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…
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 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…
Last week, the White House quietly, and unnoticed by any news organization, released the 2015 heroin production estimate for Mexico—it was another huge spike upward to an historic level. The amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico rose to 70 metric tons in 2015, a 67-percent increase over 2014,…
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…
Nearly 50,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2014, the latest year for which there are statistics, with heroin overdose deaths alone increasing 440 percent over the previous seven years. On March 29, at an Atlanta summit on drug overdose deaths, President Barack Obama acknowledged that more…
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."
No one who laments the passing of First Lady Nancy Reagan will fail to acknowledge what has become perhaps her signature contribution to American life. "Just say no," she famously replied to a young school girl who asked her what to do when presented with drug use.
President Obama's National Drug Control Strategy in 2010 first proclaimed the major policy goals of the administration's approach to the drug problem and the goals were to be met by 2015. Not only have they not been met, in critical instances, the policies have been going in the wrong direction,…
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…
After the removal of Ronald Rogers, the long-serving Pardon Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice who failed to please President Obama over issues of clemency, his replacement, Deborah Leff, has begun to operate the new ‘Clemency Project 2014.’ It is an effort to turn felons back on the…
At a Manhattan fundraiser yesterday (as noted by The Hill), potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke of the rioting in Baltimore by invoking a theme of the Obama administration: the need for reform of the criminal justice system.
President Obama this week told an audience in Jamaica that U.S. efforts against illegal drugs were “counterproductive” because they relied too much on incarceration—particularly for “young people who did not engage in violence.”
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…
A poll reported in the Washington Post on September 23 offers positive news for those troubled by the movement to legalize marijuana. It also does not augur well for those pushing more states to follow Colorado and Washington, where legalization is already underway.
President Obama visited Denver this week, was offered marijuana, and laughed. His administration made possible the open marketing and use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state by directing that federal law not be enforced. The president is joined by Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul in…