WEBVTT NOTE Prohibition Caused the Greatness of Gatsby 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Well, perhaps you've recently seen the movie The Great Gatsby. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Basically, the storyline follows the life and times of mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his friend Nick Carraway. 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:22.000 Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, the novel remains a classic and has often been viewed as an expose on the American dream. 4 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:30.000 My guest, Dr. Mark Thornton, an American economist and senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 5 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:36.000 rejoins me tonight to discuss how prohibition caused the greatness of Gatsby. 6 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:45.000 Mark wrote his dissertation on the economics of prohibition and understands the value found in the great Gatsby. 7 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:53.000 Mark is an economics professor at Auburn University and again he is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 8 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:02.000 In addition, he is also the book review editor of the quarterly journal of Austrian Economics and served as the editor of the Austrian Economics newsletter 9 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:08.000 and as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. 10 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:18.000 If you would like more information about Dr. Mark Thornton, please visit mises.org, and that's M-I-S-E-S dot org. 11 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.000 Welcome back to America Now, Mark. 12 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.000 Good evening, Barb. It's great to be with you. I love your program. Thank you for having me back on. 13 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:28.000 Well, thank you so much for rejoining me tonight, Mark. 14 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:37.000 Mark the Great Gatsby, you recently wrote an article on how prohibition caused the greatness of Gatsby. What do you mean by that? 15 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:44.160 Well, you know, I was supposed to have read the book in school, but I really did not like 16 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:45.160 it at all. 17 00:01:45.160 --> 00:01:53.880 I mean, it's a story of licentiousness and promiscuity, and it's really hard to get through. 18 00:01:53.880 --> 00:01:58.640 And a friend of mine wanted to go see the movie, and I heard the critics had really 19 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:05.960 panned the movie, but I went to the movie anyways, and it's a really good movie, but 20 00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:12.640 You can only really understand the whole thing if you realize that the whole thing is driven 21 00:02:12.640 --> 00:02:17.840 by the alcohol prohibition that the government imposed during the 1920s. 22 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:22.920 It set the stage for the whole plot. 23 00:02:22.920 --> 00:02:33.320 So the alcohol drove this whole culture basically back then, or I should say the secretive world 24 00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:37.160 of Having to Go Underground, which caused a black market, right? 25 00:02:37.160 --> 00:02:38.160 Oh, that's right. 26 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:42.200 You know, it's a very fast-paced movie. 27 00:02:42.200 --> 00:02:48.320 You know, there's giant parties and fireworks going off and people are drinking and, you 28 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:53.000 know, partying and it's just way over the top. 29 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.560 But you have to realize that alcohol prohibition was going on. 30 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.320 There was a huge black market economy in the United States at the time. 31 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:07.960 There was organized crime and smuggling and moonshiners and speakeasies and all this was 32 00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:17.160 going on and that's what's really behind the whole plot is that this, the great Gatsby, 33 00:03:17.160 --> 00:03:27.860 Jay Gatsby, who came from a dirt poor family and came up from nothing but somehow found 34 00:03:57.860 --> 00:04:05.900 is that he actually starts pharmacies that sell legal alcohol by prescription. 35 00:04:05.900 --> 00:04:13.420 So this was a part of the prohibition that there was this loophole that doctors could 36 00:04:13.420 --> 00:04:16.380 write prescriptions for whiskey. 37 00:04:16.380 --> 00:04:23.660 And so pharmacies became a big business because doctors were making money writing prescriptions 38 00:04:23.660 --> 00:04:30.940 and pharmacies were making money selling this legal alcohol which was the pure, you know, 39 00:04:30.940 --> 00:04:38.220 market-based alcohol and they were also diverting some of this good tasting pure whiskey into 40 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:44.340 the illegal markets where it was incredibly popular because everybody else was consuming 41 00:04:44.340 --> 00:04:53.140 bathtub gin which was highly potent and impure and tasted bad, smelled bad and so, you know, 42 00:04:53.140 --> 00:04:58.220 Dr. Hicksby was making lots of money and this is a reflection of the real world. 43 00:04:58.220 --> 00:05:05.980 The Walgreens drugstore chain in 1920 had 20 pharmacies. 44 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:13.940 By 1930 they had 500 pharmacies and there's no doubt that the fact that you could sell 45 00:05:13.940 --> 00:05:16.820 medicinal alcohol was a big part of that. 46 00:05:16.820 --> 00:05:22.000 Yeah, and it sounds familiar to something going on here in America now, Mark. 47 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:28.720 The parallel between what's going on between marijuana. You can get medical marijuana licenses 48 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:33.920 in many states, which was the precursor to what happened here in Colorado. People were 49 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:41.240 able to get the medical license, but eventually Colorado and Washington State now have finally 50 00:05:41.240 --> 00:05:46.640 legalized and are now in the process of trying to figure out how to regulate this. So I think 51 00:05:46.640 --> 00:05:50.560 we don't end up in that situation. How do you see that? 52 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:54.920 I think you're absolutely right, Barb. There's two things going on here. One is that if you 53 00:05:54.920 --> 00:06:02.000 create the loophole, people will use the loophole to avoid the prohibition. You had the medical 54 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:11.400 alcohol for alcoholics and a lot of other reasons. It was a legitimate use in medicine 55 00:06:11.400 --> 00:06:19.480 at the time and still is. With marijuana, there's legitimate uses, medical uses for 56 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:26.480 for Marijuana and but it gets diverted into non-medical uses but one of the things is 57 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:32.400 people see that well there's really nothing really terrible about that, that even with 58 00:06:32.400 --> 00:06:39.400 the diversion of alcohol and marijuana into non-medical uses it's not the end of the world, 59 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:47.200 it's not the cause of the social problems that we imposed those prohibitions in the 60 00:06:47.200 --> 00:06:52.520 In the first place, we imposed the alcohol prohibition because we thought we could solve 61 00:06:52.520 --> 00:07:04.560 all of these social problems of family problems, of crime, of corruption, of spousal abuse, 62 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:11.960 diverted democracy, and so forth, and it just made all those things much worse. 63 00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:17.120 What people are finding is that in these states with medical marijuana laws is that, well, 64 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:22.600 Well, it's helping patients, and some of it's getting diverted into non-medical uses, but 65 00:07:22.600 --> 00:07:23.760 it's not the end of the world. 66 00:07:23.760 --> 00:07:26.240 It's not causing social problems. 67 00:07:26.240 --> 00:07:33.600 It's actually calming some of those problems down, and of course, you know, with marijuana 68 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:39.600 it's a much less violent drug than alcohol, that's for sure. 69 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:44.280 And basically, too, the Great Gatsby pretty much exemplified the evils of prohibition. 70 00:07:44.280 --> 00:07:54.280 All right, we'll continue this discussion about the greatness of Gatsby with Dr. Mark Thornton here on American Hound after the break. 71 00:07:54.280 --> 00:08:00.280 My guest this evening is Dr. Mark Thornton and we are talking about the economics of prohibition. 72 00:08:00.280 --> 00:08:07.280 And Mark, you know, we were talking about before how the great Gatsby does really exemplify the evils of prohibition. 73 00:08:07.280 --> 00:08:14.160 but it wasn't really that it was so much that that happened but prohibition was 74 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:21.600 forced because of the 18th amendment that we actually ratified an amendment 75 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:26.800 that created prohibition and even though the alcohol was illegal it wasn't 76 00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:33.280 eliminated you know all of this forced this black market to just go ahead and 77 00:08:33.280 --> 00:08:42.280 What's happening in America now that you can kind of relate to what happened then back in the 20s? 78 00:08:42.280 --> 00:08:50.280 Well you know government prohibitions never work. They never actually eliminate what they're intended to eliminate. 79 00:08:50.280 --> 00:09:00.280 They only make it much worse. They only make the product that is prohibited, for example with alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, 80 00:09:00.280 --> 00:09:07.920 Drugs, they make those products more potent and more impure. 81 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:13.160 And the example I like to give here in Auburn, Alabama, where we have Auburn University and 82 00:09:13.160 --> 00:09:19.120 the Auburn University football team and 100,000 fans coming in in the fall for home football 83 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:24.840 games and tailgating, is that if you walked around you would see many of those fans drinking 84 00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:28.060 beer outside of the stadium. 85 00:09:28.060 --> 00:09:35.020 But inside the stadium, alcohol is illegal, but many of the fans want to continue to drink 86 00:09:35.020 --> 00:09:40.260 alcohol and you never see any one of them bring a beer into the stadium. 87 00:09:40.260 --> 00:09:51.580 What they bring in is the highly potent, double-proof rums and brandies and whiskeys, Meyers 151 88 00:09:51.580 --> 00:09:53.740 rum and that sort of thing. 89 00:09:53.740 --> 00:10:00.060 And so that's a perfect example of what happened during Prohibition and it's a perfect example 90 00:10:00.060 --> 00:10:02.580 of what's going on around the United States. 91 00:10:02.580 --> 00:10:10.380 You make marijuana illegal and what happens, the potency has increased tremendously and 92 00:10:10.380 --> 00:10:20.580 now the potency of marijuana today is 1000% higher than it was in the 1970s. 93 00:10:20.580 --> 00:10:26.020 And it's worse than that because, you know, marijuana users are discouraged by the high 94 00:10:26.020 --> 00:10:33.560 prices of marijuana and so they went to cocaine and then they make cocaine expensive. 95 00:10:33.560 --> 00:10:41.700 And so they've gone to even more dangerous drugs like heroin, methamphetamines, hallucinogenics, 96 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:47.500 which are all smaller, more potent, easier to hide, easier to transport. 97 00:10:47.500 --> 00:10:54.460 You can carry, you know, a million doses of some of these hallucinogenic drugs in the 98 00:10:54.460 --> 00:10:58.840 same container that you would transport one pound of marijuana. 99 00:10:58.840 --> 00:11:04.980 And so the smugglers and the producers are encouraged every time we make it tougher, 100 00:11:04.980 --> 00:11:12.020 every time we hire more law enforcement agents, every time we raise the penalties, we encourage 101 00:11:12.020 --> 00:11:16.900 the high potency, dangerous, even deadly products. 102 00:11:16.900 --> 00:11:23.860 And nowadays, of course, because these illegal drugs are so potent and so dangerous and so 103 00:11:23.860 --> 00:11:32.860 deadly, Americans have switched to some of these synthetic prescription-grade opiates, 104 00:11:32.860 --> 00:11:42.460 OxyContin, for example, thinking that, well, if I get caught with this, the penalty won't 105 00:11:42.460 --> 00:11:52.460 Drugs are just as deadly as the street drugs. We've seen the numbers of people dying from 106 00:11:52.460 --> 00:12:03.460 Oxycontin and related drugs such as that rising to more than 10,000 people per year. That's 107 00:12:03.460 --> 00:12:33.460 The Theory of Money and Credit 108 00:12:33.460 --> 00:12:39.940 from things like marijuana, which is, you know, it's essentially harmless and has many benefits, 109 00:12:39.940 --> 00:12:48.420 you know, as long as you're not using machinery and things like that, you know, compared to some 110 00:12:48.420 --> 00:12:53.940 of these other drugs which are very dangerous, very destructive, and very destructive. And so 111 00:12:53.940 --> 00:12:59.340 government is, you know, it's gone down this path of trying to reform society and what it's done is 112 00:12:59.340 --> 00:13:07.340 It's created chaos in American, in American schools, on the American streets, in the urban 113 00:13:07.340 --> 00:13:15.260 areas. It's gutted, you know, our urban areas with all the crime that's associated with 114 00:13:15.260 --> 00:13:20.980 all this, with all the violence that's associated with all this. The murder rate in the United 115 00:13:20.980 --> 00:13:26.340 States is probably 100% higher than what it ought to be. I mean, in the sense of being 116 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:39.340 The drug war creates a lot of violence, it involves a lot of guns, and a lot of innocent people are being killed every day as a result of all this. 117 00:13:39.340 --> 00:13:48.340 You mentioned the guns, Mark, because back in the 20s, property rights were pretty much determined by machine guns back there. 118 00:13:48.340 --> 00:13:55.340 Organized crime came on strong, and what you're talking about, that's exactly what's happening again right here on the streets of America. 119 00:13:55.340 --> 00:14:02.540 Absolutely. The murder rate in the United States before alcohol prohibition was 5 murders 120 00:14:02.540 --> 00:14:13.380 per 100,000 population. During alcohol prohibition, that rate of murders jumped 100% to 10 murders 121 00:14:13.380 --> 00:14:21.580 per year per 100,000 population. And when we repealed prohibition in 1933 and FDR became 122 00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:27.500 In the most popular president ever, the murder rate fell right back down to five murders 123 00:14:27.500 --> 00:14:30.260 per 100,000 population per year. 124 00:14:30.260 --> 00:14:31.260 So it's clear. 125 00:14:31.260 --> 00:14:37.300 I mean, it's unmistakable, it's undeniable that prohibition doubled the murder rate in 126 00:14:37.300 --> 00:14:41.020 the United States during that period. 127 00:14:41.020 --> 00:14:47.060 And it's done the same thing here in the United States in the last couple of decades. 128 00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:55.160 Crime has decreased in the United States as a result of the concealed carry permit laws, 129 00:14:55.160 --> 00:14:59.200 but our murder rates and our violent crime rates are still very high, and the murder 130 00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:06.320 rates and the crime rates in drug-producing countries is much, much even higher than that. 131 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:15.040 In Mexico, in Colombia, in Venezuela, the murder rates there are very scary, even compared 132 00:15:15.040 --> 00:15:16.640 here to the United States. 133 00:15:16.640 --> 00:15:19.200 Yeah, that is scary. 134 00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:23.000 You know, I keep thinking about this, Mark, because the push is on now for gun control 135 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:25.400 big time. 136 00:15:25.400 --> 00:15:31.320 And as we put this out there, and especially if they're going to make another amendment 137 00:15:31.320 --> 00:15:36.960 or do something along those lines and really try to curtail gun rights in this country, 138 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:40.340 we're going to push it a lot harder the other direction. 139 00:15:40.340 --> 00:15:42.480 And I want to talk about this on the other side. 140 00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:49.480 And America now returns after this commercial break. 141 00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:55.240 Well the age of the cocktail might have been the only thing to come out of prohibition 142 00:15:55.240 --> 00:15:59.540 that was a good thing other than Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. 143 00:15:59.540 --> 00:16:04.960 My guest tonight is Dr. Mark Thornton and we are talking about prohibition and the effects 144 00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:11.960 this can have on society. And Mark, we were talking again about what the government literally 145 00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:33.480 the 18th Amendment which outlawed the alcohol, it really helped the black market bloom and a lot of people like Gatsby, although I'm thinking more along the lines of the Kennedys, they really took advantage of this with the bootlegging and all that and they made their millions and billions and all of that. 146 00:16:33.480 --> 00:16:38.360 Today what's happening in America now though with the gun control issue, Mark? 147 00:16:38.360 --> 00:16:42.200 I'm concerned because could this not push it the same way 148 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:45.080 if we go ahead and try to make 149 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:49.160 concealed weapons and many weapons illegal? 150 00:16:49.160 --> 00:16:52.760 Oh yes, I mean the, you know, it's unfortunate 151 00:16:52.760 --> 00:16:56.640 everybody would love to see less violence in society. 152 00:16:56.640 --> 00:17:01.320 Sure. But the fact of the matter is that gun control does not work. 153 00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:31.320 I can guarantee you that. It's something I've looked at intensely. And what it does is it leaves citizens knowingly unarmed and unprotected. And when you have concealed carry permit laws, which allow some people to carry concealed weapons, the criminals don't know where the bullets might be coming from. And as a result, crime has fallen. If you look at the spread of these concealed carry permit laws across the nation, 154 00:17:31.320 --> 00:17:37.960 Across the states, what you see is that in states that pass these laws and pass strong 155 00:17:37.960 --> 00:17:46.720 laws that allow carry permits, crime rates, particularly violent crime rates, fall. 156 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:52.360 And the national crime rates and particularly violent crime rates have also fallen. 157 00:17:52.360 --> 00:17:57.520 So if you watch the mainstream media, if you watch CNN, you think that the world is coming 158 00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:04.520 to an End, that crime is everywhere, that people are being shot down and captured and 159 00:18:04.800 --> 00:18:10.120 raped and pillaged. They have to go around the entire nation of 300-plus million people 160 00:18:10.120 --> 00:18:16.120 to find one of these stories, but the truth of the matter is that crime rates have fallen. 161 00:18:16.120 --> 00:18:22.280 And I don't want to say that it's just because of guns, because it's also because of the 162 00:18:22.280 --> 00:18:27.520 Spread of Surveillance Cameras on private establishments where people are trying to 163 00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:29.040 protect themselves. 164 00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:34.920 Those cameras are also shut down the criminals. 165 00:18:34.920 --> 00:18:42.960 Things like burglar security systems have also cut down on crime tremendously and even 166 00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:52.140 cell phones have also helped cut down on crime and violence and murder because criminals 167 00:18:52.140 --> 00:18:59.140 The problem of crime in the United States, through guns, surveillance cameras, burglar systems, security systems, and cell phones, and we've seen a tremendous drop in crime, so I want to get the word out about this problem. 168 00:19:22.140 --> 00:19:38.140 And I've heard out that, you know, go on the internet and look it up, the statistics are fairly clear to anybody who looks at them, that the private sector has risen up, the number of private security guards has increased dramatically and crime rates have fallen. 169 00:19:38.140 --> 00:19:50.140 We have not become a more violent country. We have not become a more criminal country as a result. The crime rates are actually falling as a result. 170 00:19:50.140 --> 00:19:59.740 and so the real story is that in a very important sense things have gotten better and you know 171 00:19:59.740 --> 00:20:05.020 of course there's still a lot of violence, there's still a lot of murders in this country. 172 00:20:05.020 --> 00:20:11.860 It's largely confined to the drug trade and the battles that take place there amongst 173 00:20:11.860 --> 00:20:23.500 Street gangs battling for turf, organized crime battling for turf, but overall for the 174 00:20:23.500 --> 00:20:28.020 normal average citizen things have gotten better and the only places you have to be 175 00:20:28.020 --> 00:20:35.140 worried is where guns are illegal, like on campuses, in school zones, in states that 176 00:20:35.140 --> 00:20:42.700 have gun control laws is where basically people are, you know, known to be and identified 177 00:20:42.700 --> 00:20:50.560 by criminals to be unarmed and as a result they can run, you know, over over to people 178 00:20:50.560 --> 00:20:55.300 because they know that they don't have any means of self-protection. 179 00:20:55.300 --> 00:20:56.780 So what's the solution Mark? 180 00:20:56.780 --> 00:21:01.320 I'm sort of hearing you say that maybe we do need to bring guns into the schools and 181 00:21:01.320 --> 00:21:04.900 do those types of things, am I hearing you correctly? 182 00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:12.420 Well, I think there's a role for that. I think that if it was legal and that schools could 183 00:21:12.420 --> 00:21:21.700 have trained teachers and trained professors randomly to have guns and to be trained in 184 00:21:21.700 --> 00:21:28.620 the use of guns and to have other means of protection, it doesn't necessarily have to 185 00:21:28.620 --> 00:21:34.780 be guns. It can be tasers. It can be other things. It doesn't necessarily have to be 186 00:21:34.780 --> 00:21:42.460 Security Guns, but the criminals have to know that they're facing a threat. 187 00:21:42.460 --> 00:21:50.860 They have to know that the movie theater has security guards with guns there and that guns 188 00:21:50.860 --> 00:21:54.740 are not illegal on these certain premises. 189 00:21:54.740 --> 00:22:02.780 And so I don't think there's any way to eliminate crime entirely, but I think that there are 190 00:22:02.780 --> 00:22:09.940 Some well-known and well-tested ways of reducing crime and I think, you know, the most important 191 00:22:09.940 --> 00:22:16.820 thing is that criminals know that their victims might have guns. 192 00:22:16.820 --> 00:22:25.740 There was a study done in the 1970s where the sheriff of Orange County in Florida, which 193 00:22:25.740 --> 00:22:35.100 which is Orlando basically. He put newspaper ads in the paper offering courses for females 194 00:22:35.100 --> 00:22:40.960 to learn how to shoot pistols. And this was played up in the TVs and so on and so forth. 195 00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:47.620 And hardly anybody showed up for those classes. But the rape rate in Orange County fell dramatically. 196 00:22:47.620 --> 00:22:53.380 It fell by 46% just because criminals thought, well, all these females must be getting trained 197 00:23:23.380 --> 00:23:30.020 permit laws and it's a generally speaking it's a pretty safe place to live. 198 00:23:30.020 --> 00:23:34.380 Yeah it's odd that because here in Colorado being part of the West we always had that 199 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:40.340 policy as well but now we've had we've had Columbine we had the New Church shootings 200 00:23:40.340 --> 00:23:47.300 we've had the Aurora Colorado shootings you know and now they're trying to regulate all 201 00:23:47.300 --> 00:23:52.700 of this so I'm not sure where we can draw the line on all of this because I agree with 202 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:58.700 If they are with you in one sense, but in another sense, the criminals may realize these things. 203 00:23:58.700 --> 00:24:01.700 Then they may fear those of us. 204 00:24:01.700 --> 00:24:05.700 But I think a lot of the criminals still have their minds marked. 205 00:24:05.700 --> 00:24:12.700 I think the whole situation comes down to there's a lot of mentally unstable people in this country. 206 00:24:12.700 --> 00:24:16.700 And I think that's where we need to be really addressing the issue. 207 00:24:46.700 --> 00:24:52.700 On the other side of the break here on America Now with my guest, Dr. Mark Thornton. Stay tuned. 208 00:24:57.700 --> 00:25:11.700 My guest this evening is Dr. Mark Thornton and we have been talking about the economics of prohibition as well as the correlation about what happened back in the roaring 20s and today's culture here in America. 209 00:25:11.700 --> 00:25:18.260 What we were talking about before the break, we were talking about gun control specifically 210 00:25:18.260 --> 00:25:25.020 and how crime does seem to go down when the criminals know that people have the right 211 00:25:25.020 --> 00:25:30.780 to have guns, both concealed and just regular guns in their house. 212 00:25:30.780 --> 00:25:37.020 However, what I mentioned, I'm living here in Colorado, we had those horrific acts, Columbine 213 00:25:37.020 --> 00:25:42.540 in the New Life, and the latest, the Aurora movie theater shootings. 214 00:25:42.540 --> 00:25:44.220 These people were not sane. 215 00:25:44.220 --> 00:25:50.700 I think the bigger issue, instead of running and grabbing the guns from us and restricting 216 00:25:50.700 --> 00:25:57.820 us once again and having basically prohibition on guns, is to start doing something about 217 00:25:57.820 --> 00:26:01.780 the mental health of people in this country. 218 00:26:01.780 --> 00:26:07.220 I couldn't agree more, Barb, I think that that is a huge problem. 219 00:26:07.220 --> 00:26:18.660 I think that, but when you look at it historically, you don't see this problem existing to any 220 00:26:18.660 --> 00:26:26.900 extent whatsoever 25, 50, 75, 100 years ago. 221 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:36.020 We don't have, we have hardly any examples of the Columbine Aurora type phenomenon in 222 00:26:36.020 --> 00:26:46.260 our history and my feeling and my analysis of the situation, I haven't done any academic 223 00:26:46.260 --> 00:26:51.940 research, I haven't published any academic research on this, but from what I've been 224 00:27:21.940 --> 00:27:23.940 and Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Medicine 225 00:27:51.940 --> 00:27:54.500 to Commit Mass Murders. 226 00:27:54.500 --> 00:28:03.180 And we do know that this was the case in Aurora, in Columbine, Virginia Tech and in Connecticut. 227 00:28:03.180 --> 00:28:06.140 We know this for a fact. 228 00:28:06.140 --> 00:28:14.220 And so we also know for a fact that none of these psychoactive pharmaceutical prescription 229 00:28:14.220 --> 00:28:20.700 medicines have been tested and approved for young adults or teenagers. 230 00:28:20.700 --> 00:28:31.060 They were only tested on adults and the mind formation of the brain is not complete in 231 00:28:31.060 --> 00:28:39.900 people under 21 years old and certainly their psychological profile, their sociological profile 232 00:28:39.900 --> 00:28:48.420 is much more unstable and much less developed particularly nowadays when young adults are 233 00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:58.260 are not exposed in many cases to the trials that you and I were exposed to in high school 234 00:28:58.260 --> 00:29:01.260 and college. 235 00:29:01.260 --> 00:29:06.980 I think we've created a situation here where once again the pharmaceutical companies have 236 00:29:06.980 --> 00:29:16.700 produced products and have been approved by the government, but the approval is limited. 237 00:29:16.700 --> 00:29:22.180 But the doctors and the patients feel that if the FDA has approved these things that 238 00:29:22.180 --> 00:29:25.100 they must be safe and effective. 239 00:29:25.100 --> 00:29:31.620 In my view and my suspicion, I guess I should say, is that these drugs are not safe and 240 00:29:31.620 --> 00:29:39.660 they're not necessarily effective, particularly in an age group where they've never been tested 241 00:29:39.660 --> 00:29:46.620 except just at random by physicians, not specialists by the way, these are just physicians in many 242 00:29:46.620 --> 00:29:53.260 In many cases, who are prescribing these drugs, and I've had friends who have, and relatives 243 00:29:53.260 --> 00:29:59.980 as well, who have fallen on hard times for whatever reason, and they've been given these 244 00:29:59.980 --> 00:30:07.580 psychoactive pharmaceutical prescription medicines, and their condition deteriorated materially 245 00:30:07.580 --> 00:30:13.260 as a result, so that they didn't get better, they got much worse, and so I think this is 246 00:30:13.260 --> 00:30:19.780 This is part of a general phenomenon and I have an article about this general phenomenon 247 00:30:19.780 --> 00:30:27.980 on mises.org about prescription medicines and the moral hazard that the government approval 248 00:30:27.980 --> 00:30:41.100 of these drugs means that doctors just prescribe these things to everybody out there and that 249 00:30:41.100 --> 00:30:47.580 And the patients willingly accept these things and so instead of losing weight to reduce 250 00:30:47.580 --> 00:30:50.620 their blood pressure, they just take a pill. 251 00:30:50.620 --> 00:30:54.660 Instead of being more physically active to reduce their cholesterol, they just take a 252 00:30:54.660 --> 00:30:55.660 pill. 253 00:30:55.660 --> 00:31:05.700 And so Americans now, every American man, woman and child on average now consume 13 254 00:31:05.700 --> 00:31:08.020 prescriptions per year. 255 00:31:08.020 --> 00:31:14.660 And I just don't think as a person, I'm an economist, I'm not a doctor, but just as a 256 00:31:14.660 --> 00:31:20.620 person I don't think that's a very healthy prescription for the American people. 257 00:31:20.620 --> 00:31:29.620 We've gotten more obese, more diabetes, more mental health problems, and so I'm very concerned 258 00:31:29.620 --> 00:31:36.460 that the FDA and its approval process and all of the other expense that that places on 259 00:31:36.460 --> 00:31:44.260 on American Consumers, that in the end, it's created this moral hazard where we're taking 260 00:31:44.260 --> 00:31:49.620 prescriptions to solve problems and we're ending up creating problems. 261 00:31:49.620 --> 00:31:55.820 The most extreme example of that, I think, is these psychoactive prescription pharmaceutical 262 00:31:55.820 --> 00:32:02.460 medicines being given to children and young adults for which they were never tested. 263 00:32:02.460 --> 00:32:09.400 They were not a part of the testing process and so I think that's something that has to 264 00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:19.800 be looked at and examined and reviewed and I think just your audience just needs to take 265 00:32:19.800 --> 00:32:27.560 a second look at what their doctors and what the FDA are offering out there is you know 266 00:32:27.560 --> 00:32:36.920 As a lot of your great advertisers are saying, take this natural product, it has some effectiveness 267 00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:45.120 and it's non-addictive, it might help you but at least it's not going to hurt you. 268 00:32:45.120 --> 00:32:51.960 So I think that that natural approach that your great advertisers are promoting I think 269 00:32:51.960 --> 00:33:15.960 is something that should be considered by your audience and by all Americans because I think it's creating a lot of problems and you know a nation that's consuming literally billions of prescriptions every year and nobody's even questioning that is something that's of great concern to me. 270 00:33:15.960 --> 00:33:20.960 Yeah, and it's a great concern to me as well, and I agree with you 100%, Mark. 271 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:23.960 We have created, as you called it, a moral hazard here. 272 00:33:23.960 --> 00:33:29.960 We have drugged Americans to the point where they can't think, let alone reason, 273 00:33:29.960 --> 00:33:32.960 what's right and what's wrong just about anymore. 274 00:33:32.960 --> 00:33:39.960 And we're creating a nation of basically drugged out zombies who are acting crazed half the time. 275 00:33:39.960 --> 00:33:43.960 They can't drive, they can't think for themselves, they're out there. 276 00:33:43.960 --> 00:33:57.960 Not all of them, but so many of them, you know, we've primed them by feeding them from sometimes two years old and on with these psychotropic drugs. 277 00:33:57.960 --> 00:34:02.960 It's horrific, you know, and I really hate to see what's going to be coming from this. 278 00:34:02.960 --> 00:34:10.960 Mark, we've run out of time here. Can you please tell people where they can get some information about you quickly? 279 00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:39.960 Mises.org and you can email contact at Mises.org and just ask for me or just search our web page and you'll find the article on the great Gatsby and on the prescription drugs and all that kind of stuff. We've got a big, big pile for you to look at. It's all free, by the way, and there's no registration or anything. 280 00:34:39.960 --> 00:34:43.960 Great. Mark, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. 281 00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:45.960 Good night, Barb. Good night.