Drug War

The Libertarian Angle – Drug War: Decriminalization or Legalization?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 22, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob discusses the inherent evil of the drug war. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

Prohibition’s Killing Fields

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2015

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 400 pages. When American bombs began to rain down on Vietnam, the country’s water buffalo reacted queerly. The fields full of opium had always been there, but once the U.S. munitions fell around them, the water buffalo left their pastures ...

Stop the Wars on Drugs & Terrorism (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation April 30, 2015

The Future of Freedom Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty presented a one-day conference on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin at the LBJ Auditorium in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library on Saturday, April 11, 2015, that addressed the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. “Stop the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism” featured an ...

Conference: “Stop the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism”

by Future of Freedom Foundation April 10, 2015

The Future of Freedom Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty present a one-day conference on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin at the LBJ Auditorium in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library on Saturday, April 11, 2015, that will address the war on drugs and the war on ...

The Libertarian Angle: Chasing the Scream: The Drug War

by Future of Freedom Foundation February 18, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the drug war. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The Root of Support for the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2015

Although many states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, some states have decriminalized the possession of certain amounts of marijuana, and four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, bipartisan support for the drug war throughout the United States continues unabated and unquestioned. Why? Why do so many Americans think that the ...

A Small Victory for Freedom

by Laurence M. Vance November 6, 2014

One of the most ridiculous things about the government’s war on drugs is that it classifies marijuana in the same category as dangerous drugs such as heroin, thus making marijuana worse than morphine, cocaine, methamphetamine, and phenobarbital. Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). As a Schedule I drug, marijuana ...

The Libertarian Angle: Highway Robbery and the Drug War

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 8, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: Highway Robbery and the Drug War. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The Eighteenth Amendment and the War on Drugs

by Laurence M. Vance January 16, 2014

For more than 40 years now the U.S. government has been waging its War on Drugs. After declaring drug abuse to be “America’s public enemy number one” and “a national emergency,” Richard Nixon employed military rhetoric as he launched his war on individual liberty, personal freedom, and private property, calling for a “full-scale attack” on drug abuse “on many ...

Pot Crusaders or Freedom Crusaders?

by Laurence M. Vance September 16, 2013

The states of New Hampshire and Illinois recently legalized marijuana for medical use. New Hampshire’s governor, Maggie Hassan, signed House Bill 573 into law on July 23. The bill allows patients to purchase up to two ounces of marijuana from four regional dispensaries. To qualify for the program, a person must have “both a debilitating disease such as ...

Stop-and-Frisk: How Government Creates Problems, Then Makes Them Worse

by Sheldon Richman August 14, 2013

Two recent law-enforcement decisions illustrate yet again that when government sets out to solve a problem it created, things get much worse. This week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will keep nonviolent small-scale drug sellers who have no links to criminal organizations from getting caught in the mandatory-minimum-sentence trap. Under current law, judges must impose a ...

The War on Americans

by David S. D'Amato July 1, 2013

That the consumption of certain drugs ought to be proscribed by law is probably taken for granted by most people. The presumption in favor of banning some drugs has become so strong, so embedded in the mainstream of popular discourse as to be practically beyond debate — notwithstanding either philosophical or empirical issues that stand in contradiction to the ...