Drug panics have real and damaging consequences. The following article first appeared on Substance.com: Journalists are no less likely to take drugs than anyone else—indeed, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, they’re more likely to use. You’d think that this would make us especially skeptical both about federal policies that failed to prevent our own drug-taking and about extreme claims about drug users. But the press may actually be one of the biggest obstacles to reform. Instead of asking tough questions, reporters tend to simply parrot conventional wisdom—and reinforce the idea that the drug war is the only way, even when drug warriors’ claims contradict the evidence of the writers’ own lives. In the last month alone, we’ve seen several particularly egregious examples of mindless reporting—including one that […] Read More