New Evidence From Canada and the U.S. Suggests That Legalizing Marijuana Leads to Less Drinking

One of the most important issues for people worried about the consequences of marijuana legalization is the extent to which cannabis serves as a substitute for alcohol, which is more dangerous is several significant ways. New evidence from Canada and the United States reinforces the hypothesis that people tend to drink less when marijuana is legally available, although the issue is far from settled.

During 2019, the first full year of legalization in Canada, the volume of beer sold there fell by 3 percent as of last November, the Financial Post reports. That drop was large compared to the annual declines seen in the previous five years, which averaged 0.3 percent. Vivien Azer, an industry analyst quoted by the Post, said the accelerated slide is probably related to marijuana legalization, and she predicted that the expansion of cannabis products available from government-licensed (or government-run) sources, which as of this month include vapes, edibles, and beverages, will “perpetuate this trend.”

More rigorous evidence on the relationship between marijuana use and drinking comes from a study reported in the March 2020 issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors. Based on nationwide survey data covering a 10-year period, Zoe Alley and two other researchers at Oregon State University found that college students in states where marijuana had been legalized for recreational use were 6 percent less likely to report binge drinking than college students in other states after taking into account pre-existing trends and several potential confounding variables.

In a second analysis that excluded data from the 2017-18 academic year, when there was a sharp drop in binge drinking among college students in states that had legalized marijuana (regardless of whether legalization had just taken effect), the main result was no longer statistically significant for college students in general. But the researchers found a statistically significant 9 percent decline in binge drinking among students 21 or older, the cutoff for legally purchasing marijuana.

This apparent substitution effect, the authors note, is consistent with earlier studies that found “reductions in alcohol consumption (especially binge drinking in young adults) and alcohol related traffic accidents” following the legalization of medical marijuana. A causal connection is plausible in those studies if we assume that some ostensibly medical use is actually recreational (or that some drinking is functionally medical), such that cannabis consumption would displace the use of alcohol. Another possibly relevant consideration, in addition to marijuana’s less dramatic impact on driving ability, is that drinking is more apt to happen in public settings, making driving under the influence more likely.

“For students ages 21 years and over, binge drinking decreased following” recreational legalization, Alley et al. conclude. “A prior national study of how marijuana and alcohol use change in the years before and after turning 21 may put the present findings in context: Although substance use generally declines across this age period, there is a pronounced decrease in marijuana use that coincides with marked increases in alcohol use after minors reach the legal drinking age. This suggests that once alcohol is more accessible and its use is no longer prohibited, young adults may substitute an illegal substance (marijuana) with a legal one (alcohol). We speculate that legalizing recreational marijuana use may temper this effect, such that college students over the age of 21 who otherwise would have engaged in binge drinking continue using marijuana instead.”

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California Cities and State Regulators Are Coming for Your Gas-Powered Leaf Blower

Californians blows a little too much for the likes of state regulators and city governments, both of whom have been leading the charge against gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers.

Some 60 cities in the Golden state have already passed bans or restrictions on gas-powered landscaping equipment. Now the California Air Resources Board (CARB)—which regulates emissions in the state—is crafting long-term plans to phase them out statewide, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle.

CARB will lower the allowable amount of emissions these machines can produce this year, with an eye toward zeroing out all such emissions by 2022. Other local governments have been less patient, passing or proposing immediate bans that have Earth-saving potential.

“What I think we need to realize is that we have to do something different for climate change in the world,” said Pat Eklund, the Mayor Pro Tem of the California city of Novato, who proposed a gas-powered leaf blower ban in December, to the Chronicle. “If not, we are going to see a different world than we do today. Every little bit is going to help.”

In addition to the global implications of prohibiting certain types of lawnmowers, there also appears to be some smaller-minded motivations at play: The noise produced by these machines is disturbing quiet suburban neighborhoods.

Groups like Citizens for a Quieter Sacramento have been leading the charge against leaf blowers on noise pollution grounds since the 1990s, arguing that even if these machines produced conversation-levels of noise (65 decibels), their use is still rude and invasive.

“Don’t be fooled by comparison of 65 decibels from a leaf blower to the volume of a normal conversation. You wouldn’t want a noise in your home as loud as a normal conversation that you had not invited and could not control,” reads one post from the group.

Indeed, despite all the talk of fighting global warming, cities like Palo Alto have banned gas leaf blowers only in residential neighborhoods. Emissions produced by landscaping commercial properties, I assume, could still affect the environment.

According to a CARB factsheet, small off-road engines (aka SOREs) are a significant source of emissions in the state. “Operating the best-selling commercial lawn mower for one hour emits as much smog-forming pollution as driving the best-selling 2017 passenger car, a Toyota Camry, about 300 miles,” notes the agency.

These bans can nevertheless be hard on landscaping businesses. Electric lawncare equipment, they say, isn’t practical, and doesn’t offer the same level of performance as gas-powered equivalents. One business owner told the Chronicle he had stopped accepting jobs in the city of Mill Valley after they banned gas-powered leaf blowers.

A well-manicured lawn, maintained by loud, gas-guzzling machines, has long been a symbol of freedom, prosperity, and the American dream. A people who would trade that away for fewer emissions and a slightly quieter neighborhood are letting their liberties go to seed.

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California Cities and State Regulators Are Coming for Your Gas-Powered Leaf Blower

Californians blows a little too much for the likes of state regulators and city governments, both of whom have been leading the charge against gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers.

Some 60 cities in the Golden state have already passed bans or restrictions on gas-powered landscaping equipment. Now the California Air Resources Board (CARB)—which regulates emissions in the state—is crafting long-term plans to phase them out statewide, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle.

CARB will lower the allowable amount of emissions these machines can produce this year, with an eye toward zeroing out all such emissions by 2022. Other local governments have been less patient, passing or proposing immediate bans that have Earth-saving potential.

“What I think we need to realize is that we have to do something different for climate change in the world,” said Pat Eklund, the Mayor Pro Tem of the California city of Novato, who proposed a gas-powered leaf blower ban in December, to the Chronicle. “If not, we are going to see a different world than we do today. Every little bit is going to help.”

In addition to the global implications of prohibiting certain types of lawnmowers, there also appears to be some smaller-minded motivations at play: The noise produced by these machines is disturbing quiet suburban neighborhoods.

Groups like Citizens for a Quieter Sacramento have been leading the charge against leaf blowers on noise pollution grounds since the 1990s, arguing that even if these machines produced conversation-levels of noise (65 decibels), their use is still rude and invasive.

“Don’t be fooled by comparison of 65 decibels from a leaf blower to the volume of a normal conversation. You wouldn’t want a noise in your home as loud as a normal conversation that you had not invited and could not control,” reads one post from the group.

Indeed, despite all the talk of fighting global warming, cities like Palo Alto have banned gas leaf blowers only in residential neighborhoods. Emissions produced by landscaping commercial properties, I assume, could still affect the environment.

According to a CARB factsheet, small off-road engines (aka SOREs) are a significant source of emissions in the state. “Operating the best-selling commercial lawn mower for one hour emits as much smog-forming pollution as driving the best-selling 2017 passenger car, a Toyota Camry, about 300 miles,” notes the agency.

These bans can nevertheless be hard on landscaping businesses. Electric lawncare equipment, they say, isn’t practical, and doesn’t offer the same level of performance as gas-powered equivalents. One business owner told the Chronicle he had stopped accepting jobs in the city of Mill Valley after they banned gas-powered leaf blowers.

A well-manicured lawn, maintained by loud, gas-guzzling machines, has long been a symbol of freedom, prosperity, and the American dream. A people who would trade that away for fewer emissions and a slightly quieter neighborhood are letting their liberties go to seed.

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Is Trump Winning the Middle East or Doubling Down on Previous Failures?

Last week, the United States military took out Iran’s top military leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran has responded by raining down missiles on two American bases in Iraq (no casualties were reported) and with promises to do much, much more. “We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani’s path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region,” vowed Esmail Ghaani, who now leads Iran’s military.

Are we going to war with Iran? Is the flare-up a sign that President Donald Trump, who as a candidate said previous administrations “got us” into Iraq “by lying,” charting a bold, new course in the Middle East or following the failed footsteps of Barack Obama and George W. Bush?

To answer these questions—and define what a uniquely libertarian foreign policy should look like—Nick Gillespie talks with Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. From 1990 to 1993, Preble served as an officer in the U.S. Navy on the USS Ticonderoga and he holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University. He’s the co-author of Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover) and the author Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy.

Preble says that two decades of failed wars pushed by Republican and Democratic presidents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen have rightly made Americans, especially younger people, skeptical of the use of force abroad to secure the safety and interests of the United States. Increasingly, people want a foreign policy that is “skeptical of the bipartisan consensus” and predicated upon “peaceful global engagement through which [the United States] trades with the rest of the world, engages diplomatically with the rest of the world, and uses our cultural influence in a positive way.” Preble also ranks the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in terms of foreign policy, evaluates the foreign policy legacies of Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and praises recent revelations about internal military dissent over the war in Afghanistan.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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Is Trump Winning the Middle East or Doubling Down on Previous Failures?

Last week, the United States military took out Iran’s top military leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran has responded by raining down missiles on two American bases in Iraq (no casualties were reported) and with promises to do much, much more. “We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani’s path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region,” vowed Esmail Ghaani, who now leads Iran’s military.

Are we going to war with Iran? Is the flare-up a sign that President Donald Trump, who as a candidate said previous administrations “got us” into Iraq “by lying,” charting a bold, new course in the Middle East or following the failed footsteps of Barack Obama and George W. Bush?

To answer these questions—and define what a uniquely libertarian foreign policy should look like—Nick Gillespie talks with Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. From 1990 to 1993, Preble served as an officer in the U.S. Navy on the USS Ticonderoga and he holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University. He’s the co-author of Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover) and the author Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy.

Preble says that two decades of failed wars pushed by Republican and Democratic presidents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen have rightly made Americans, especially younger people, skeptical of the use of force abroad to secure the safety and interests of the United States. Increasingly, people want a foreign policy that is “skeptical of the bipartisan consensus” and predicated upon “peaceful global engagement through which [the United States] trades with the rest of the world, engages diplomatically with the rest of the world, and uses our cultural influence in a positive way.” Preble also ranks the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in terms of foreign policy, evaluates the foreign policy legacies of Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and praises recent revelations about internal military dissent over the war in Afghanistan.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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Motion to Stop Me from Publishing Material …

Two weeks ago, I objected to a sealing motion in a District of Colorado case, Cowles v. Bonsai Design LLC. The motion sought to seal an entire proposed amended complaint and an entire reply to a motion to dismiss, as well as some exhibits. (All the documents had already been filed in the open court record.) I argued that the sealing was unjustifiable, and would violate the public’s right of access to court records—and that includes my own right of access (which is why I have standing to object).

Monday, the movant filed a much-narrowed revised motion, which asks for sealing of only a few exhibits and a redaction of references to those exhibits. I think that is still not justifiable, but I agree that such narrower proposed restrictions are potentially more defensible than the initial proposal.

But the revised motion also adds this:

Finally, to ensure that the Restriction is implemented, and in the face of Professor Volokh’s expressed desire to publish documents from this case, which publication would seriously harm Bonsai’s business interests, Bonsai requests that this Court’s order specify that no publication of these documents (or redacted portions of documents) be published, regardless of whether these documents were previously available on the court’s website or otherwise.

That, it seems to me, would violate my free speech and free press rights, and not just my right of access to court records. Once someone has downloaded publicly accessible documents, that person has a right to quote them and write about them, and that right cannot be taken away by retroactively sealing the documents. The sealing order could bar future access to the documents in the court file, and might also constrain the parties to the case. But it can’t bar continued speech about those documents by outsiders who had lawfully accessed them.

Indeed, under the logic of Florida Star v. B.J.F., such outsiders are free to publish even information that the government was supposed to have kept confidential all along, but had released erroneously. It should be even clearer that people are free to publish information that had been properly released, even if later the government (here, the court) concluded that it shouldn’t be released in the future. The renewed motion doesn’t actually cite any precedent for the no-publication order that it seeks.

Still, it’s an interesting issue, potentially made more complicated by my being a member of the bar (including of the District of Colorado bar), which might be seen as imposing greater obligations on me. I don’t think that those obligations would include a prohibition on publishing such downloaded-while-publicly-available-but-later-sealed documents; but that is one of the matters that the Court will need to decide.

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Illinois Dispensaries Ran Out of Weed During First Week of Legal Sales

Illinois’ first week of recreational marijuana sales appears to be going so well that dispensaries have actually run out of product.

Illinois passed legislation last summer to become the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana. The legislation not only allows adults to possess up to 30 grams of recreational marijuana but sets itself apart from other legalization efforts by including language that would grant clemency to those convicted of low-level marijuana offenses.

The legislation took effect on January 1.

With about 40 dispensaries licensed, many people celebrated the beginning of legal weed in the state on the first day of the new year. Even Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton posed for a picture at a dispensary after purchasing edibles.

By the end of the first day, dispensaries had made $3.2 million in sales. By the end of the first week, the figure was almost $11 million.

A handful of dispensaries have had to temporarily shut down operations since demand was so high. Some dispensaries have turned to creating limits on how much product a single customer can buy and shortening hours to help mitigate the shortages until new shipments arrive. Business owners note that the most popular product has been flower, the dry bud that is smokeable via pipe, bong, or similar apparatus.

The day before legalization went into effect, Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, issued 11,017 pardons for low-level marijuana offenses. The pardons were then forwarded to the state attorney general’s office for expungement. An estimated 700,000 records are eligible for a pardon or record expungement under the new law.

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Motion to Stop Me from Publishing Material …

Two weeks ago, I objected to a sealing motion in a District of Colorado case, Cowles v. Bonsai Design LLC. The motion sought to seal an entire proposed amended complaint and an entire reply to a motion to dismiss, as well as some exhibits. (All the documents had already been filed in the open court record.) I argued that the sealing was unjustifiable, and would violate the public’s right of access to court records—and that includes my own right of access (which is why I have standing to object).

Monday, the movant filed a much-narrowed revised motion, which asks for sealing of only a few exhibits and a redaction of references to those exhibits. I think that is still not justifiable, but I agree that such narrower proposed restrictions are potentially more defensible than the initial proposal.

But the revised motion also adds this:

Finally, to ensure that the Restriction is implemented, and in the face of Professor Volokh’s expressed desire to publish documents from this case, which publication would seriously harm Bonsai’s business interests, Bonsai requests that this Court’s order specify that no publication of these documents (or redacted portions of documents) be published, regardless of whether these documents were previously available on the court’s website or otherwise.

That, it seems to me, would violate my free speech and free press rights, and not just my right of access to court records. Once someone has downloaded publicly accessible documents, that person has a right to quote them and write about them, and that right cannot be taken away by retroactively sealing the documents. The sealing order could bar future access to the documents in the court file, and might also constrain the parties to the case. But it can’t bar continued speech about those documents by outsiders who had lawfully accessed them.

Indeed, under the logic of Florida Star v. B.J.F., such outsiders are free to publish even information that the government was supposed to have kept confidential all along, but had released erroneously. It should be even clearer that people are free to publish information that had been properly released, even if later the government (here, the court) concluded that it shouldn’t be released in the future. The renewed motion doesn’t actually cite any precedent for the no-publication order that it seeks.

Still, it’s an interesting issue, potentially made more complicated by my being a member of the bar (including of the District of Colorado bar), which might be seen as imposing greater obligations on me. I don’t think that those obligations would include a prohibition on publishing such downloaded-while-publicly-available-but-later-sealed documents; but that is one of the matters that the Court will need to decide.

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Illinois Dispensaries Ran Out of Weed During First Week of Legal Sales

Illinois’ first week of recreational marijuana sales appears to be going so well that dispensaries have actually run out of product.

Illinois passed legislation last summer to become the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana. The legislation not only allows adults to possess up to 30 grams of recreational marijuana but sets itself apart from other legalization efforts by including language that would grant clemency to those convicted of low-level marijuana offenses.

The legislation took effect on January 1.

With about 40 dispensaries licensed, many people celebrated the beginning of legal weed in the state on the first day of the new year. Even Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton posed for a picture at a dispensary after purchasing edibles.

By the end of the first day, dispensaries had made $3.2 million in sales. By the end of the first week, the figure was almost $11 million.

A handful of dispensaries have had to temporarily shut down operations since demand was so high. Some dispensaries have turned to creating limits on how much product a single customer can buy and shortening hours to help mitigate the shortages until new shipments arrive. Business owners note that the most popular product has been flower, the dry bud that is smokeable via pipe, bong, or similar apparatus.

The day before legalization went into effect, Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, issued 11,017 pardons for low-level marijuana offenses. The pardons were then forwarded to the state attorney general’s office for expungement. An estimated 700,000 records are eligible for a pardon or record expungement under the new law.

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Trump’s Speech Confirms That Soleimani Strike Didn’t Prevent Imminent Attack or Make Americans Safer

In the aftermath of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and an Iranian attack on American military bases in Iraq, President Donald Trump signaled Tuesday morning that he’s prepared to step back from the brink of war.

“We want you to have a future, and a great future,” Trump said, speaking directly to the Iranian government and the people of Iran. “The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”

This is unequivocally good news. While Trump did not offer to open direct negotiations with Iran and spoke glowingly about the power of the American military—all while being flanked by uniformed military officials—his Tuesday morning address seems to suggest that the immediate danger of open war has, for now, been reduced ever so slightly. Iran’s government has already expressed a desire to avoid further escalation, so you can expect the president’s supporters to claim that developments in the past 24 hours vindicate Trump’s reckless and unpredictable version of Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” theory.

But once the threat of war has mostly passed, observers should start asking: What exactly has the saber-rattling of the past week accomplished for the United States?

For starters, it should be obvious by now that the most immediate justification for Soleimani’s assassination was either an outright lie or a strategic miscalculation. Killing Soleimani did not prevent an attack on American troops in Iraq; if anything, it appears to have triggered an attack, though thankfully there were no casualties.

It’s telling that the White House has already largely dispensed with the notion that the assassination was conducted in order to stop some impending attack. On Tuesday, Trump called Soleimani “the world’s top terrorist,” and talked up Soleimani’s history of organizing and planning militia attacks that have killed and maimed American troops in Iraq over the course of the past decade-plus. As other observers have noted, it’s now fairly obvious that Soleimani’s killing was about vengeance, not deterrence.

One could argue that killing Soleimani removed a dangerous opponent from the battlefield and that Soleimani’s absence will weaken Iran’s hand in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the wider Middle East long-term. That’s certainly possible—plausible, even—but it probably overstates the extent to which Soleimani was dictating Iran’s foreign policy and  underestimates the resilience of the Iranian regime. It also ignores the potential dangers of using assassinations as a tool of foreign policy. And it gives the Trump administration credit for a strategic angle that even the administration itself has not publicly claimed. Indeed, the White House has tried to justify killing Soleimani in the present tense (“imminent threat”) and past tense (retribution for killing Americans in Iraq), but never in such a hypothetical, future-looking way.

What else has the assassination accomplished? It’s given the Iranian regime an even stronger incentive to obtain nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future American aggression. It’s exposed, once again, the extent to which Trump has alienated America’s allies. It’s caused the United States to deploy more troops to the Middle East, thus making any eventual withdraw during Trump’s first term even less likely than it already was. And it’s given the Iranian government a martyr to use for domestic political purposes in rallying anti-American sentiment.

Yes, Trump’s speech on Tuesday has reduced the chance of war with Iran. No, this was not a successful week for U.S. foreign policy, or for the man in charge of it.

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