Here’s some recent commentary on California’s Prop. 19 ballot initiative:

• Today, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof makes the case against the war on cannabis.  Although there is no mention of Cato, Kristoff mentions the work of our senior fellow, Jeff Miron, and links to our report on the Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition.  Kristoff also mentions Portugal’s drug decriminalization policies and links to a Time Magazine article that highlights the Cato report on that subject by Glenn Greenwald.
• Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch make the case that Prop. 19 is the most important item before the voters in this election cycle.  Even more important than whether Barbara Boxer can continue her work in the Senate?  Yes, read the whole thing.  Dan Mitchell has additional thoughts here.
• George Soros is in the news for helping the Prop. 19 effort with a one million dollar contribution.  He explained his reasons for supporting Prop. 19 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

For additional Cato scholarship on drug policy, go here.

Prop. 19 Roundup is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Progressives are outraged that the Supreme Court overturned limits on corporate political advertising last month. Here’s why they should be rejoicing.

• Policy forum today at Cato: “Will the Senate Health Care Bill Keep the Poor Poor?” Click here to watch live from 12:00-1:30 PM EST.

• Idea of the day: Cut the Commerce Department to boost real business.

• Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron: “Economists find weak or contradictory evidence that higher government spending spurs the economy. Substantial research, however, does find that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that fiscal adjustments—attempts to reduce deficits by raising taxes or lowering expenditure—work better when they focus on tax cuts.”

• Cato’s Ilya Shapiro wrapping up daily dispatches from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. More here.

• Podcast: “How Many Libertarians?” featuring David Boaz.

Monday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Another day, another IPCC-gate.

• Why remaining in Afghanistan and creating a stable government there is not a precondition to keeping America safe. For more, watch the debate on Bloggingheads.

• Jeffrey Miron: “Leave Mideast, end terrorism.”

• Could Iran’s nuclear program be a sacrificial pawn?

• Globalization: A curse or a cure?

• Podcast: “Liberate Bone Marrow Donors” featuring Jeff Rowes of the Institute for Justice.

Monday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Jeffrey Miron on Obama’s bank fees: “Bailing out the banks was wrong, but a new tax won’t make it right.”

• What Constitution? If Congress can order you to buy health insurance, why stop there?

• Don’t poke the bear: There is a proposal in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to rearm the country of Georgia.

• Why the tragedy in Haiti cries out for swift action from private donors and yes, governments.

• Podcast: “Obama and Immigration in 2010” featuring Daniel Griswold.

Weekend Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• The “Karzai problem” in Afghanistan: “The U.S. has assisted and sponsored a corrupt, illegitimate and slightly autocratic regime there while purporting to advance the values of freedom and democracy.”

• Did it work? Cato’s Jeffrey Miron debates the effectiveness of Obama’s stimulus plan.

• The Democrats’ internal battle: Why they can’t agree on how to overhaul the health care system.

• The limits of American power in Afghanistan.

• “Peter Bauer and the Economics of Prosperity“

Monday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is about the failure of the drug war.  Excerpt:

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Good stuff.  Jeff Miron is a Cato senior fellow.  Here’s a link to Cato’s new study, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal,” by Glenn Greenwald.  More Cato research here.

Kristof: Drugs Won the War is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Jeffrey Miron, Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard’s Department of Economics, has joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow.

“I am delighted to be working with Cato,” Miron said. “This is a crucial moment in our nation’s history, and Cato’s mission – increased understanding of the virtues of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace - has rarely been more important.”

Miron will help Cato’s economic team promote dynamic market capitalism and economic freedom through media appearances and policy analyses, in addition to speaking engagements and outreach to the academic community.  He is the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition (Independent Institute, 2004) and The Economics of Seasonal Cycles (MIT Press, 1996), in addition to numerous opeds and journal articles.

Miron will retain his affiliation with Harvard.  Prior to joining Harvard, he served as chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University.  Miron received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mark Calabria, a veteran staff member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs, has joined the Cato Institute as Director of Financial Services Regulation.

“I join Cato with a great sense of excitement and urgency,” Calabria said. “Cato has long been a strong, and sometimes the only, voice for expanding and protecting individual choice.  We are confronted with stark choices regarding the regulation of our financial markets: whether to expand the role of politics in deciding who will get credit and what institutions will fail.  In a time when markets and freedom are being questioned and attacked, Cato’s mission of understanding the impact of government proposals is all the more necessary.”

Calabria will lead Cato’s efforts in developing solutions to what ails the U.S. financial markets that do not include more oppressive government regulation.  He will also help educate the public, via media appearances and other outreach, as to how the government itself contributed heavily to the disruptions now occurring in the financial sector.

In addition to his work on Capitol Hill, Calabria served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, and was also senior economist at the National Association of Realtors. Calabria earned his  Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University.

“We are delighted to have two of the nation’s most effective proponents of free markets and individual liberty on board now at Cato,” said Cato founder and president Ed Crane. “Mark Calabria and Jeff Miron are distinguished economists who will play an important role in advancing Cato’s mission in the months and years ahead.”

Miron, Calabria Join Cato Institute is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Does the policy of setting a national drinking age reduce highway fatalities?

In Friday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University, talks about the research he and student Elina Tetelbaum (now a Yale Law student) carried out on that question:

What we find is that the only area where there is any evidence for efficacy of the law are states that adopted a higher drinking on their own without any compulsion. For the states that the feds forced … to raise [their] drinking age, there is no evidence of a beneficial reduction in traffic fatalities… We conclude quite strongly that it’s only when a state chooses a higher drinking age on its own, it’s only when it decides its going to devote enforcement resources and when there’s public sentiment to support that, that you see those sorts of beneficial effects.

Miron and Tetelbaum offer a more detailed look at their findings in the Spring issue of Cato’s magazine Regulation, which will be released March 26.

Friday Podcast: ‘Drinking Ages and Highway Fatalities’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog