On Friday, I debated cannabis legalization at AmericaFest 2025, the annual convention for Turning Point USA, the group led by Charlie Kirk until his assassination in September. Here’s my opening argument:

My opponent this afternoon is Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine and a staunch libertarian. Katherine’s pinned post on X calls for the legalization of heroin, so at least she is consistent.

I too am consistent. I believe the liberal and libertarian effort to destigmatize, normalize, legalize, and even promote the use of ‘drugs of abuse‘ has been a catastrophe for the United States. 

We are a global outlier on this issue. We have reaped nothing but pain for a generation of ideologically driven decisions to make drugs more accessible to both young people and adults.

By ‘drugs of abuse,’ I mean drugs that produce a subjective high that makes people want to keep using them and to use more over time. The precise biochemical mechanism and whether the high is stimulating, sedating, or intoxicating matters less than the fact of its temporary pleasure. Of course those drugs include cannabis. Yes, alcohol is a drug of abuse too. So are medically prescribed drugs, from Oxycontin to Adderall to Valium.

Unfortunately, Thursday’s decision by President Trump to ‘reschedule’ cannabis and make it more accessible will only worsen this self-imposed crisis and lead to more drug-driven misery and death.

Let’s be clear about cannabis. Cannabis — particularly cannabis today, which is very high in THC, the chemical that intoxicates users — is very much a drug of abuse.

When they have been tested in rigorously controlled trials — and they have been tested over and over — cannabis and THC have shown almost no medical benefits. But they have many side effects, to both brain and body.

Normalizing drug use normalizes drug use. Pretending drugs of abuse are medicine normalizes it even faster.

Cannabis can cause psychotic episodes where users lose touch with reality and become paranoid that friends or family members want to hurt them. It can sometimes cause those users to become violent in response. It can cause episodes of prolonged vomiting that send users to emergency rooms. It is associated with traffic accidents and deaths. It raises the risk of heart attacks in users dramatically. And, yes, it is a gateway drug.

Overall, cannabis is probably at least as dangerous as alcohol. It is less obviously physically harmful, for despite its cardiovascular risks, it does not cause direct overdose. But it is more psychiatrically harmful.

Now we come to the simple, facile libertarian argument: but alcohol is legal! Cannabis should be legal too. In fact, all drugs should be legal — and again, I do appreciate the fact Katherine was honest enough to say that out loud.

My drug, my body, my choice.

Sounds good. Except that to use drugs is inevitably to risk consequences both to yourself and to other people that cannot be foreseen. Drugs follow their own logic.

Some drugs — especially opioids — frequently kill their users from overdose. Many drugs cause users to behave in antisocial ways — to become violent, or simply to stop caring about the possible consequences of their actions. And all drugs of abuse have addictive potential.

The libertarian solution to this problem is to ignore it, to say that users are responsible for their own behavior. If they become addicted, too bad for them.

This theory sounds nice. But it ignores reality.

The children and families around users and addicts inevitably bear the brunt of their antisocial behavior, and the rest of us cannot ignore its public harms. Even when it does not lead to full-bore addiction, drug use that is more than casual almost inevitably worsens the problems users have turned to it to solve. It is the most selfish of acts. It divorces users from the lives of people around them — and their own lives.

A religious person might call that behavior immoral. But one doesn’t have to be religious to recognize it has what economists call externalities. The user feels the subjective pleasure, while everyone else faces the potential consequences.

As a society, we seem to have become desensitized to the potentially horrific consequences of drug use.

We should not be. We must not be.

We — as individuals, and as a nation — must do everything possible to remind people of them. We must discourage it at every turn. That means stigmatizing drugs of abuse, not legitimizing them, not building industries that profit from heavy use and addiction.

It means driving up the price — in dollars and potential legal consequences — of drug use to discourage people who have not used from doing so, rather than making drugs cheap, openly advertised, and easily accessible.

It means understanding that every drug is a gateway drug, not just biochemically but societally. Normalizing drug use normalizes drug use. Pretending drugs of abuse are medicine normalizes it even faster.

Legalization is a red herring. Alcohol is legal, but we arrest people for alcohol consumption all the time — for underage use, for public drinking or intoxication, for drinking and driving. We will continue to arrest people for using cannabis too, even if the drug is fully legalized at the state and federal level.

But whatever the legal status of cannabis, we are not going to put every — or even many — cannabis users in jail. We don’t now, and we didn’t a generation ago. 

The question is whether we want encourage use: of cannabis, of Adderall, of alcohol, of OxyCONTIN, of fentanyl, of cocaine, of every legal and illegal drug. Legalizing cannabis is another step on that path to ruination.

I hope we do not take it.

Editor’s note: This column first appeared on the author’s Substack, ‘Unreported Truths.’

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a conservative legal group, is requesting the Trump administration remove race from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) ‘Social Vulnerability Index,’ which the groups claim is being used by liberal localities to steer funds to communities based on race.

WILL refers to what has been taking place as ‘DEI redlining’ in its letter to Trump administration officials at the CDC and the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). It says the tool helps localities prioritize Black and Hispanic neighborhoods over White neighborhoods due to racial composition, independent of any other factors, like poverty.  

‘In the name of ‘racial equity,’ local officials prioritize certain geographic areas for public safety, parks improvements, public swimming pool closures, broadband access, safe drinking water, and disaster assistance,’ the letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill stated. ‘And these governments point to CDC’s SVI as the reason for their race-based spending.’

Among various examples the group highlights is Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s county parks department, which states on their website that the Milwaukee Parks Foundation ‘works to reduce or eliminate racial disparities through investments and activation of park spaces that rank high on the Milwaukee County Park’s Equity Index.’ 

Meanwhile, an inter-office communication from 2024 obtained by WILL, updating officials on the ‘Parks Equity Index,’ the Milwaukee Parks Foundation points out that ‘the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index’ is part of its ‘weighted composite data analysis’ meant to help streamline decision-making within the department.         

‘In other words, parks in white neighborhoods are de-prioritized, while parks in non-white neighborhoods are prioritized,’ WILL argues in its letter to HHS and the CDC.

To show the real life consequences of this, the conservative law group pointed to a community pool that has been closed for the past few years in a local town that is 90% White.  According to local media reports, the pool needs about $600,000 in repairs, but WILL said those will likely never come to fruition, since the community ranks low on the parks department’s ‘Racial equity Index.’ 

Milwaukee County Parks Department came out with a study indicating it was considering shutting down the pool or transferring it to be run through a public-private partnership similar to other pools in the area, according to local outlet Urban Milwaukee.

‘According to Milwaukee County, Hales Corners ranks 128 out of 153 parks in Milwaukee County, with a 3 out of 10 score and a 0.33 SVI score. So the kids and families in Hales Corners will lose their swimming pool, which has been a community fixture since 1968, because the residents are too white,’ WILL argued in their letter. ‘Race-based SVI encourages the use of race for its own sake, or at best, as a proxy for other elements already accounted for within the SVI.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Milwaukee Parks Department for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

WILL pointed to numerous examples of case law determining such activities are unconstitutional, including the recent Students for Fair Admission case that resulted in an overhaul of affirmative action rules in higher education. 

Besides Milwaukee, WILL highlighted examples from California’s Community Development Block Program, run by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, which the conservative law group alleges is using the CDC’s SVI index to help prepare for, and respond to, natural disasters. Connecticut’s ‘Drinking Water State Revolving Fund,’ which helps maintain public water systems and assigns a ‘Social Vulnerability Index score’ to each project, was listed as well.

Cook County, in Chicago, was also among those listed. Their ‘Comprehensive Broadband Planning Initiative’ says explicitly on its website that it ‘prioritizes communities with the highest Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) in Illinois.’

The Trump administration has cut more than 600 rules and regulations in the past year, while only introducing five new ones in an effort to advance Trump’s deregulation priorities, Fox News Digital has learned.

Trump did not hesitate to take action to cut red tape as soon as he took office — after former President Joe Biden’s administration introduced hundreds of new rules every year during his term in the White House. As a result, Trump signed an executive order in January instructing federal agencies to eradicate 10 regulations for every new one implemented. 

As a result, agencies submitted more than 1,300 proposals to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in 2025 — resulting in a total of 646 deregulatory actions this fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

Altogether, the deregulatory actions have amounted to $211.8 billion in net cost savings in fiscal year 2025, translating to more than $600 per American, according to OMB.

‘The Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda is the most ambitious in American history,’ OMB Director Russ Vought said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘We have blown far past the target 10 to 1 deregulatory ratio in President Trump’s Executive Order, saving hundreds of billions for the American people.’

‘In less than one year we have already achieved more savings than in all four years of the prior Trump Administration, and we’re just getting started,’ Vought said. 

Deregulatory actions that the Trump administration has taken this year include eliminating the requirement to remove shoes during Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) airport screenings — saving every passenger roughly two minutes going through TSA. Additionally, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the Department of the Treasury eliminated a rule for U.S. companies and individuals to report to the government personal informationrelated to business ownership. 

The bulk of deregulatory actions taken occurred at the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration added between roughly 400 and nearly 800 rules each year — which were often coupled with additional regulations, according to a senior administration official. 

Total regulatory costs imposed under the Biden administration snowballed and accumulated to $1.8 trillion during his term in the White House, according to the American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute. 

Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has come under scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans for its deregulatory push. 

Democrats opposed a proposal from Trump’s Labor Department to slash more than 60 workplace regulations that encompassed a host of issues, including minimum wage requirements to harmful substance exposure guidelines. 

‘Donald Trump is betraying America’s workers by forcing people to choose between a paycheck and their safety,’ Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement in July. ‘Slashing basic protections like standards to ensure roofs don’t collapse, minimum wage for home health care workers, and proper lighting in a construction site won’t make workers safer or small businesses stronger — it will just make greedy corporations richer.’ 

The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Friday that target seven family members and associates tied to Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which the Trump administration continues to put in its crosshairs.

The action, carried out by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), seeks to address corruption and deceptive practices involving the Venezuelan state.

‘Today, Treasury sanctioned individuals who are propping up Nicolás Maduro’s rogue narco-state. We will not allow Venezuela to continue flooding our nation with deadly drugs,’ Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. 

‘Maduro and his criminal accomplices threaten our hemisphere’s peace and stability. The Trump Administration will continue targeting the networks that prop up his illegitimate dictatorship.’

This builds on sanctions issued earlier this month, with the Treasury now targeting family networks, not just individuals. The Treasury release names the familial networks of Carlos Erik Malpica Flores (Malpica Flores) and Ramon Carretero Napolitano (Ramon Carretero).

The named and sanctioned individuals in the Treasury release include Eloisa Flores de Malpica, Malpica Flores’ mother and the sister of Cilia Flores; Carlos Evelio Malpica Torrealba, his father; Iriamni Malpica Flores, his sister; Damaris del Carmen Hurtado Perez, his wife; and Erica Patricia Malpica Hurtado, his adult daughter.

According to the Treasury Department, sanctions are not meant to punish indefinitely, and OFAC provides a formal process for petitioning removal.

The Justice Department posted thousands of pages related to Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases on a public website Friday and said additional documents were forthcoming.

The trove of documents was released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law passed last month that imposed a 30-day deadline on the DOJ to publish all unclassified material related to the cases.

The files came from the DOJ, the FBI, the Southern District of New York and other entities, and they were expected to include public and nonpublic information about Epstein, a registered sex offender who faced charges of trafficking underage women before dying in prison in 2019 in what authorities said was a suicide.

The bill also required the DOJ to release flight logs, the DOJ’s internal communications about the cases, information on Epstein’s death and any material about people, government entities or companies with ties to Epstein’s ‘trafficking or financial networks.’

The documents included redactions and reasons for blocking out the information. The transparency bill gave the DOJ wide latitude to withhold information that could identify victims, child pornography and material that could jeopardize open investigations or litigation. The government could also leave out information ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,’ the bill said.

Because President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Nov. 19, the statutory deadline for release is Dec. 19.

The DOJ is already facing scrutiny for missing the cutoff date after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday’s documents were incomplete during an interview with Fox News.

Blanche said he expected the government to upload ‘several hundred thousand more’ pages in the coming couple of weeks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that Democrats are ‘working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts’ to address the anticipated late files.

This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.

More than a dozen politically exposed people and government officials’ names appear in the hundreds of thousands of pages of Jeffrey Epstein files made public Friday, sources said.

And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ discovered more than 1,200 victims and their families during the exhaustive review, explaining the process behind determining which files could be released in a letter to Congress exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.

Sources told Fox News Digital that new photos of Epstein with former President Bill Clinton are part of the release. 

The Justice Department redacted the names and identifiers of victims. Fox News Digital has learned that the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials. 

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a letter written by Blanche to members of the House of Representatives regarding Friday’s anticipated release of the files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

‘We write to notify you that today the Department of Justice is producing hundreds of thousands of pages of responsive materials in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,’ Blanche wrote. 

‘Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, this unprecedented disclosure highlights our commitment to following the law, being transparent, and protecting victims,’ Blanche continued, noting that the production of documents comes within the 30 days required under the law signed by the president.

‘This letter will summarize the Department’s historic efforts and disclose specific details regarding the review and production process,’ Blanche continued.

‘Never in American history has a President or the Department of Justice been this transparent with the American people about such a sensitive law enforcement matter,’ he added. ‘Democrat administrations in the past have refused to provide full details of the Jeffrey Epstein saga. But President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Patel are committed to providing full transparency consistent with the law.’ 

In November, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed, requiring the government to release within 30 days all unclassified material in its possession related to Epstein’s and associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases. 

President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in November. 

The law allows the DOJ to omit or redact any references to victims and files that could jeopardize pending investigations or litigation, such as a probe Bondi recently opened in New York into Epstein’s ties to Democrats. Information could also be left out ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,’ the law says.

Meanwhile, in the letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Blanche revealed that the Justice Department, through its sprawling internal process, learned of more than 1,200 victims.

‘This process resulted in over 1,200 names being identified as victims or their relatives,’ Blanche wrote. ‘We have redacted reference to such names. In addition to redacting the names of these victims, we have also redacted and are not producing any materials that could result in their identification.’

Blanche explained that ‘all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials that relate to: Jeffrey Epstein including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters’ are being released.

Also being released are any records relating to ‘Ghislaine Maxwell; flight logs or travel records..for any aircraft, vessel, or vehicle owned, operated or used by Jeffrey Epstein or any related entity.’

The DOJ is releasing any records or documents with ‘individuals, including government officials, named or referenced in connection with Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity or plea agreements, or investigatory proceedings;’ as well as any ‘entities..with known or alleged ties to Epstein’s trafficking or financial networks.’

The documents will also reference ‘any immunity deals, non-prosecution agreements, plea bargains, or sealed settlements involving Epstein or his associates.’

The DOJ also is making public any ‘internal DOJ communications, including emails, memos, meeting notes, concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates,’ Blanche said.

The documents will also include ‘all communications, memorandum, directives, logs or metadata concerning the destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment of documents, recordings or electronic data related to Epstein, his associates, his detention and death, or any investigative files.’

Blanche also said that any ‘documentation of Epstein’s detention or death, including incident reports, witness interviews, medical examiner files, autopsy reports, and written records detailing the circumstances and cause of death’ will also be released.

Blanche said the DOJ is continuing to review additional documents and other items for ‘potential responsiveness.’ 

‘Just this week, one of the Department’s components provided additional victim information requiring updated review of materials, and in the last few weeks multiple courts have granted the Department’s unsealing motions, requiring detailed review of thousands of pages of investigative and grand jury material.’

Blanche pointed to a ruling in the Southern District of New York requiring ‘additional layers of review to minimize the risk of inadvertent production of protected victim information.’

‘We anticipate this ongoing review being completed over the next several weeks.’

Blanche explained that prior to the passage of the new Epstein law, the DOJ conducted ‘a thorough review, including digital searches of databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as searches of real and personal properties.’ 

‘This review did not reveal credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, nor did it undercover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,’ Blanche explained. He added that judges in the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York have authorized the DOJ to produce materials ‘previously prohibited from production by protective orders and grand jury secrecy laws.’

Blanche explained that the review protocol instructed attorneys to redact or withhold material that contained personally identifiable information of victims; depicted or contained child sexual abuse materials…; would jeopardize an active investigation or prosecution; depicted images of death, physical abuse, or injury; and property classified national defense or foreign policy information.’

‘Protecting victims is of the highest priority for President Trump, the Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice,’ Blanche wrote. ‘As part of the review and production, the Department solicited counsel for any victims of Jeffrey Epstein and invited counsel to provide us with names of victims, whether previously identified or not.

‘This process resulted in over 1,200 names being identified as victims or their relatives,’ Blanche wrote. ‘We have redacted reference to such names. In addition to redacting the names of these victims, we have also redacted and are not producing any materials that could result in their identification.’ 

Blanche said the Justice Department’s review team consisted of more than 200 DOJ attorneys working to determine whether materials were responsive under the Act and, if so, whether redactions or withholding was required.

The review had multiple layers, according to Blanche, including 187 attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division conducting a review of all items for responsiveness. Next, a quality control team of 25 attorneys conducted a second-level review to ensure that victims’ personal identifying information was properly redacted and that materials that should not be redacted were not marked for redaction.

Then, assistant U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of New York reviewed the responsive materials to confirm appropriate redactions.

‘The Department will continue to follow the Review Protocol and add to the public website materials that are responsive under the Act, and the Department will inform Congress when that review and production are complete by the end of this year,’ Blanche said.

‘The Department’s commitment to transparency, following the law, and protecting all victims under the leadership of President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Patel will never waver.’

Fox News’ Ashley Oliver contributed to this report.