Research Library

In 1972, a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, comprising establishment figures chosen mostly by President Richard Nixon himself, issued a report that declared that “neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana and seek means other than prohibition to discourage use. President Nixon ignored the report and Congress declined to consider its recommendations, but during the 40-plus years since its publication, at least 37 states have acted to refashion a crazy-quilt collection of prohibitions, nearly always in the direction favored by the commission. The specifics vary by state, but most reform legislation has followed one of three formulas: decriminalization of marijuana possession, legalization of marijuana for medical use, or legalization of marijuana for adult recreational use. In this issue brief, authors Katharine Neill and William Martin examine the facts and fears surrounding each of these options.

This paper investigates how new potential and proposed regulations will influence the natural gas market in the United States in the coming decades, using the Rice World Gas Trade Model (RWGTM) to examine scenarios in which domestic natural gas development is stressed in a variety of ways. It considers a range of possible policy actions from the federal to the local level.

A new “Make in India” campaign to “transform India into a global manufacturing hub” aims to use manufacturing as a vehicle for job growth. Is this strategy realistic? This paper helps answer the question by describing the job growth potential of the Indian economy. Formal-sector manufacturing demonstrates the most potential for job growth under a more supportive policy regime. The paper models future employment paths for India for the next 20 years. Assuming sufficient reforms to generate East Asia-style manufacturing growth, the impact on employment and output is substantial, even if the campaign target of 100 million new manufacturing jobs remains difficult to achieve. The paper then describes a set of reforms sufficient to unleash such a manufacturing growth boom.

The 10th in a series of reports on the implementation of the ACA analyzes the costs and coverage of marketplace plans in Texas.

Whether out of strategic calculations or due to attitude towards women, the outcome is the same: female candidates often do not follow the party route to political office in Bahrain.

The decade 2003-2013 was an exceptional one for Latin America in social terms, but less clearly so in economic terms. Growth slowed down significantly after the exceptional factors that fed the 2003-2007 boom came to an end. The possible unwinding of the super-cycle in commodity prices and, to a lesser extent, of the expansionary monetary policy of the United States, has added new challenges. But the major issue is the need to overcome the poor long-term economic performance that has characterized the region in the post-market reforms period, particularly by adopting active production sector development strategies.

More Texans found talking to the call center more helpful than using healthcare.gov to get information or enroll for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new study released by the Baker Institute Health Policy Forum and the Episcopal Health Foundation.