This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 17th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. Virtually every state has laws regulating so-called

drug paraphernalia. In many cases, those laws stand in the way of volunteers attempting

to save the lives of people who really just want to know what it is they're consuming.

Jeff Singer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, we discussed how these laws might be

fixed to reduce drug overdose deaths and allow people to work together to address

problems of addiction. We're recording this discussion in Nolan's, Louisiana for the Cato Institute State

Health Policy Summit and you walk up and down Bourbon Street and you see a lot of people trying to sell you shots or any

number of other items but there are stores in this area that would be more than

happy to sell you items made of various materials for the

the clear purpose of consuming illegal drugs and they're not selling you drugs,

they're selling you products to make the consumption

of those drugs easier or more convenient

or more pleasurable somehow. But again, these are not per se illegal products because they're being

sold in storefronts. So what governs that? Well that's called drug paraphernalia laws or

prohibitions. When the Controlled Substance Act was passed in 1970, 71, the Drug Enforcement

Administration started encouraging states to pass drug paraphernalia laws.

On the federal level, it's against the law to knowingly transport, exchange, sell

various paraphernalia across state lines.

So the federal government's role simply is regarding crossing state lines.

But because of that the Drug Enforcement

administration encouraged states to set up their own

...