Public Policy

Once a problem such as opoid overprescribing is widespread, entrenched in practice, good luck eradicating it with new laws.

My concern is that these same hallucinogens have a pronounced tendency to escape the research environment and find their way out into the streets

…as one judge told me at a conference: “no matter how many jails you build, judges will fill them. It’s the easiest way to make this someone else’s problem, instead of ours.”

So if some enterprising MD or PhD were to show with a proposal for research designed to prove that drinking has definite health benefits, the industry will throw money at it.

From a seller’s viewpoint, no customer is more desirable than someone who is actually dependent on their product.

But if a community treats a correctional institution as a kind of locked flophouse, what else we can expect?

“…over the past five years, less than 10% of the nearly $40 billion in tobacco payments went towards such efforts.”

In their eagerness to reduce the size of government, states  have stripped away staff who would otherwise make onsite visits to ensure compliance.

Sometimes powerful business leaders sound like drunk drivers or corner drug dealers. Rationalizing, externalizing, minimizing…

Nonetheless, in most instances it’s an a priori resistance rooted in fear, rather than legitimate objections.