Commercializing Vice: Marijuana, Tobacco and Alcohol Policy in the US
“Please drink responsibly.” These words are etched into every bottle of booze and embedded into the fine print of television advertisements, reminding consumers that the producers and distributors of beer, wine, and spirits have the public’s best interests in mind. However, as public policy expert Mark Kleiman notes: “responsible drinkers don’t build breweries.”[1] The […]
Harmful Drugs, Harmful Policy
For Mike, every day is the same. Shivering nights mercifully give way to morning while he watches the people in his neighborhood get ready for school and work. Although Mike has no job, he has the same plan every morning, afternoon, and night: make money to score heroin. Tuesday is trash day, which means […]
The Infrastructure Improvement Conundrum
Infrastructure in the United States is in a state of disrepair. The American Society of Civil Engineers 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure stamps US infrastructure with a letter grade of D+, with an estimated $3.6 trillion investment needed by 2020 to bring that grade to a B.[1] How will the US finance the necessary […]
Buying Our Security: The Actual Risk of Terrorism
The United States is in a perpetual state of alert, forced to contend with a question that never seems to receive an answer: are we safer than we were before the fall of the Twin Towers changed everything? The effort to provide a positive response to this question comes with considerable cost. The Department of […]