authority of judges. No inhabitant of the Nation shall be obliged to perform what the law does not demand nor deprived of what it does not prohibit.
Today, the Supreme Court ruled that personal drug consumption is covered by that privacy clause stipulated in Article 19 of the Constitution since it doesn’t affect third parties. Questions still remain, though, on the extent of the ruling. However, the government of President Cristina Fernández has fully endorsed the Court’s decision and has vowed to promptly submit a bill to Congress that would define the details of the decriminalization policies.
According to some reports, Brazil and Ecuador are considering similar steps. They would be wise to follow suit.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Law and Civil Liberties
Kristof on the Drug War
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cites the Cato report about Decriminalization of Drugs in Portugal by Glenn Greenwald. Here’s an excerpt:
Above all, it’s time for a rethink of our drug policy. The point is not to surrender to narcotics, but to learn from our approach to both tobacco and alcohol. Over time, we have developed public health strategies that have been quite successful in reducing the harm from smoking and drinking.
If we want to try a public health approach to drugs, we could learn from Portugal. In 2001, it decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use. Ordinary drug users can still be required to participate in a treatment program, but they are no longer dispatched to jail.
“Decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal,” notes a report this year from the Cato Institute. It notes that drug use appears to be lower in Portugal than in most other European countries, and that Portuguese public opinion is strongly behind this approach.
A new United Nations study, World Drug Report 2009, commends the Portuguese experiment and urges countries to continue to pursue traffickers while largely avoiding imprisoning users. Instead, it suggests that users, particularly addicts, should get treatment.
Senator Webb has introduced legislation that would create a national commission to investigate criminal justice issues — for such a commission may be the best way to depoliticize the issue and give feckless politicians the cover they need to institute changes.
Good stuff. Read the whole thing.
More Anti-Drug Aid to Mexico?
The Washington Post reports that despite reports of widespread violence and human rights abuses since Mexico increased its fight against the drug trade, the U.S. government is considering pumping more money to their failing efforts:
The Obama administration has concluded that Mexico is working hard to protect human rights while its army and police battle the drug cartels, paving the way for the release of millions of dollars in additional federal aid.
The Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.4 billion assistance program passed by Congress to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, requires the State Department to state that the country is taking steps to protect human rights and to punish police officers and soldiers who violate civil guarantees. Congress may withhold 15 percent of the annual funds — about $100 million so far — until the Obama administration offers its seal of approval for Mexico’s reform efforts.
…In recent weeks, after detailed allegations in the media of human rights abuses, the Mexican military said that it has received 1,508 complaints of human rights abuses in 2008 and 2009. It did not say how the cases were resolved, but said that the most serious cases involved forced disappearances, murder, rape, robbery, illegal searches and arbitrary arrests. Human rights groups contend that only a few cases have been successfully prosecuted.
Sending additional anti-drug aid to Mexico is a case of pouring more money into a hopelessly flawed strategy. President Felipe Calderon’s decision to make the military the lead agency in the drug war–a decision the United States backed enthusiastically–has backfired. Not only has that strategy led to a dramatic increase in violence, but contrary to the State Department report, the Mexican military has committed serious human rights abuses. Even worse, the military is now playing a much larger role in the country’s affairs. Until now, Mexico was one of the few nations in Latin America that did not have to worry about the military posing a threat to civilian rule. That can no longer be an automatic assumption.
Washington needs to stop pressuring its neighbor to do the impossible. As long as the United States and other countries foolishly continue the prohibition model with regard to marijuana, cocaine, and other currently illegal drugs, a vast black market premium will exist, and the Mexican drug cartels will grow in power. At a minimum, the United States should encourage Calderon to abandon his disastrous confrontational strategy toward the cartels. Better yet, the United States should take the lead in de-funding the cartels by legalizing drugs and eliminating the multi-billion-dollar black market premium.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; General
Drug Policy Debate Is Under Way in Latin America. What About the U.S.?
The First Latin American Conference on Drug Policies was held last week in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was a high-profile event sponsored by the United Nations, the Pan-American Health Organization, the Anti-Drug Latin American Initiative on Drugs and Democracy, the Open Society Foundation Institute, and the Dutch and British embassies. Among the participants were high ranking government officials and experts from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru.
According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the main conclusion of the conference was that:
The tough approach adopted by Latin America and the US over the past two decades to combat drug trafficking and consumption has failed miserably and a new, more humanitarian view focused on decriminalizing possession for personal consumption and helping addicts while concentrating efforts in fighting large traffickers must be adopted.
My colleague Ian Vásquez and I have written before on how Latin Americans are increasingly getting fed up with the War on Drugs. A serious and open debate about the future of drug policy in Latin America seems to be underway. The question remains on whether Washington is paying any attention to this.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; International Economics and Development; Law and Civil Liberties
End War–At Least the Drug War
War is an awful thing. Yet, to show they are serious, politicians constantly use the “war” analogy. A “war on poverty.” An “energy war.” The “drug war.”
Yet militarizing these and other issues is precisely the wrong way to deal with them. So it is with the drug war, which has come most to resemble a real war. Indeed, more Mexicans have been dying in their “drug war” than Americans have been dying in Iraq.
It’s time to call a truce. Writes Sherwood Ross:
Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has renounced even the use of the phrase “War on Drugs” on grounds it favors incarceration of offenders rather than treatment. But talk is no substitute for action.
To his credit, Obama has long appeared to be open to a fresh approach. In an address at Howard University on Sept. 28, 2007, then Sen. Obama said, “I think it’s time we took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first time nonviolent drug users for decades.”
“We will give first-time, non-violent drug offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior,” he added. “So let’s reform this system. Let’s do what’s smart. Let’s do what’s just.”
And as prison overcrowding worsens and governors currently whine they can’t balance budgets, the public might get some real relief.Last year, more than 700,000 of the country’s 20-million pot smokers were arrested for marijuana possession, according to NORML, an advocacy lobby that works for decriminalization. Over the past decade, 5-million folks got arrested on marijuana charges, 90% of which were for “simple possession, not trafficking or sale,” NORML says.
“Regardless of whether one is a ‘drug warrior’ or a ‘drug legalizer,” writes Bob Barr in the May 25 Atlanta Journal Constitution, “it is difficult if not impossible to defend the 38-year old war on drugs as a success.”
Drug abuse is a serious social problem. But so is alcoholism. And many other social (mis)behaviors. We should start treating it as a social, health, and moral problem, not as a matter for the criminal law.
President Obama: End this war!
Tom Tancredo Says: Legalize Drugs!
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo is no libertarian. After all, he made his name attacking immigration. But the former member is now speaking politically painful truths.
Yesterday he spoke to a local Republican group in Denver:
Admitting that it may be “political suicide” former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said its time to consider legalizing drugs.
He spoke Wednesday to the Lincoln Club of Colorado, a Republican group that’s been active in the state for 90 years. It’s the first time Tancredo has spoken on the drug issue. He ran for president in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform that has brought him passionate support and criticism.
Tancredo noted that he has never used drugs, but said the war has failed.
“I am convinced that what we are doing is not working,” he said.
Tancredo told the group that the country has spent billions of dollars capturing, prosecuting and jailing drug dealers and users, but has little to show for it.
“It is now easier for a kid to get drugs at most schools in America that it is booze,” he said.
He said the violent drug battles in Mexico are moving north. A recent ABC News report profiled how easy it has become for violent drug cartels to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Drug enforcement officials told ABC that Denver is a hub city for distribution.
It’s time for politicians like Tancredo to start telling the truth while they are still in office.
The War in Afghanistan Is about to Turn Nastier
While Iraq’s security situation has been improving–though the possibility of revived sectarian violence remains all too real–the conflict in Afghanistan has been worsening. The challenge for allied (which means mostly American) forces is obvious, which is why the Obama Administration is sending more troops.
But the administration risks wrecking the entire enterprise by turning American forces into drug warriors.
American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations.
The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency. The additional troops, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to reverse the course of the seven-year war, will roughly double the number already in southern Afghanistan. The troops already fighting there are universally seen as overwhelmed. In many cases, the Americans will be pushing into areas where few or no troops have been before.
Through extortion and taxation, the Taliban are believed to reap as much as $300 million a year from Afghanistan’s opium trade, which now makes up 90 percent of the world’s total. That is enough, the Americans say, to sustain all of the Taliban’s military operations in southern Afghanistan for an entire year.
“Opium is their financial engine,” said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “That is why we think he will fight for these areas.”
The Americans say that their main goal this summer will be to provide security for the Afghan population, and thereby isolate the insurgents.
But because the opium is tilled in heavily populated areas, and because the Taliban are spread among the people, the Americans say they will have to break the group’s hold on poppy cultivation to be successful.
No one here thinks that is going to be easy.
Indeed.
The basic problem is that opium–and cannabis, of which Afghanistan is also the world’s largest producer–funds not only the Taliban, but also warlords who back the Karzai government and, most important, the Afghan people. The common estimate is that drugs provide one-third of Afghanistan’s economic output and benefit a comparable proportion of the population. Making war on opium inevitably means making war on the Afghan people.
U.N. Official: Portugal’s Policy ‘Appears to be Working’
Over at Drug War Rant, Peter Guither notes the strange reaction of a drug policy official to the new Cato report, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Glenn Greenwald’s excellent report (on the successful decriminalization of all drugs in Portugal for personal use) was picked up by Scientific American: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
What really caught my attention in this article was that they got the UNODC to agree that it seemed to work, but the response was Kafkaesque.
Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal “appears to be working.” He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, “because it smacks of legalization.” Yes, decrim works, but we don’t support something that actually works because it sounds like something we’re afraid want to talk about. Right.
A spokesperson for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office’s new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.Well, I guess no policy is better than what we’re used to.
Glenn Greenwald has more on the reaction to his report here.
New Study: ‘Drug Decriminalization in Portugal’
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.
In a new study, constitutional lawyer and Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald examines the Portuguese model and the data concerning drug-related trends in Portugal, and argues that, “judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.”
Greenwald will speak at the Cato Institute Friday, April 3, about the success of the decriminalization program.
Events This Week
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
POLICY FORUM – Can the Market Provide Choice and Secure Health Coverage Even for High-Cost Illnesses?
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
In a study recently published by the Cato Institute, economist John Cochrane argues that the market can solve a huge piece of the health care puzzle: providing secure, life-long health insurance and a choice of health plans to even the sickest patients. The key, Cochrane explains, is to eliminate government policies that force the healthy to subsidize the sick, such as the tax preference for employer-sponsored coverage and other attempts to impose price controls on health insurance premiums.
Featuring John H. Cochrane, Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; Bradley Herring, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; moderated by Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
Please register to attend this event, or watch free online.
Friday, April 3, 2009
P
OLICY FORUM – Drug Decriminalization in Portugal
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
In 2001, Portugal began a remarkable policy experiment, decriminalizing all drugs, including cocaine and heroin.
In a new paper for the Cato Institute, attorney and author Glenn Greenwald closely examines the Portugal experiment and concludes that the doomsayers were wrong. There is now a widespread consensus in Portugal that decriminalization has been a success. The debate in Portugal has shifted rather dramatically to minor adjustments in the existing arrangement. There is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. Join us for a discussion about Glenn Greenwald’s field research in Portugal and what lessons his findings may hold for drug policies in other countries.
Featuring Glenn Greenwald, Attorney and Best-selling Author; with comments by Peter Reuter, Department of Criminology, University of Maryland; moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.
Please register to attend this event, or watch free online.
Jim Webb and Criminal Justice
Senator Jim Webb (D-Va) is calling for a national commission to review the American criminal justice system from top to bottom. Good for him. With more than seven million people under criminal justice supervision (prison, parole, probation), a thorough review is desperately needed. You can tell that Webb is new to the Congress because he is raising a subject that most of the long term incumbents would rather not discuss. As Glenn Greenwald observes:
For a Senator like Webb to spend his time trumpeting the evils of excessive prison rates, racial disparities in sentencing, the unjust effects of the Drug War, and disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons is precisely the opposite of what every single political consultant would recommend that he do. There’s just no plausible explanation for what Webb’s actions other than the fact that he’s engaged in the noblest and rarest of conduct: advocating a position and pursuing an outcome because he actually believes in it and believes that, with reasoned argument, he can convince his fellow citizens to see the validity of his cause. And he is doing this despite the fact that it potentially poses substantial risks to his political self-interest and offers almost no prospect for political reward. Webb is far from perfect — he’s cast some truly bad votes since being elected — but, in this instance, not only his conduct but also his motives are highly commendable.
Read the whole thing.
And speaking of Glenn Greenwald, he will be here at Cato this Friday to discuss his new study for Cato, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal. Portugal is treating drug use as a health problem, not a crime problem, and it is working rather well. When Senator Webb’s commission gets assembled, this report ought to be at the top of its reading list.
To register for the Greenwald forum, go here. For a discussion on mass incarceration, go here. For more Cato work on crime and drugs, go here and here.
The Price of the Drug War
Critics of the drug war long have pointed out how criminalizing drug use creates crime. America has been through this experience before, with Prohibition. Just look at Prohibition-era Chicago with pervasive corruption and mob warfare.
Unfortunately, the experience is being repeated in Mexico. And the violence is spilling over the border into the U.S. Reports the New York Times:
Sgt. David Azuelo stepped gingerly over the specks of blood on the floor, took note of the bullet hole through the bedroom skylight, raised an eyebrow at the lack of furniture in the ranch-style house and turned to his squad of detectives investigating one of the latest home invasions in this southern Arizona city.
A 21-year-old man had been pistol-whipped throughout the house, the gun discharging at one point, as the attackers demanded money, the victim reported. His wife had been bathing their 3-month-old son when the intruders arrived.
“At least they didn’t put the gun in the baby’s mouth like we’ve seen before,” Sergeant Azuelo said. That same afternoon this month, his squad was called to the scene of another home invasion, one involving the abduction of a 14-year-old boy.
This city, an hour’s drive north of the Mexican border, is coping with a wave of drug crime the police suspect is tied to the bloody battles between Mexico’s drug cartels and the efforts to stamp them out.
Since officials here formed a special squad last year to deal with home invasions, they have counted more than 200 of them, with more than three-quarters linked to the drug trade. In one case, the intruders burst into the wrong house, shooting and injuring a woman watching television on her couch. In another, in a nearby suburb, a man the police described as a drug dealer was taken from his home at gunpoint and is still missing.
Tucson is hardly alone in feeling the impact of Mexico’s drug cartels and their trade. In the past few years, the cartels and other drug trafficking organizations have extended their reach across the United States and into Canada. Law enforcement authorities say they believe traffickers distributing the cartels’ marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs are responsible for a rash of shootings in Vancouver, British Columbia, kidnappings in Phoenix, brutal assaults in Birmingham, Ala., and much more.
United States law enforcement officials have identified 230 cities, including Anchorage, Atlanta, Boston and Billings, Mont., where Mexican cartels and their affiliates “maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors,” as a Justice Department report put it in December. The figure rose from 100 cities reported three years earlier, though Justice Department officials said that may be because of better data collection methods as well as the spread of the organizations.
Washington officials want to believe that throwing more money at the Mexican government will solve the problem. But there’s nothing in the experience of Afghanistan, Colombia, or many other drug production and smuggling centers to suggest that more enforcement, especially by a government as weak as that in Mexico City, will end the drug trade.
Only taking money out of drug production and sales will end the violence. And that means no longer treating what is fundamentally a health and moral problem as a criminal problem. Legalizing adult drug use may not be a great solution, but it would be a vast improvement over drug prohibition, which promotes violent crime while tens of millions of Americans still use illicit substances.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
Republicans Rediscover Their Big-Government Principles
Sen. Chuck Grassley, who can always be counted on to stick the federal government’s nose where it doesn’t belong, is criticizing Attorney General Eric Holder’s teeny-tiny steps toward a less oppressive enforcement of drug prohibition. Holder said on Wednesday “that federal agents will target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law. This is a departure from policy under the Bush administration, which targeted dispensaries under federal law even if they complied with the state’s law allowing sales of medical marijuana.”
Grassley says that marijuana is a “gateway” drug to the use of harder drugs and that Holder “is not doing health care reform any good.”
As Tim Lynch and I wrote in the Cato Handbook for Policymakers:
President Bush . . . has spoken of the importance of the constitutional principle of federalism. Shortly after his inauguration, Bush said, “I’m going to make respect for federalism a priority in this administration.” Unfortunately, the president’s actions have not matched his words. Federal police agents and prosecutors continue to raid medical marijuana clubs in California and Arizona.
And as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the power of the federal government to regulate medical marijuana:
If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
That’s the principle that Chuck Grassley defends. Republicans claim to be the small-government party — and President Obama’s policies on taxes, spending, and regulation certainly justify a view that the GOP is, if not a small-government party, at least the smaller-government party — but they forget those principles when it comes to imposing their social values through federal force.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Law and Civil Liberties
Drug Prohibition’s Role in Mexico’s Violence
Since January 2007 there have been more than 6,800 drug-war related deaths in Mexico, and Mexican drug cartels continue to expand their operations in American cities. Washington’s response has been to expand its prohibitionist efforts with the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.Mexico anti-drug-trafficking program. Historically, however, prohibitionist policies have had little success in reducing the flow of drugs. Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato’s Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, suggests a new strategy must be tried.
You can view the full event here.
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