Thoreau wants to know why liberal think tanks write little about marijuana legalization:
I just realized this morning that when I read about legalization, any time I see mention of a pro-legalization think-tanker it’s always, always, ALWAYS a Cato person. Admittedly, I don’t read every single piece of literature on legalization or every single article on Prop. 19, but I do read non-libertarian stuff on legalization, and even the lefty stuff on legalization seems to quote Cato. Even Greenwald, when talking about Portugal’s experiment, gave a talk at Cato.
Now, Cato is obviously a well-known institution that has spent a lot of time writing about legalization, so there’s one reason for them to get lots of attention on this. And I do realize that right-leaning and libertarian-leaning think tanks outnumber lefty think tanks (less so than in the past, admittedly), so statistically any time you see a think tank quoted the odds are that it’s not a lefty think tank. Finally, I admit that I have not personally checked every position paper ever put out by a lefty think tank, so maybe there’s a whole bunch of legalization sentiment that I’m just missing out on. But, whatever the reason, and however much individuals in lefty think tanks might have pro-legalization views, it’s Cato that gets all the attention.
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