Month: February 2025

Back in 2022, I wrote a big feature for Reason magazine about how tobacco policies were tipping past mere regulation to enter a new era of actual prohibition. As part of that story, I interviewed drug policy expert Ethan Nadelmann. Here’s what he had to say:

“I think that people in tobacco control, including in the harm reduction community, have become kind of comfortable with how to live with an illicit market,” says Ethan Nadelmann, founder and former executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “But I think that they’re not conscious that there can be a tipping point when you keep pushing more and more of the market into the underground, into the prohibitionist market, where it’s entirely unregulated. The more intensive the prohibitions, the higher the profits go.”

[…]

Tight restrictions on tobacco are, as Nadelmann notes, criminogenic: By forcing buyers and suppliers into illicit markets, they create crime where none previously existed. Even if possession of tobacco products remains legal, many small-time dealers likely will be drawn to the illicit trade. That will expose them to harassment by cops, potentially violent confrontations, arrest, and incarceration. Judging from what has happened with the drug war, crackdowns on “loosie” sales, and enforcement of outdoor smoking and vaping bans, the impact of the new restrictions will land most heavily on racial minorities and people of modest means.

Around the same time, I wrote a separate article predicting that the spread of statewide bans on flavored tobacco products would lead in the near future to the incarceration of sellers, pointing to Massachusetts as one of the places where it would likely happen first. Massachusetts banned all flavored products, including menthol cigarettes and non-tobacco flavored e-cigarettes, effective in 2020. While selling forbidden products is itself only a misdemeanor, the move to illicit markets also violates state tax laws. And not paying excise taxes is a felony offense.

Since the Massachusetts flavor ban has encouraged a massive illicit market leading to numerous seizures and arrests, it was only a matter of time before one of those sellers ended up behind bars. This month, it happened. My latest piece for Reason looks at the case of vape shop owner Ashraf Youssef, who is now serving six months in the House of Correction.

As noted in minutes from a local Board of Health meeting, Youssef was frequently selling flavored products:

In December of 2021, for example, a “Tobacco Control Manager stopped at the establishment, witnessed the sale of flavored tobacco products, and found 300 disposable flavored vapes.” And in March of 2022, “The Marlborough Police Department was sent to investigate suspicious activity in the parking lot of AAA Smoke & Vape. They determined the business has a car parked outside where patrons can walk up & purchase flavored vape products for cash.”

These violations led to fines and suspension of his license, which is how tobacco control advocates ideally imagine such enforcement working. But since he was also bringing the products in illicitly from out of state, he simultaneously violated tax laws, leading to a guilty plea for attempted tax evasion and a sentence of six months behind bars.

Although violating the flavor ban is not technically the statute that put him in jail, the outcome is the same. And it’s exactly what many of us — Nadelmann, myself, the ACLU and other organizations — warned will happen when prohibitionist policies force products onto the illicit market. Nor will this case be the last: there are at least two other felony prosecutions underway in Massachusetts arising from the sale of flavored tobacco products, these two even more unambiguously related to the state’s creation of illicit markets.

There are other pragmatic reasons to be skeptical of bans on flavored e-cigarettes, most notably that they appear to result in more people smoking far more dangerous conventional cigarettes. To those reasons we can now add another, which is that by banning voluntary transactions between consenting adults, they create crime where none existed before. It’s a familiar consequence of prohibition, and it shouldn’t be surprising to find that it applies to nicotine and tobacco too.

I have a really fun new feature at Slate digging into some very strange coffees:

The weirdest coffee I’ve ever tasted is one I found at a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, last fall. Like many coffee enthusiasts, I usually buy beans based on the country of origin or the reputation of the roaster, but that day something different beckoned. It was a bag labeled “watermelon co-ferment” from Quindio, Colombia. “Coffee and watermelon flavors eloquently mingle,” promised the label.

I brought the beans home with no idea of what to expect. I’m used to picking up subtle tasting notes in coffee, a hint of cacao, or even blueberry. This was something else entirely. As soon as I opened the bag, aroma of watermelon erupted forth. In the cup, that flavor dominated every other aspect. This was no hint of fruit. This was hyperreal watermelon, amped up to 11. Drinking this coffee felt closer to sucking on a Jolly Rancher candy than sipping a standard cup of joe. I’d never tasted coffee like this. I wasn’t sure coffee should taste like this.

The piece digs into the intriguing and controversial practice of co-fermentation, fermenting coffee beans alongside other fruits and spices. If you’re a coffee lover, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Over at Liberal Currents, I have a new piece up on Portland, protests, and pardons, defending the city from right-wing stereotypes and making the case that the 2020 protests here in no way justify Trump’s mass pardon of the Capitol rioters:

If one insists on drawing comparisons, it’s also worth emphasizing that the 2020 protests in Portland and the January 6 protest at the Capitol differed in their aims. The former were at bottom a response to the homicide of George Floyd at the hands of police; to the extent that protesters were united by any single aim, it was to demand reform to violent policing. The Portland protests were fundamentally democratic, a visible expression of popular sentiment intended to influence elected officials and raise the salience of the issue.

The January 6 protest, in contrast, was explicitly anti-democratic. The aim was not to influence politics through persuasion but rather to forcefully overturn American voters’ decision to elect Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Every legal avenue for challenging the results, no matter how ludicrous or conspiratorial, had already been tried and rejected, often by judges appointed by Trump himself. All that remained was the threat of violence against Congress and the vice president for carrying out their constitutional duties, which the rioters eagerly undertook with actual violence against Capitol Police and threats of hanging for figures like Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.

Read the whole thing here, and read Liberal Currents generally. It’s an essential publication right now and Adam Gurri is doing fantastic work publishing it.

My review of Henry Oliver’s new book Second Act is also out:

There’s a joke that goes around on Halloween about dressing up as a gifted child. “What are you supposed to be?” people ask. Punchline: “I was supposed to be a lot of things.” If that joke resonates with you, then you may want to pick up Henry Oliver’s new book Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life.

Read it here, or here without a paywall.

2024 was the best year for seeing live music I’ve ever had, especially since I got to share it with my wonderful girlfriend who’s always up for a concert. Somehow we made it to more than 40 shows together. To remember it, we made a playlist with a song each from 59 artists we got to see live. Maybe you’ll find some new favorites here too, especially if you’re into indie or Americana.