Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a great place to think and solve problems instead of finding new and exciting things to get mad about.

Today we are going to talk about the drug war, and I will make a promise to you right here right now.

By the end of today's episode you will definitively

know if Coca-Cola ever actually included cocaine in it or if that's just an

urban rumor you heard in middle school and have been too lazy to follow up on.

More importantly, we will hear about the cost of the drug war, alternate models abroad, and

policies we might implement here in the United States.

I'm your host Andrew Heaton, and I'm joined by Dr. Jeffrey Myron, senior lecturer and director

of undergraduate and graduate studies in economics at Harvard University, as well as director of economic studies at the Cato Institute.

Dr Myron, thank you for coming on.

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

So you are, I'm going to put you in the category of very legitimate economist given the credentials that I just read.

And I wanted to talk to you today specifically about the drug war.

That has come up a fair amount over the last couple of months with or at least the last few weeks

with Black Lives Matter and the protests and everything going on.

It's something that I see is fairly central to police reform efforts and I know that it's

been something that you focused on for a

number of years in your own research and in your own writing so I assume that you

are still in favor of abolishing the drug war you have not done a hard right

turn on that. I am still in favor of abolishing the drug wars.

That's correct.

I will make a further, you know what, I'll go ahead and I'll make a stab.

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