Life, Love, and Liberty

(Just a bit modified from the discussion group)

Drug War Debunking Continues

Charts the history of marijuana.

Newsbrief: The Next Prohibition? Surgeon General Supports Banning Tobacco

Will they break down your door for tobacco? I hope not!

Keith Preston had some insightful things to say on this issue.

“I suspect tobacco prohibition will be implemented slowly. These things usually come in increments. It started with the movement to ban smoking on airlines back in the early 1960s. Then television advertising for cigarettes was banned in 1972. We see how it’s escalated since then. When I was a teenager in the early 80s, no one ever dreamed it would be illegal to smoke in bars one day.

An interesting thing about this, however, is that if tobacco prohibition comes about, it will radically expand the criminal market for illegal substances. The huge US prison population is mostly because of drug prohibition, and a substantial number drug arrests are for the use or sale of marijuana (I think it’s about 700,000 annually). Tobacco prohibition would radically up that number, I suspect. At the same time, it would be harder for prohibition officials to demonize tobacco users/growers/ sellers the way they do users of pot, coke, X, etc. because tobacco has a long history as a cash crop and a product used by “normal” people as opposed to “deviant” drug users.

Quite frankly, if this happens it will be in the context of full-blown totalitarianism a la Josef Stalin. No state can imprison that many of its subjects and wage war against that large of a population without an unencumbered police state.

The upside, of course, is that tobacco prohibition might well motivate many ostriches to see through the drug war, prohibitionist ideology and, for that matter, the state itself or at least the present state. Such a withdrawal of public confidence may well be the beginning of the end for the powers that be.”

The source of the quotation is here (not sure if people who are not members of the group can view the message, but I did want to source my quotation), and is from a Yahoo group.

Got the Warfare State Blues

South Koreans: Many killed after letter

The atrocities in the Korean war are not as well known as they could be.

Meeting Resistance: A film by Steve Connors

I’m keeping my eye on this one since it looks quite interesting.

Meeting the Resistance in Iraq

The interview that tipped me off to the above.

Economic Goodness

Ghetto Capitalism

Tis the counter-economy in action!

The Ethics of Labor Struggle: A Free Market Perspective

Kevin Carson gives us a provocative piece on the ethics of labor struggle from a free market perspective. Labor lawyers should give this one a read!