Beyond Labels

A 360° Discussion of Foreign, National and Local Policy Issues

Scott Miller

For 18 September: Marijuana

As a warm-up to this evening’s “Community Conversation” and the Town of Surry’s public hearing on the subject, we’ll be discussing marijuana, legalization in Maine, and Peninsula town’s reactions to the opportunity to decide whether to regulate certain commercial marijuana activities.

Here’s a link to a recent Denver Post article, provided by Richard Jacoby (who spends a lot of time in Colorado–resident?), that should help to get us started. Richard notes that the Denver Post has generally been sympathetic to marijuana legalization. He also adds:

Note it is only a correlation but does underestimate the impaired problem because the samples have usually been taken several hours after the fact and in many cases once a legal limit of alcohol has been detected the coroner doesn’t bother with testing for other drugs.  It points out the difficulties of addressing the effect of drug impaired driving.

See you later today!

For 14 August: North Korea

Given the developments of the last few days, it looks like we presciently (fortuitously?) chose “North Korea” as our topic for next Monday. We can discuss questions such as:

  • What should the US policy be towards North Korea?
  • How do we best leverage the Chinese relationships with NoKo and the US to achieve our goals?
  • What are realistic goals for US policy?
  • How do the new South Korean president’s views on engagement with NoKo factor in?
  • Should US policy adopt Susan Rice’s “red line”–which I take to mean “annihilation of North Korea” upon “proof that North Korea has transferred nuclear weapons to another state or nonstate actor”? Or are these just empty words?

This is obviously a very difficult puzzle–one that has eluded the UN Security Council’s attempts to solve. While we’ve focused on NoKo in past Beyond Labels discussions, it seems particularly timely to revisit now that the degree of bellicosity has ramped up on both sides.

Remember: We start at 10:00am (instead of 10:30am) for the month of August.

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