This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 26, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

Imagine a country in which the Drug War hasn't just ended but ended 15 years ago. It's a worthy thought experiment, especially if

you, like Cato's Trevor Burris, believe the country would be improved. In his chapter in the new book from

Libertarianism.org, of liberty he describes a world

15 years from the end of the war on drugs. Tomorrow the world wakes up and

decides drug prohibition has been an absolute failure.

You and I agree on this.

But the question is then what now?

And so moving to a world where drug prohibition has ended, where drug use at a very basic level is tolerated.

What does that look like?

Yeah, my contribution to the book actually looks hypothetically back from 15 years after this day

when everyone suddenly realizes that drug prohibition doesn't work. And it discusses what would initially happen.

So let's say tomorrow, it's not even decriminalization.

So we're talking about legalization.

I don't really get into what, you know, should it be 18 or 21 or the different states pass different laws as you'd expect them to

prescription or not but it's broadly legal all drugs and so first thing you'd expect and this is something

I think is very important when we talk about legalization

Drug use goes up.

Some people some for some reason some people deny this they think everyone who wants to do drugs right now is not doing drugs, but when you make them

available in stores and you take away the possibility of incarceration or criminal penalties,

there are people who are like, okay, yeah, I'll go get that now.

So a related note, we've seen in states like Colorado and Washington that teen drug use,

...