Free Republic

Call it a buzzkiller from BuzzFeed. On Wednesday, online news site BuzzFeed reported that the Trump Administration is engaged in a "secret war on weed." BuzzFeed stated that the Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee told multiple federal agencies to submit "data demonstrating the most significant negative trends" about marijuana use. The goal appears to be to try to prevent further support for relaxing federal anti-marijuana laws. If the committee is successful in its efforts, companies with U.S. marijuana operations such as Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE:SMG), CannaRoyalty (NASDAQOTH:CNNRF), and Kush Bottles (NASDAQOTH:KSHB) could see their hopes of operating in a fully legal environment...

A few years ago, this column discussed certain disturbing findings regarding psychiatry and its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry: The major psychoactive drugs are no better than placebos; the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness is mostly nonsense; and psychoactive drugs are being given to children as young as two. The first finding was buried in clinical trials of antidepressants, in which side effects of real drugs (such as dry mouth) could be emulated in an otherwise non-active agent (aka removing “unblinding bias”). In these cases, there was absolutely no difference in efficacy between the antidepressant and the placebo. As...

Psychotropic drugs have been used for the purpose of suppressing fear and enabling murderous rage for a long time. In Dispatches, his extraordinary book about the war in Vietnam, Michael Herr passes this along about the use of drugs by American soldiers: Going out at night the medics gave you pills. . . . I knew one 4th Division Lurp [Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol] who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail, the other to send him down it. He told me that...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said Democratic candidates should be proud to run on the party's economic record this fall, brushing aside concerns that both chambers of Congress could fall to Republican control. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," the former Virginia governor said the Obama administration has helped the U.S. economy "turn the corner" after nearly a decade of irresponsible fiscal policies, pointing to statistics that show the country's GDP numbers are growing. "After nearly 20 months in a row of private-sector job losses, we've gained jobs in the private sector for eight months in a row," Kaine told...