Does the American experience with alcohol prohibition generalize to marijuana?

It is common to compare contemporary legal prohibitions against drugs with the prohibition against alcohol in the 1930s. Making this analogy presumes similarities between the two prohibitions which have policy implicatioas for the current legal response to drugs. This study focuses on one drug, marijuana. Moonshiners of the 1930s are compared with contemporary domestic marijuana cultivators, the effects of alcohol prohibition are compared with the effects of prohibiting marijuana, and issues relevant to current marijuana policies are examined.     

The meaning of party labels

To determine the meaning(s) of the concepts Republican, Democrat, and Independent, the most frequently cited attributes of each party label were scaled in terms of their semantic centrality. An analysis of the magnitude scale values demonstrates that the labels Republican and Democrat have unique cognitive properties which easily discriminate one label from another. The most characteristic and discriminating properties refer to (1) voting, (2) electioneering, and (3) other forms of electoral behavior. Although these two labels have many strong properties over which there is considerable agreement, such consensus is lacking for the fewer and weaker properties which characterize and discriminate the label Independent. Whereas Republican and Democrat are sharply delineated, semantic inversions of one another, the concept Independent is ambiguously defined and only weakly distinguishable from other concepts.     

Modernization and counter-revolution in Thailand

Abstract

Thailand is now the linchpin in America’s Asia. As revolutionaries in Indochina continue to force a reduction of U.S. ground troops in Asia and as Washington’s commitment to Taiwan weakens, Thailand assumes increasing strategic importance for current American counterrevolutionary operations in continental Asia. This development extends a general trend which began in the early 1950s.     

The Twin Peaks of Pyongyang

The United States has been negotiating with North Korea in an effort to have it renounce its nuclear program for over a decade, since Washington negotiated an Agreed Framework in 1994. In this time, North Korea has only amassed more plutonium. The negotiations are hindered by mutual distrust and hostility, but it is doubtful whether any change in Washington's attitude toward the dprk would help solve the nuclear issue. It is the Kim regime that is the core problem. Until the regime is removed, there can be no durable peace in the region. This article suggests that with the prospect for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear issue remote, and since any attempt to remove the Kim regime militarily would entail huge costs, Washington might consider a third option: directly engaging the North Korean people.