Courses

Steven Duke

Professor of Law

Yale University

Professor Steven B. Duke teaches and writes on criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and drug policy. From 1981 until 2003, he was the Law of Science and Technology Professor. He received his B.S. degree from Arizona State University and his J.D. from the University of Arizona, where he was editor-in-chief of the first Arizona Law Review.

Blog Posts

Sobering up: Why the war on marijuana should be over soon

November 5, 2016
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War on Drugs

Marijuana is becoming legal across the US, mostly because a lot of people have used it. Americans knew very little about marijuana — the leaves, flowers and stems of the cannabis plant — in the first half of the twentieth century. Few had any experience with it. Our widespread ignorance permitted federal bureaucrats and others to engage in a campaign of racist fraud. The baseless claims about marijuana included assertions that Hispanic users were engaging in crazed rape and murder rampages. This propaganda campaign resulted in the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which was a de facto prohibition