Ask Jacob Sullum All Your Questions About Drugs, Policy, and Drug Policy
And then donate to the magazine that lets you do stuff like that!

We need to talk about Jacob Sullum. This Reason senior editor plays it low key, but he's pretty amazing. Our beardy drug guru is the author of two critically acclaimed books: Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (Tarcher/Penguin) and For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Free Press). He knows everything there is to know about pretty much any illicit substance you can imagine. And everybody likes him: Saying Yes has been praised by both sides of the political spectrum. National Review called it "a highly effective debunking," and Mother Jones described it as "a healthy dose of sober talk in a debate dominated by yelping dopes."
Just in the last couple of weeks he's delivered killer reporting and analysis on ecstasy, marijuana, kratom, cannabis candy, booze, and even soda. Plus flag burning and criminal justice reform.
So ask him anything over at his Twitter account using the #askalibertarian hashtag. And then donate!
Read the whole Q and A below.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Jacob's not home, man.
How many marijuanas can I snort before I'm addicted to bath salts? Or would I die first?
It's a trick question. You've already died of chirossis of the liver from drinking all that beer you saw commercials for on tv every day of your life.
Drug policy and health care are related. What if nearly every drug was otc? You could avoid expensive Dr visits for many maladies.
Good point. I'd be all for that happening. Companies that make drugs can determine what disclosures they make and the buyer can be responsible (through personally educating themselves or placing the decisions in the hands of a caretaker) for what they choose to ingest.
Hey, Jacob -- What's your favorite drug?
And don't cop out with "the truth"!
You, uh, holding?
Is William Holdin here? Did Holden Caulfield come to the party?
Any advice on good articles and/or books I can give pro-drug war people on why they should want the drug war to end, even though they're anti-drug?
Ceremonial Chemistry by Thomas Szasz
Give them a Bible. And put sticky notes to the passages about "live and let live". Specifically John 8:7.
Hell, just tell them to read the four gospels and ask them who they are to judge anyone for what they want to do to/with/for their own body.
When it gets to Robby, is Reason going to pretend he's an expert in something, or are they just going to accept reality and acknowledge that all questions he'll get will be about his hair?
"Robby, where did the journalism professor at TSUN touch you?"
I'll post this here so as not to clutter the twitter feed.
I disagree on the national vs state policy IRT drugs. We need a national approach. The alternative is to leave an apparatus in place that enables selective prosecution of people in states where drugs are "legal". And you either believe in the equal application of the law for all people (rule of law, equal protection and all that stuff we were founded on) or you believe in the rule of man (selective prosecutions and legal limbo based on the whims of a prosecutor/govtmofficial). So many libertarians call our national boundaries "imaginary lines" but are ok with the Feds prosecuting federal laws arbitrarily based on an even smaller imaginary line dividing two states with differing state laws? That, to me, is insane.
Fucking self-ownership, how does it work?
Also: the Yelping Dopes would be an excellent name for a band.
What's y'all's favorite method of weed ingestion?
Stereotypical consensus is black folk smoke blunts, older whites smoke joints -- I am a Midwest millennial and smoke bowls more than anything else.