Yes, Compulsory Drug Treatment Works

Last week, New York City mayor Eric Adams proposed the Compassionate Interventions Act, which would allow judges and doctors to order involuntary treatment for dangerous addicts (read more about the proposal here).

Despite critics’ claims to the contrary, research shows that pushing people to get clean works. As Charles Fain Lehman observes, a large American survey found that involuntary treatment reduced program drop-out, while a cross-sectional examination of Thai drug users found compulsory drug detention to be positively associated with drug-use cessation of at least a year.

“People who are addicted to drugs don’t like having to quit, if for no other reason than the unpleasant consequences of withdrawal,” Lehman writes. “Being compelled to quit will, all else held equal, help people kick the habit that makes them a danger to themselves and others.”

Read more about the research here.

New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to raise the city’s hourly minimum wage from $16.50 to $30. That proposal might sound like a windfall for low-income workers, but it would lead to fewer employment opportunities, hurting them in the long run.

As Santiago Vidal Calvo points out, such a dramatic increase could devastate small businesses, pushing workers out of jobs. And in other cities that have raised their minimum wages, workers have seen a net earnings loss due to fewer hours worked.

Read more about Mamdani’s proposal and how it could end up hurting the very people it’s intended to help.

President Trump is reportedly considering reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, putting it in the same less-dangerous category as anabolic steroids and ketamine.

This would be the wrong move, Patrick T. Brown writes. “Marijuana’s benefits remain vastly oversold and its harms understated,” he observes, “particularly when it comes to young men’s job, marriage, and family-formation prospects.”

Read his take on the potential consequences of making it easier for Americans, and young men in particular, to get their hands on pot.

Once dedicated to teaching about free markets, business schools around the globe have become agents of social change, instructing students in ESG, DEI, and Corporate Social Responsibility.

“This is a category error,” Allen Mendenhall and Daniel Sutter write. “Business schools exist to research and teach the principles of successful commercial organization. When they become instruments of social transformation, they abandon their comparative advantage—their expertise in market processes—for areas where their competence is questionable and their legitimacy suspect.” 

Read more about Mendenhall and Sutter’s research into schools’ embrace of progressive thinking.

“The New Yorker was one of the magazines my parents, though not wealthy, always subscribed to because they thought it was well written and entertaining. Thus, I grew up reading it as well. It could be somewhat political but not overbearing. Then their political preening became the priority and drove me away. Boy have they fallen.”

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