David Murray is a policy analyst and writer specializing in drug policy issues. He contributed to The Weekly Standard from 2014 to 2017, focusing extensively on marijuana legalization, the opioid crisis, and the broader consequences of shifting drug policies in the United States. His articles frequently examined the political dimensions of drug enforcement and public health outcomes.
Conventional wisdom has been bullish regarding the potential profits from investing in commercial marijuana businesses, now considered legal in several states but not under federal law. There have even been glossy brochures from consulting firms, offering the lure of potential billions in sales for…
The closing reports on the Obama administration's drug policy were delivered this week. Drug-induced deaths for the year 2015 were reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on December 8, and the youth school survey of drug use for 2016, Monitoring the Future (MTF), was just released by the…
An investigative article in the Sunday, October 23, Washington Post detailed the Obama Justice Department’s actions to hamper the Drug Enforcement Administration's aggressive efforts to stop the deadly diversion of pain medications. The article draws on testimony from multiple sources indicating…
The first year of the Obama administration, 3,278 people in the United States died of heroin overdoses. By 2014 (the most recent year for which there are statistics), that number had more than tripled, with 10,574 heroin deaths. Add to heroin the abuse of narcotic painkillers (analgesics such as…
The results of a Gallup survey released this week reinforce the message from several recent national monitoring instruments that use of marijuana by American adults is surging. From seven percent reporting regular use in 2013, the figure has nearly doubled to 13 percent answering in the affirmative…
The June 28 release of the 2016 DEA National Heroin Threat Assessment addresses the emerging scope of the synthetic opioid threat—particularly from fentanyl, a drug that significantly escalates the current devastating heroin and prescription opioid abuse outbreak. Fentanyl and its analogues, lethal…
It has been another rough couple of weeks for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). After the long-running scandals of shameful wait times, neglect to the point of lives lost, and the need for new leadership, they have faltered again recently with tone-deaf comparisons to Disneyland visits and…
Later today, the White House and the Brennan Center for Justice will host an event pressing for the release of thousands of convicted federal felons in the name of sentencing reform. During this event, titled “The Economic Consequences of the Criminal Justice System," those consequences will likely…
In this political season, the results of polling have proven as problematic as they have consequential. Questions of validity increasingly plague polls at the very moment that the body politic most bends to their will (or to that of the media outlets reporting on them).
Discussing the "sentencing reform" bill now before the Senate—the effect of which would be to provide early release for thousands of federal felons—George Will argues that it will not be enough. That's because the issue is "complex."
The Senate held a hearing last week on the addiction and overdose crisis caused by heroin, illicit trafficking of the extremely potent drug fentanyl, and prescription opiate diversion and misuse. The crisis was responsible for 29,467 American deaths in 2014 alone, and many more in 2015 for which…
While she opposed marijuana decriminalization during her first run for the presidency in 2007, according to Politico, candidate Hillary Clinton now provides support for so-called “medical marijuana.” She attributes her decision to “medical research,” which leads her further to seek a liberalization…
In the July 3, 2015 “Notable and Quotable” column, the Wall Street Journal honors the school reformer, Marva Collins, who died this week at age 78, by resurrecting a 1982 opinion piece about her authored by Paul Gigot. Collins was a fearless supporter of funded tuition vouchers, and herself a…
The Colorado Gazette reports this week that “Colorado is taking a novel approach to marijuana education — not telling people to avoid the drug, just to use it safely.”
In April of this year, the Obama administration announced it would “reformulate” clemency guidelines for federal prison offenders. As the Washington Post described it, “Justice Department Prepares for Clemency Requests from Thousands of Inmates.” The paper claimed that this “unprecedented campaign…