Medical-marijuana laws reduce traffic deaths, according to a new study, probably because people in states with such laws partly substitute marijuana for alcohol - and alcohol is more deadly when combined with driving. Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia have passed medical-marijuana laws since 1996. Examining National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data before and after the passage of those laws, the researchers found a nearly 9% decrease in overall traffic fatalities. (The calculations also took account of trends in neighboring states.) That decline was caused entirely, or nearly so, by a drop in alcohol related traffic deaths. [continues 236 words]
If laws banning the use of force are relaxed when an intruder crawls in your window and you're home, shouldn't stringent F.D.A. regulations bend when you're backed into a dark corner by a terminal illness? That was the gist of an argument made by the U.C.L.A. law professor Eugene Volokh in the May issue of The Harvard Law Review. Citing the concept of "medical self-defense," Volokh contended that a dying American should have the right to buy any drug that has passed the F.D.A.'s preliminary safety tests. [continues 441 words]
What if our prison system wasn't just a reflection of society - but a force that shaped it? CHRISTOPHER SHEA explores a new way of looking at lock-up. What if America launched a new New Deal and no one noticed? And what if, instead of lifting the unemployed out of poverty, this multibillion-dollar project steadily drove poor communities further and further out of the American mainstream? That's how America should think about its growing prison system, some leading social scientists are saying, in research that suggests prisons have a far deeper impact on the nation than simply punishing criminals. Fueled by the war on drugs, "three strike" laws and mandatory minimum sentences, America's prisons and jails now house some 2.2 million inmates - roughly seven times the figure of the early 1970s. And Americans are investing vast resources to keep the system running: The cost to maintain American correctional institutions is some $60 billion a year. For years sociologists saw prisons - with their disproportionately poor, black and uneducated populations - partly as mirrors of the social and economic disparities that cleave American life. Now, however, a new crop of books and articles are looking at the penal system not just as a reflection of society but as a force that shapes it. [continues 1385 words]
It's A Government Program Whose Impact Rivals the New Deal. It Pushes Whole Communities Out of Society's Mainstream. It Costs Tens of Billions of Dollars a Year. Scholars Are Just Beginning to Understand How Prison Is Reshaping the Country. WHAT if America launched a new New Deal and no one noticed? And what if, instead of lifting the unemployed out of poverty, this multibillion-dollar project steadily drove poor communities further and further out of the American mainstream? That's how America should think about its growing prison system, some leading social scientists are saying, in research that suggests prisons have a far deeper impact on the nation than simply punishing criminals. [continues 1773 words]
Even by Washington standards, the drug debate is uncompromising and partisan. President Clinton claims that the number of Americans using drugs has declined by 50 percent since 1979, and earlier this year he laid out plans to cut drug use in half again over the next ten years. House Speaker Newt Gingrich scoffed at the Clinton proposals, which he called a "hodge-podge of half steps and half truths." He wanted all drug use eliminated in four years. Amid all the posturing and confusion, one voice suffers no doubt. When politicians or journalists need information about drugs, they often turn to a university-based "expert" who is certain where others are cautious and who compares drug policies he dislikes to "playing Russian roulette with our children." [continues 3929 words]
