5.02: Playing Monopoly: Never Okay

Negative → Positive / Visible / Legal → Social: marijuana legalization and how systems change.

Marijuana legalization is happening in various states in the United States. How does that kind of change fit into the system we’ve devised for talking about structure and agency/systems and individuals? Because norms do change: all the time. How?

• Reefer Madness
• “What’s More Dangerous: Marijuana or Alcohol? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast”
• “Four of the Major Fear Campaigns That Helped Create America’s Insane War on Drugs” – we don’t necessarily endorse all the ideas here, but it does a nice job summarizing a lot of the issues around the drug war
• “Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin” – the New York Times editorial board, on the DEA’s recent decision to continue categorizing marijuana the same way it does heroin (as a Category 1 drug)
• “Donald Trump’s economic speech is basically about getting a do-over” – in which the journalists employed the Internet Archive as part of their reporting on Trump
• Previous episodes mentioned on the show:
  • 4.12: Five Years of Facepalming (Live at NC State) – learning from other countries about our own legal approaches
  • 5.01: A Ph.D.-Level Math Problem – introducing our axes for analyzing systems and their effects on individuals

• “DaVinci” by Jaw Gems. This song is from Jaw Gems' new album Heatweaver. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. He’s composing other music right now, and this inspired him a bit along the way. Get inspired yourself and remix it! We’ll feature it if you do.

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

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