institute newspaper logo sized

This Is Your Hand on Opioids: Trump's 'Very Bad Commercials' Rely on Dishonest and Pernicious Scare Tactics

by | Jun 7, 2018 | ,

Three months ago, Donald Trump promised to spend "a lot of money" on "very, very bad commercials" that would "scare" teenagers away from opioids by depicting "pretty unsavory situations." Today the White House unveiled four of those government-sponsored ads, and they are indeed very, very bad, in the sense that they rely on deceptive tropes and misleading half-truths. "The first four ads, which are based on real life, tell the graphic stories of four young adults going to extreme lengths to maintain their prescription opioid addiction," says White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee...

read more

Colorado's Governor, Who Founded a Brewpub, Nixes Cannabis 'Tasting Rooms'

by | Jun 7, 2018 | ,

Yesterday Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper vetoed the latest attempt to give recreational cannabis consumers in his state someplace aside from private residences where they can legally use the marijuana they have been legally buying since the beginning of 2014. Hickenlooper erroneously claimed that H.B. 18-1258, which would have allowed "tasting rooms" where customers of marijuana shops could sample the merchandise, conflicted with Amendment 64, the 2012 ballot initiative that legalized recreational use. "Amendment 64 is clear," Hickenlooper says in his veto letter. "Marijuana consumption may...

read more
Your Secrets Are Not Safe With Anyone

Your Secrets Are Not Safe With Anyone

by | Nov 30, 2017 |

Timothy Carpenter specialized in stealing cellphones, the same devices that betrayed him. Based on four months of cellphone location data from the companies that provided Carpenter's mobile phone service, the FBI placed him near four stores while they were being robbed. Carpenter argues that the FBI should have obtained a warrant before looking at those records. His case, which the Supreme Court will hear today, gives the justices a chance to reconsider a misbegotten and increasingly obsolete rule that threatens everyone's privacy in an age when people routinely store large volumes of...

read more

Opioid Commission Mistakenly Blames Pain Treatment for Drug Deaths

by | Nov 3, 2017 | ,

The panel wants to make prescription analgesics even harder to obtain. In the report it published yesterday, the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, endorses what has become the standard explanation for the rise in opioid-related deaths during the last decade and a half. "A widely held and supportable view is that the modern opioid crisis originated within the healthcare system," the report says. The problem began, it explains, with "a growing compulsion to detect and treat pain." According to this narrative,...

read more

Trump’s Pick for Attorney General Is a ‘Drug War Dinosaur’

by | Nov 21, 2016 | ,

When Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's choice for attorney general, was nominated as a federal judge in 1986, one of the comments that got him into trouble was a joke about the Ku Klux Klan. A federal prosecutor testified that Sessions, at the time the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, had said he thought the KKK "was OK until I found out they smoked pot." Although Sessions, now a senator from Alabama, confirmed that story, in light of his longtime obsession with the evils of marijuana the anecdote reads like a joke about him. After all, this is the same man who recently opined...

read more

Jacob Sullum



Podcasts

scotthortonshow logosq

coi banner sq2@0.5x

liberty weekly thumbnail

Don't Tread on Anyone Logo

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

Shop Our Books

Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

by

From the Foreword by Lawrence B. Wilkerson: “[T]he debate over whether oil was a principal reason for the 2003 invasion has waxed and waned, with one camp arguing that it absolutely was, while the other argues the precise opposite.” “Mr. Vogler, himself a former...

read more