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Reason Versus City Journal: Legalize All Drugs

Reason was joined by City Journal for a lively, thought-provoking discussion. The resolution: "Legalize all drugs."

Reason's Billy Binion and Jacob Sullum argued for the affirmative, while City Journal's Charles Fain Lehman and Rafael Mangual argued for the negative. The debate was moderated by Reason's Peter Suderman.

The discussion was recorded in front of a live audience at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.

0:00—Introduction

01:00—Andrew Heaton comedy sketch

9:35—Debate introduction from Peter Suderman

15:20—Jacob Sullum's opening statement

19:45—Charles Fain Lehman's opening statement

24:20—Billy Binion's opening statement

28:16—Rafael Mangual's opening statement

33:28—Moderator questions about the harmfulness of drugs and the harmfulness of prohibition

42:15—Is alcohol bad?

44:00—Should police be focusing on drug enforcement?

48:28—The failings of the war on drugs

53:30—Game: Legalize, Regulate, Ban

1:02:31—Audience Q&A

1:23:54—Jacob Sullum's closing statement

1:26:00—Rafael Mangual's closing statement

1:28:12—Billy Binion's closing statement

1:30:15—Charles Fain Lehman's closing statement

1:34:11—Who won the debate?

Video editor: Cody Huff
Camera: César Baéz
Camera: Justin Zuckerman
Camera: Kevin AlexanderShow More

Reason Versus City Journal: Legalize All Drugs

Reason was joined by City Journal for a lively, thought-provoking [...]

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Remy: Strategic Crypto Reserve?

HODL your nose. Watch all of Remy's Reason TV music videos here: [...]

HODL your nose.

Watch all of Remy's Reason TV music videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL02D02B9A144182DB

Written and performed by Remy. Music tracks mastered by Ben Karlstrom.

LYRICS:
Hey scholars, it's squalor if we don't stock up the shelves
The dollar's hotter, buys Prada, but man I want something else
We must exceed the meager savings of the people we serve
That's why I'm pleading: we need a Strategic Fartcoin Reserve

What puts the ass in asset? The bs in blocks?
I'm talking Fartcoin baby, we gone stock up Fart Knox
The sky is the limit, yeah this chance can't be missed
What's this chart telling you? That mistaken people exist?

It's a valuable token. Whose use case is nothing boys
Limited supply, like the ten million other coins
Crypto-secure, it's a peak-needed asset
Who made this thing? Our founder, Yugo Nidagasex

Are you on meth? Fool, I'm on methane
Just look at this chart it's going up like a jet plane
We need a store of value for the people, it's true
Isn't gold number one? Maybe it's time for number two.

Hey scholars it's squalor if we don't stock up the shelves
Gold is old and it's a bore we need to rock something else
We must exceed the meager savings of the people we serve
That's why I'm pleading we need a Strategic Fartcoin Reserve

You looking for investments? This thing is a beast
Do what you can to buy it, sell one kidney at least
But what's its value intrinsically? It sounds like a vapor
It's like you ain't even read the brown paper

The market has spoken we know just what the truth is
We got more consensus than Justin Tucker's masseuses
It's anti-establishment, we ain't just some hobbyists
It's a hedge against big government. Who said so? Our lobbyist

Hey scholars it's squalor if we don't stock up the shelves
Silver's fodder, buys nada, we need to hawk something else
We must exceed the meager savings of the people we serve
That's why I'm pleading we need a Strategic Fartcoin Reserve

A centralized effort with a centralized ledger
Peak decentralization… Damn, what could be better
And think of security, boy it would be crushing
If a war broke out and we lacked made-up coins that do nothing

I'm sympathetic to not printing dollars up to infinity
But isn't private money central to the causes of liberty?
What even is a Fartcoin? I can't solve this caper
Sounds like someone didn't read the brown paper…

It's not the role of government—it is, I retort
Look, "be the bagholder of last resort"
Just because your constituents hold these tokens
Our voters own this? I like where this is going

Hey scholars it's squalor if we don't stock up the shelves
Oil is slippery, I'm not Diddy, so we got something else
We must exceed the meager savings of the people we serve
That's why I'm pleading we need a Strategic Fartcoin ReserveShow More

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Budget expert explains why the government is borrowing so much money

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Higher debt means lower wages, higher interest rates, and fewer opportunities, says Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute.

https://reason.com/video/2025/05/22/how-does-the-national-debt-affect-you-a-budget-expert-explains/
---
The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $2 trillion this year. And while that budget deficit is a major concern for many Americans, the specifics of how and why the government borrows so much money can often seem confusing.

That's why Reason asked Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, to break it down into more manageable morsels.

So why does the federal government borrow so much? Because "it's much easier for Congress to promise benefits to certain constituencies than to ask U.S. taxpayers to actually pay" for those benefits, explains Boccia, who also writes a Substack newsletter about federal fiscal issues.

The most expensive of those benefits are the so-called entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—which run on autopilot and are not subject to the regular appropriations process. "Most of the spending growth now, and most of the growth in the budget deficit in the United States, doesn't come about as a result of Congress voting for spending bills but rather is automatically baked into the budget," she says.

Higher debt and bigger deficits could create the circumstances for a "severe fiscal crisis," warns Boccia. Even if that doesn't happen, the growing budget deficit can have serious consequences for Americans.

"Because debt is so high, it is actually reducing economic growth," says Boccia. That means lower wages and fewer opportunities. The higher debt is also driving interest rates higher, which means "you have to pay more in interest if you want to borrow money" for a mortgage, to start a business, or to pursue higher education.

So what can be done about this mess? Boccia says that's the "trillion-dollar question."

Channeling Milton Friedman, Boccia says the key is to give politicians the right set of incentives so that even the wrong people can make the right decisions. She favors the creation of a fiscal commission within Congress that could give lawmakers political cover to make necessary changes to Social Security and Medicare, the two old-age entitlement programs.

Those programs should be reconfigured to focus on keeping older Americans out of poverty, says Boccia, "rather than just transferring income from working Americans to retirees, regardless of need."

Producer: Eric Boehm
Video editors: Danielle Thompson, Regan McDaniel
Cameras: Cody Huff, César BáezShow More

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Does legalizing sex work increase human trafficking?

A go-to study for advocates of restricting sex work used a flawed [...]

A go-to study for advocates of restricting sex work used a flawed economic model and abysmal data.

https://reason.com/video/2025/04/25/does-legalizing-sex-work-increase-human-trafficking/

One of the most influential social science papers of the 21st century argued that when countries legalize prostitution between consenting adults, it causes more people to be coerced into sex work.

The study, published in 2013 in the journal World Development, has been used to stop legalization initiatives around the world and to justify harsh new laws that turn customers of voluntary sex work into criminals, often in the name of stopping human trafficking.

Unfortunately, the authors of the study used a flawed economic model and abysmal data to reach their conclusion. When crucial information was missing, they guessed and filled it in. Then, when the analysis didn't yield what seemed to be the authors' desired finding, they threw out the data. There is no evidence that legalizing prostitution increases human trafficking.

Despite its obvious flaws, the paper has been widely influential, cited not only in the press but by advocates and lawmakers writing policy. The Canadian government referenced the paper when crafting a 2014 law criminalizing the purchase of sexual services, and it influenced a similar law passed in France.

So, how do you demonstrate that allowing consenting adults to exchange money for sex causes more people to be driven into sexual slavery?

They classified countries based on 4,950 accounts of human trafficking from 1996 to 2003, tabulated in a dataset put together by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The UNODC report was compiled from official government reports, news and opinion articles, and materials produced by activist groups. These sources aren't consistently trustworthy, and yet the study authors weighted them equally and didn't bother taking into account the number of reported victims in each incident. Almost half the accounts were missing crucial data, and the U.N. only included English-language sources.

The authors conceded that given all of these problems, their data "needs to be interpreted cautiously." But they plowed ahead anyway, asserting that their index was still "meaningful."

After tabulating the human trafficking incidents by destination country, the authors looked at whether or not sex work was legal in each place. A problem is that most countries allow some types of sex work but not others, and the laws often vary in different parts of the same country. Some places changed laws significantly during the study period. Enforcement also varies widely, from non-existent to very strict. The binary classification into legal or illegal that the authors used misses more information than it reveals.

And yet, the dataset they compiled showed no statistically significant link between legalized sex work and trafficking—until the authors eliminated 34 countries from their analysis.

What was their rationale for deleting data? The authors claimed that some of the countries were so poor that their citizens wouldn't have enough money to pay for sex work. That is unlikely to be true, and in any case, wasn't a good reason to exclude data, since the study already controlled for per-capita income.

After boiling the list down to 116 countries, they reran the analysis, but there was another problem. The authors had made so many adjustments and "imputed"—that's a fancy word for guessing—so much of the missing data that the results were statistically unreliable. But they ran with them anyway.

It turned out that the study's strongest finding was that human trafficking destinations happen to be countries with democratic governments, not where sex work is legal. Why didn't they make that the banner claim of their study? Can you imagine any journalists or policymakers citing such a finding to argue that we need more dictatorships?

So the authors ran with the sixth strongest effect they found, suggesting, falsely, that legalizing prostitution caused more human trafficking. That's the finding that would sell.

It's unfortunate that such a poorly executed study with a conclusion that defies economic common sense received so much attention from advocates and policymakers. Its perverse finding has likely only led to an increase in human trafficking while making willing, adult sex workers and their customers considerably worse off.

Motion Graphics: Adani Samat
Video Editor: Cody Huff
Audio Production: Ian Keyser
Graphics: Nathalie Walker

Photo Credits: Thomas Padilla/MAXPPP; Olivier Donnars/ZUMA Press/Newscom; MidjourneyShow More

Is THIS constitutional? Here's how due process works

Due process is really having a moment, and the Founders are rolling in [...]

Due process is really having a moment, and the Founders are rolling in their graves.

https://reason.com/video/2025/04/24/is-this-constitutional-heres-how-due-process-works/

The basic legal principle—that people have the right to challenge the evidence against them before the government takes away their liberty—is central to the Constitution. And yet, it has come under fire recently, after President Donald Trump's administration deported hundreds of immigrants it alleges are gang members to a prison in El Salvador.

It appears that many people are now eager to dispense with due process, or simply do not understand what it is or why it exists.

"The entire American media and left wing industrial complex has decided the most important issue today," said Vice President J.D. Vance last week, "is that the Trump admin deported an MS-13 gang member (and illegal alien)."

Vance was referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration illegally deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order—an action the government attributes to an "administration error." Abrego Garcia and many other men, most of them Venezuelan, were shipped to El Salvador's mega prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). There, President Nayib Bukele has suspended civil liberties, including due process, allowing him to imprison people indefinitely without a fair trial.

Is it possible that some people sent to a Salvadoran prison were in a gang? It is. It is also possible some were not, which is precisely why we have due process: to test the integrity of the government's allegations. That is an American value, not a left-wing value.

"Did Rachel Morin get due process? Did Laken Riley get due process?" right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec inquired recently. "No one ever asks that."

Morin and Riley were murdered by immigrants, which is tragic. But Posobiec's question implies he doesn't understand what due process is at a basic level. By his logic, we should abolish the doctrine for anyone accused of bad acts, which is backward: The point of due process is to provide fairness to people accused of crimes, because the government doesn't always get it right. "Because we said so" isn't good enough.

OutKick founder Clay Travis noted that "if the president can't deport illegal immigrants then we have no border at all."

The president can, in fact, deport people. At issue is whether or not he can send them to a third-world prison, where they will be held without charge or conviction. These are two different things. And it isn't relevant that the people deported weren't U.S. citizens, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that even immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally are entitled to due process of law.

"I can't fully articulate this problem yet," former Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle wrote, "but I think that libertarianism has been hijacked by radical empathy & that we don't fully understand the concept of a right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. Libertarians have elevated it over all other rights & factors."

The Founders made due process central to the Constitution not because they loved criminals, but because they understood that any system of justice will give people a chance to publicly challenge the government before it deprives them of their liberty indefinitely, as the government has done here. That should be important to anyone who cares about the Constitution and the rule of law. "Libertarians Who Believe the Government Is Perfect and Trustworthy" is not a coherent ideology.

If you love the Constitution, you have to love due process.

Producer: Billy Binion
Video editor: Danielle Thompson

Photo Credits: Juan Carlos/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; EL SALVADOR PRESIDENTIAL PRESS O/UPI/Newscom; AFP / GDA Photo Service/Newscom; Taylor Friehl on Unsplash; Randy Laybourne on Unsplash; Ben Moreland on Unsplash

Music Credits: "Grab the Goods" by MooveKa via Artlist; "Above the Skies" by Icosphere via Artlist; "The Walking Cat" by Out of Flux via Artlist; "Swiping Right" by Damon Power via ArtlisShow More

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Free trade expert takes down the best arguments for tariffs

Daniel Hannan argues that protectionism never works, but that's a [...]

Daniel Hannan argues that protectionism never works, but that's a lesson that politicians and voters seemingly have to relearn repeatedly.

https://reason.com/video/2025/04/11/free-trade-expert-takes-down-the-best-arguments-for-tariffs/
---
Can you avoid the cost of tariffs by buying only American-made products? Will tariffs promote domestic manufacturing while filling federal tax coffers? Is free trade killing jobs?

No, no, and certainly not, explains Daniel Hannan, a conservative member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom and president of the Institute for Free Trade.

"Tariffs will push up the cost not only of the imported stuff obviously with the tariff but also that the domestic industries will raise their prices as well because they no longer have the competition," Hannan tells Reason. "And what does that mean? It means that every American has less disposable income. They've all got to spend more money to live at the same level that they were living at before without any gain."

In an exclusive sit-down with Reason, Hannan debunks some of the most common arguments for tariffs and explains why free trade remains underappreciated—despite a remarkable track record of lifting billions out of poverty and making it possible for human beings to work and live in better conditions than ever.

And that's true even if other countries are imposing tariffs on American goods.

"Just because somebody else is shooting himself in the foot, the worst possible response is to take aim and blow off a couple of your own toes in order to show them," he says.

President Donald Trump has imposed 10 percent tariffs on nearly all imports into the United States (and far higher tariffs on goods from China). Trump says he wants to stop other countries from taking advantage of America, but his trade war is rattling stock markets and threatens to reduce Americans' standard of living.

Hannan says protectionism never works, but that's a lesson that politicians and voters seemingly have to learn and relearn periodically.

"Free trade is always unpopular, but it always works. What, in the end, convinces people is not theory, but practice," says Hannan. "After the [Smoot-Hawley] tariffs, people understood that protectionism made everybody poorer, especially the people it was most designed to protect, the people on lower incomes. I have a horrible feeling that we're about to go through that learning process again."

Music credits: "Goals" by Rex Banner via Artlist; "Daydream" by Audiopanther via Artlist; "Dark Sparks" by Raz Burg via Artlist; "Bubbles Drop" by Cosmonkey via Artlist; "A Girl Can Dream" by Emily Lewis via Artlist; "Big Fat Tummy" by Ge Gilter Fish via Artlist; "Sensation Station" by Novembers via Artlist; "Hey Honey" by The Talbot Brothers via Artlist; "Come Around" by Danya via Artlist; "Valley of Lights" by Romeo via Artlist

Video Editor: Danielle Thompson
Producer: Eric BoehmShow More

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