Is Dennis Hastert just a slimy, slandering politician, or is he a tool of the drug cartels?
A reader makes an obvious point about Dennis Hastert’s dumb and dastardly attack on George Soros (which Eugene Volokh continues to cover with calm relentlessness): drug legalization is the very last thing illegaldrug dealers want to see, since it would put them out of business.
But the reader then makes a non-obvious, but sensible, suggestion: is it possible that the cartels so fear George Soros’s drug legalization campaign that they have paid Dennis Hastert to attack him? Like Hastert about Soros, I’m not saying the accusation is true; I’m just saying we don’t know.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Who Will the Cartels Support?
Via Eugene Volokh I see that Jesse Walker at Reason picked up on the absurdity of hastert's fantasy about George Soros:In addition to being baseless, Hastert's accusation doesn't even make sense. Drug prohibition acts as a price support and a barrier t…