Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Attorney General Jeff Sessions inadvertently argued the case libertarians have been making about the War on Drugs for decades. Sessions observed, correctly, that the black market for drugs is inherently violent. He failed to see that the majority of violence stems from the illegality of the market – not from the products themselves. Prohibition, the failed experiment that never completely ended, showed signs of waning over the past 15 years. This was thanks in part to the work of economists like Milton Friedman (among the first to call for the legalization of all drugs) and more recently, Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard professor and prominent libertarian voice for ending the War on Drugs. Sessions, however, seems determined to bring it back into full force. Unfortunately, it is Sessions (and not the expert economists) who holds the levers of federal power. Professor Miron’s key point on prohibition is based on the same principle behind all libertarian thought: drug use is an individual decision, and government has no right to interfere. He has written four books including "Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition" and "Libertarianism, from A to Z." Bob and Jeff look at the potential impact of Sessions' re-escalation of the War on Drugs, following a string of new state-based experiments in marijuana legalization and decriminalization.