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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Opinion >  Syndicated columns

This marijuana disaster could rival Big Tobacco

On July 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration wrapped up an 11-day hearing on whether marijuana should be rescheduled, or reclassified, as a less dangerous substance under federal law – a process that requires showing that the drug has an accepted medical use and a lower risk of abuse than drugs subject to greater controls.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Allison Schrager: Expect more data center moratoriums – and slower growth

If you are an AI doomer, as a majority of Americans are, then you might find New York’s one-year moratorium on new data centers reassuring: No matter how fast technology progresses, humans will do all they can to slow it down. Restrictions on data centers, which are almost certainly coming in other states as well, illustrate what we economists call friction. As usual, it comes from a place of ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Allison Schrager: Houses are no longer the best place for your money

The median house price in Nantucket, Massachusetts, is nearly $4 million. It was just $500,000 in 1995. This sounds like a stunning increase in one of the hottest and least accessible real estate markets in the country. What’s even more stunning is the stock market: If you invested $500,000 in the S&P 500 Index in 1995, you’d have more than $8.2 million today, even more if you reinvested the dividends you earned.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Jackie Calmes: Send Trump a message that the ICE killings have consequences

Markwayne Mullin's goal, he told senators in March at his confirmation hearing to replace the failed Kristi Noem as the Homeland Security secretary, was to keep the department and its blood-stained Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency off the nation's front pages. Now he's failed too. Front pages and screens in the last week have been full of the news that two more people, two fathers, ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Commentary: Fund families, not cruel crackdowns

President Donald Trump and other Republicans like to say the United States does not have money for programs that address the needs of ordinary citizens. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said recently, saying that the nation had more important things to do, like “fighting wars.” But in fact, the nation has plenty of ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Amy L. Solomon: When law enforcement takes on immigration, our safety is the cost | Opinion

President Donald Trump recently signed a $70 billion immigration funding bill. While the massive increase in federal immigration spending sparked widespread debate, many agency budgets look surprisingly stable. One example? Department of Justice grants supporting crime reduction and victim services ‒ which I oversaw during the Biden administration ‒ fell by just 1% from 2025 levels.  
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Lisa Jarvis: It’s alarmingly easy to get obesity drugs online

A secret shopper survey conducted by researchers at Yale University and published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association offers an alarming, if unsurprising, glimpse into the world of telehealth purveyors of GLP-1 medicines. It confirms what doctors have worried about for years: The popular obesity drugs are being cavalierly prescribed. It should be yet another wake-up call for regulators.