Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. I invited him on the podcast to talk about his recent article “How I Changed my Mind About Marijuana.” As Charles says in our podcast, the public debate around marijuana has largely been about whether criminalization is bad rather than whether legalization is good. Since it’s been legalized, the potency of marijuana has increased, use by young people and daily use have reached all-time highs, and the illegal market has continued to thrive. Whatever your view on the subject is, it’s fair to say there’s room for improvement. We also discuss what society would look like if Amazon sold heroin, problems with the East-Asian model of drug prohibition, America’s 40-year amphetamine bender, why “psychedelic science” is mostly about legalizing psychedelics, not science, and the limits of individual liberty.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Links:

* Charles Fain Lehman, How I Changed my Mind About Marijuana.

* David T. Courtwright, The Age of Addiction.

* Charles Fain Lehman, How Equity Ruined Cannabis Legalization in New York.

* Goldstein & Sumner, Can Legal Weed Win?

* Charles Fain Lehman, Adderall Kids and their Families.

* Breeksma et al., Adverse Events in Clinical Treatments with Serotonergic Psychedelics and MDMA: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review.

* Charles Fain Lehman, Rick Doblin Knows Exactly What He's Doing

* MAPS, Psychedelic Science Conference 2023

* CBC, Outreach Groups Fight for Life in the Midst of a Deadly Drug Supply [Video].

* Charles Fain Lehman, This Is Your City on Fentanyl.

* Michael Shellenberger, San Fransicko.

* Charles at Manhattan Institute, on Twitter, on Substack.