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The timeless drug war

Beth made a post at the Dose yesterday about an anti-drug war event at Brown:

The Brown University chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy ( SSDP) sponsored a lecture last night featuring Jeffrey A. Miron, libertarian economist and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard University.  Mr. Miron is the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition; his particular focus last night was contrasting the libertarian approach (complete legalization of all drugs) with that of liberals (some marijuana is okay sometimes, but the other stuff should be controlled).  Coming from the basic libertarian stance that the government should not be involved in your choices as long as third parties are not harmed, Miron made a compelling argument for complete legalization (at which time he thinks he’d like to try it!). He was smart, funny and persuasive; big ups to Greg Anderson for organizing this interesting event.

Well and good, right?

Well, it got me to thinking about the length of this discussion. It was about 20 years ago, as a young reporter for the AP in Boston, that N4N covered a drug-legalization debate between Alan Dershowitz and Frank McNamara, then the top federal prosecutor for Massachusetts.

In an unusual twist, McNamara subsequently resigned after falsely accusing Bill Weld, who would go on to become governor of the Bay State, of smoking pot.

Meanwhile, all this time has gone by and we're basically still having the same debate.

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