Rough Ol' Boy

I freely admit that I was hoping for a Ron Paul victory in the Iowa caucuses Tuesday night, but Matt Welch finds seven bright spots in Paul’s third place finish. Appropriately, I found number one to be the most important: Paul more than doubled his vote over 2008, while Mitt Romney’s stayed exactly the same. Seriously, Romney [...]

I have a new editorial in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch arguing, among other things, that cannabis prohibition has been laughably ineffective at keeping people from using the substance: However, these arrests serve little purpose, as they do not appreciably deter people from using cannabis. When cannabis was first criminalized in the United States in the 1930s, the [...]

The city of Copenhagen has approved a proposal that, if given the okay from Denmark’s parliament, would allow the city to establish a legal system for distributing cannabis. Proponents of the idea argue that taking cannabis off the criminal market and regulating it legally would eliminate the crime currently associated with its distribution: It is these people, [...]

Neill Franklin, a former narcotics officer for Maryland State Police and Baltimore City Police Departments, and current executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), published a letter to the editor in the New York Times last week succinctly describing the failure of cannabis prohibition: While some fear that legalization would lead to increased use, those who want to [...]

In his latest column for the Huffington Post, Radley Balko details the saga of Jessica Shaver, a Chicago woman who experienced the distorted priorities caused by cannabis prohibition firsthand. In 2010, Shaver was assaulted outside a bar near Wicker Park, but when she took her case to the police, they were less than helpful: Two weeks later, Shaver [...]

Wall Street Journal reporter Mary Anastasia O’Grady interviewed former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso last week, and he explained to her why he believes ending the war on cannabis would lead to reduced levels of drug use, less violence, and more international stability: Mr. Cardoso explains that as president he used traditional methods of “repression and prevention” to [...]

A couple weeks ago, I discussed our initiative to regulate marijuana in Missouri with Jason Grellner of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department on the Jaco Report. It was a pleasant conversation, but I would like to highlight some of the inaccuracies in Grellner’s argument that I did not have time to respond to on air. [...]

Former Nicholas County, Kentucky Sheriff Leonard Garrett, whom I have written about before here and here,has been sentenced for receiving money stolen from his county’s asset forfeiture fund. There’s not much new in the sentencing that we didn’t already know from the plea bargain three months ago (he’ll avoid jail but has to pay restitution, etc.), but Garrett’s comment [...]

I always feel validated when I see my opponents on the defensive, even if I’m not necessarily the one who put them there. So I couldn’t help experiencing a twinge of gratification when I read Lt. Chris Piombo of the Lodi, California Police Department “setting the record straight on asset forfeiture laws” in the Lodi News-Sentinel. He doesn’t [...]

I was extremely pleased to see my take on the original Occupy Wall Street protest posted online today, but I feel it may already be largely outdated. I wrote the piece in early October as an attempt to understand what the movement was all about. Although I never fully agreed with what most protesters were [...]