We emphasized quality over quantity here at Points this week, as we polished off two excellent series, started a new series on popular attitudes toward drug use and addiction, and featured a number of excellent one-off works. All are worthy of a look so, for your personal reference, please enjoy our Week In Review.
Monday: We kicked off the week with the final instalment of Kelsey Harclerode’s wonderful (and very popular) Points Toward the Presidency Series. Ms. Harclerode gave us the story of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s on-again, off-again relationship with illicit substances.
Tuesday: Emily Dufton kicked off her exciting new series “A Debate For the Ages” with a spritely summary of how the American War on Drugs came to be. The story of how the White House Conference on Youth fed the Nixon government’s burgeoning culture war is a chilling look at twentieth century American realpolitik.
Thursday: Contributing Editor Ron Roizen was good enough to alert us to a wonderful post on the University of Virginia’s Out of the Box blog. As we reprint the delightful post “There’s a Reefer Man In Here!”, we tip our collective hats to Dr. Roizen.
Friday: The workweek ended with “Amazon.com for Illegal Drugs,” a beguiling long-form discussion of the website Silk Road. We also provided our readers with a weekly sampling of interesting articles and podcasts with “Friday Reads” (as is our wont).