Among the arguments for legalizing marijuana is that the black market for pot will disappear, thereby ending a destructive battle in the war on drugs and conserving valuable police resources. In Oregon, however, pot’s oversupply has delivered the opposite: a thriving underground market forcing legal growers to compete with cartels and illegal grow-ops, with everyone scrambling to move product in a saturated market. In City Journal, Steven Malanga examines some of the unintended consequences of Oregon’s liberalized pot laws. Should Canadian authorities expect the same?

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


