Drugs

What can be done about Americans’ declining life expectancy?

Is the criminal justice reform bill being considered in the Senate all it’s cracked up to be?

Another good reason not to drop acid.

"That's not funny." - my mom, probably.

When pot goes legal nationwide, what will become of the drug-sniffing K9s?

The commercials avoid the pitfalls of the 'Just Say No' era.

Psychedelic exploration for the NPR set.

The deadly police tactics, insulting oratory, anti-Americanism, and overwhelming popularity of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte.

“Breaking: Trump’s ENTIRE wall just got paid for by ONE person & you won’t believe who!”

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker recently announced that he would continue pushing for rules that would require individuals to complete a drug test when applying for food stamps. Instead of free groceries, able-bodied adults with no children who test positive for drugs would be pointed toward rehab,…

A few years ago I wrote a piece called “Bitcoin Is Dead” and about once a week since then I’ve gotten an email from some aggrieved techno-utopian saying, “Oh yeah? How about issuing a correction—bitcoin rocks!”

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

Public radio doesn't quite know what it wants us to think about the anti-addiction medicine Vivitrol.

Public radio doesn't quite know what it wants us to think about the anti-addiction medicine Vivitrol.

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…

Retired Marine general John Kelly, Donald Trump's selection for Secretary of Homeland Security, is likely to bring a tough-on-drugs mentality to that department. Kevin Baron, the executive editor at Defense One, explains:

The U.S. Surgeon General granted that the country's worsening opioid epidemic received due attention amid the long election season, but said alcohol-related issues are still costlier to the public after the release of a government report on drug addiction and abuse this week.

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…

When FDA officials can't agree, who gets the last say? For individuals afflicted with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), this question has had life-altering consequences, and the answer is still unclear.

What constitutes a "fair" price for a drug? Unsurprisingly, that depends on who's asking the question, as well as who's answering. To get a price that can actually be construed as fair, it is essential that these are not the same entity.

Are these the droids I'm looking for?

Stuart Stevens has found fame and fortune as a political strategist. He is one of the half-dozen or so campaign consultants in America who actually understands both politics and strategy and isn’t just grifting the needy, well-heeled marks who often find themselves compelled to run for office.

The Washington Examiner editorial board has declared the legacy of Barack Obama to be a transformed America—one that trusts its government and institutions less than it did when he became president. Here's an excerpt from the magazine's editorial:

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…

In an iconic scene in Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman's character, Mia, overdoses on heroin and is revived by the administration of an adrenaline injection to the heart.

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…

As fans of My Big Fat Greek Wedding know, virtually anything worthwhile in life is very ancient and very Greek. My dad understood this, and was understandably surprised when he walked into a rheumatology conference several years ago to be confronted by a flashy display featuring "newly approved"…

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…

President Obama will today introduce new executive actions. This time the target opioid abuse and the heroin epidemic.

In the midst of a raging heroin epidemic, Americans just got more bad news: Colombian cocaine production jumped from 250 metric tons (MT) in 2014 to 420 MT in 2015—a 68 percent increase in one year for the nation supplying 95 percent of the cocaine in the United States.

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.

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…

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…

A video of New Jersey governor and Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie movingly addressing a New Hampshire town hall gathering on the subject of drug addiction has garnered a lot of attention this week, with many surprisingly pleased with his remarks.  Christie has set a goal of holding…

Congressional lawmakers and presidential candidates are currently debating criminal justice reform, offering to lessen the legal consequences for “non-violent drug offenders.” For most, the underlying motive is compassion for drug offenders, giving them the chance to avoid a criminal record. Yet…

Remember all the commotion surrounding the first commercials for Viagra? It wasn't just the content per se that had people talking—it was also the voiceover that casually warned you to "call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease in vision or an erection lasting longer than four…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie says America needs a "strong law enforcer as president" in a new 30-second TV ad. In the spot, Christie, a Republican, lists off examples of "lawlessness in America and around the world under Barack Obama," including the terror of ISIS, sanctuary cities for…

Peter Sullivan of The Hill reports that

“We … say for first time non-violent drug offenders, no more prison. They are going to mandatory inpatient drug treatment because this is a disease, and the war on drugs has been a failure. . . . And what we need is a country and a President who will stand up and say this is a disease and we need…

Libertarians in Colorado are flying high after their success in getting marijuana legalized in the state. In our little town of Aspen, there are now seven stores in which eager consumers – I perhaps should say addicts because one user recently held up a store, threatening staff with a hammer,…

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…

On Monday, President Obama announced the results of his war on unjust sentences and the incarceration of large numbers of low-level, non-violent drug offenders. Now in the seventh year of his presidency, he has added just 46 federal felons to the list of those whose sentences he has commuted.

“The quality of mercy is not straine’d,” implored Shakespeare’s Portia, meaning it should not be difficult or forced. But President Obama’s Clemency Project, an effort to free “a whole bunch of good citizens who committed one little mistake” and ended up with more than 10 years in prison, is…

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.” 

Barack Obama took a shot at the war on drugs at a town hall event today in Jamaica. The president, responding to a question from an audience member, even went so far as to call the effort "counterproductive."

Football great Mike Ditka says that, if he had an 8-year-old son right now, he wouldn't let him play football. He made the remarks in an episode of HBO's Real Sports, which will air tonight.

Even in the giddy afterglow of the new Congress, when all things seem possible, few Republicans seriously think that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed in 2015.  More realistically, various politicians have averred that a Republican Congress may have the wherewithal to repeal some of its more…

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.”

For at least eight months in 2013 and 2014, letter carrier Devona Charley of Washington, D.C., delivered more than just letters and junk mail. The twenty-seven year old now-former U.S. Postal Service employee was sentenced to a year and a day in prison plus 6 months of home detention, part of three…

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…

Vice President Joe Biden's son was kicked out of the Navy after a drug test "after testing positive for cocaine." The Wall Street Journal reported the news.

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.

There's now a smaller percentage of American who believe pot should be legalized than there were a year ago.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Geoffrey Norman on his recent blog item on the NFL controversies, and what the NFL should do fix its image.

The Washington Post editorial board was in favor of decriminalizing pot. But it is not in favor of legalizing it.

While the New York Times continues to editorialize in favor of the legalization of marijuana (Wednesday's installment posits the federal ban is "rooted in myth and xenophobia"!), others are pushing back against legalizing the drug. At the Wall Street Journal, Pete Wehner argues the push for the…

A leading drug policy researcher, David Murray, has a must-read piece up at the Hudson Institute website, "Comparing Marijuana and Alcohol: Seriously." Murray's article is a devastating deconstruction of claims that marijuana is relatively safe, or at least safer than alcohol. And, as he points…

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…

President Obama was asked whether he wanted to smoke marijuana by a fellow patron of a Denver bar last night. The offer came from Instagram user manton89, who posted video of the ask on his Instagram account. "Asked him if he wanted a hit of pot...he laughed!" writes manton89 .

When asked during a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour last night whether she used drugs, Hillary Clinton was admirably firm. Had she done marijuana? “Absolutely not,” she replied. “I didn't do it when I was young, I'm not going to start now.” She is, however, more wavering when it comes to…

The head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration was called in to speak with Attorney General Eric Holder and told to get in line with the Obama administration's policy on lessening sentencing for drug offenders, according to a report from the Huffington Post.

A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that "[m]arijuana use makes tobacco use more pleasurable and may increase the user’s risk for becoming addicted to nicotine." Experiments involving rats found that those animals exposed to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana,…

The front page of today's Denver Post skips Easter. Its main focus? Marijuana.

Attorney General Eric Holder tells the Huffington Post that he had "youthful experimentation" of marijuana. In other words, he smoked pot in college.

Politics at its best brings people and groups together in unexpected ways. Although the Reagan administration responded sluggishly to the emergence of HIV in the 1980s, its last FDA commissioner, Frank Young, reached out to the very HIV activists who had for years made life miserable for him and…

Monday morning, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) blog at Whitehouse.gov published an entry titled: "Support for National Association of School Nurses' [NASN] Position on the Legalization of Marijuana." However, the original link for the post is now meet with a "Sorry, the page…

The head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is now openly criticizing Barack Obama for his recent comments over the question of marijuana legalization, according to multiple reports.

In an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama says that he believes marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol.

A 2008 documentary reveals that Terry McAuliffe, who is being sworn in today as governor of Virginia, thinks that members of the Bush family “should all have been put away in jail.”

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union speech in which he declared a “War on Poverty.” There was, and continues to be, much discussion and debate over how well that effort has gone.  Are we better off now than we were 50 years ago?  The country is…

Congressman Trey Radel is back in Washington after taking time off to deal with his cocaine problem.  Using that stuff is illegal and the job of those in Congress is to write laws.  So one wonders if perhaps there isn’t something missing from Radel’s statement of public regret as reported by…

The daughter of incoming New York City mayor Bill de Blasio opens up in a YouTube video about her drug use, alcoholism, and depression:

In the East Room of the White House Sunday night, President Obama hosted the Kennedy Center Honors Reception to recognize five American artists: Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, Shirley MacLaine,  and Billy Joel.  The president gave a brief synopsis of each artist's career, including…

It’s a pity that there’s no Portland, Oregon, edition of the New York Post. After all, one can only dream of the headlines the wags at the Post would come up with to describe the ongoing travails of (now former) Multnomah County (home of Portland) Commissioner Jeff Cogen.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford told reporters, "Yes, I smoked crack cocaine. Do I, am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors--probably, approximately, about a year ago."

Lou Reed died yesterday in Amagansett, N.Y., thus ending his life on the same island, Long Island, where it began more than 71 years ago in Kings County, better known as Brooklyn. For most of the time in between, Reed was all about Manhattan (he was, says this obituary in Spin Magazine, “the…

CBS reports this morning that Walgreens is altering its health care plan for 160,000 workers due to Obamacare:

CBS News reports:

If you want to see both the potential and the peril in Latin America, you could not do better than to visit Honduras and Colombia, as I did in mid-May: The former is Exhibit A for all that is wrong with the region, from drug trafficking and violence to governmental corruption; the latter a showcase…

Socialists around the world have their own traditions for celebrating “International Workers’ Day,” and Evo Morales is no exception. Each year, the Bolivian leader uses May 1 to make a big announcement, typically regarding the military-backed seizure of a given industry or company. In 2006, during…

A list of rappers and stars, including Russell Simmons, LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Kim Kardashian, and many more, have written an open letter to President Obama to ask that he ease the nation's drug policy. They also ask that prison policy be changed, too. 

Peter Wehner writes in the Washington Post:

For years, Iran has marketed itself as a frontline state in the war against the drug lords. Recently the New York Times even described the regime in Tehran as the “West’s stalwart ally in the War on Drugs.” The problem is that while the Iranian regime is fighting drug lords on its eastern borders,…

Vice President Joe Biden was asked today whether a "ban on guns" would be more effective than outlawing drugs. "Are you suggesting that we have no -- we just legalize all drugs?," the vice president asked.

About two years ago, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official said that a certain Latin American country was becoming a veritable “United Nations” of organized criminal activity, attracting gangsters from such diverse and faraway places as Albania, China, Italy, and Ukraine. He was…

The son of Congressman John Barrow, James Pentlarge Barrow, was arrested on drug and DUI charges on Saturday morning, the Athens Banner-Herald reports. James Barrow is 18 years old.

When asked whether he favored legalizing marijuana, former president Jimmy Carter made clear that he did.

When Mexican president Felipe Calderón leaves office on December 1, his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, will inherit a country with rampant corruption and high levels of drug-related violence. Of course, when Calderón entered the presidency six years ago, he himself inherited a country with rampant…

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, has voted to rescind the honorary degree it conferred on embattled bicyclist Lance Armstrong, a university spokesman confirms.

Bill Maher, a major donor to Barack Obama's super PAC, blasted the president's debate performance on his HBO show last night:

Last week, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report and held hearings on the giant British-based HSBC bank. HSBC Holdings was ranked as the sixth-largest public company in the world by Forbes in 2011, with assets of $2.5…

Assuming the polls are correct, Mexico’s notorious Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will cruise to victory in Sunday’s presidential election and also win at least one chamber of the national legislature. Will this mean a return to the bad old days of authoritarian politics and corrupt deals…

At Forbes, David Shaywitz has a column on why excess medical regulation is harmful, and it's one of the best things I've read on the topic:

The revelation that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Quds Force had plotted to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States – by blowing him up as he dined at a Washington restaurant – is a stark reminder of the nature of the Tehran regime and its ambitions. But perhaps the…

As the Obama administration reviews its Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, looking for creative means to challenge extremist funding, the drug trade is increasingly coming into focus.

At NRO, Scott Gottlieb writes, “Fresh off its successes in the green-energy patch, the Obama team is turning its investment skills to the life sciences. Last Friday, President Obama announced his intention to increase the federal government’s involvement in the business of…

David Brooks: "Obama Rejects Obamaism"

Perry contemplating throwing a 10 gallon hat in the ring?

Politico reports that Proposition 19, which would have legalized recreational marijuana in California, has failed: