Food For Thought:

In REASON for January, Jacob Sullum documents the plight of another group of "Drug War" victims: sufferers of chronic pain who cannot obtain relief because of their physicians' fears that prescribing effective medications will arouse the wrath of the State. In other articles, Rick Henderson reports that despite relentless opposition from the education Establishment, school choice schemes have become the chief focus of reform efforts and are being adopted in more and more districts, while in the meantime, the "separation of school and state" movement gains strength; and Thomas W. Hazlett interviews Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase, propounder of the Coase Theorem, which holds that liability burdens have no effect on the economic use of a resource—- a theorem that implies that questions about whether to pollute less and increase production costs, or reduce costs and pollute more, should be made in the market (Coase, long-time editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, a journal devoted to the economic effects of regulation, says "Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture—-agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal—-the effects were bad."). (Reason, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Ste. 400, Los Angeles, CA, 90034-6064. Subscriptions $26/11 issues. For more info, go to http://www.reasonmag.com).

In CATO Policy Analysis #259, The Political Revolution That Wasn't, Doug Bandow argues that the refusal of the 1994 Congress to significantly reduce the size of government, despite the campaign promises of the freshmen, demonstrates that term limits are more needed than ever. In #261, Supply-Side Tax Cuts And The Truth About the Reagan Economic Record, William Niskanen and Stephen Moore show that economic activity and median incomes grew faster during the Reagan era than in the decades before or after. (Cato Institute, 1000 Massachussetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20001. Policy Anayses $4 each. These and other CATO studies are available online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/policyanalysis.html).