The Cannabis Industry’s New Best Friend? President Trump

It's a sign of the times that this sensible administrative initiative makes me ask:  Has the Trump organization just invested in marijuana?

The NYT has the story:

The Cannabis Industry’s New Best Friend? President Trump
The administration’s decision to relax federal regulations on medical marijuana comes with big tax breaks for many cannabis companies, and could drive new investment in the budding sector.    By Ashley Southall

"By some measures, the legal cannabis industry is flowering. It has grown to around $30 billion today from less than $20 billion just six years ago. But investors have remained wary of its high taxes, marijuana’s illicit status at the federal level and the operational costs of complying with a patchwork of state regulations.

"Now the Trump administration is pushing major policy changes that could hand marijuana companies a huge windfall and unlock new investment in the industry.

"Last week, the government relaxed federal controls on medical marijuana. While that does not make medical marijuana legal under federal law, it moves the product from a class of highly addictive drugs, such as heroin, to a category of lower-risk medicines, like prescription Tylenol, that are overseen by the D.E.A. The Trump administration has also started a process to reclassify cannabis more broadly."

Federal Appeals Court Temporarily Halts Abortion Pill Access by Mail, Appeal to SCOTUS

 Is the state of Louisiana harmed if women living there can receive abortion pills by mail?

Federal Appeals Court Temporarily Halts Abortion Pill Access by Mail  The court order, in a lawsuit by the state of Louisiana, pauses a Food and Drug Administration regulation that greatly expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone. 
By Pam Belluck

"A federal appeals court issued a ruling on Friday temporarily halting the ability of abortion providers to prescribe pills using telemedicine and send them to patients by mail, blocking what has become a major avenue for women seeking abortions in recent years.

"The order comes in a case in which the state of Louisiana is suing the Food and Drug Administration, seeking to sharply curtail access to the abortion pill mifepristone. In the order, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted Louisiana’s request for a temporary stay of the F.D.A.’s decision several years ago to remove a requirement that patients see a medical provider in person before the pills could be prescribed.

"The court order, citing Louisiana’s claims that making pills available by mail has allowed patients there to access the medication despite the state’s near-total abortion ban, said that “Louisiana has shown that it is irreparably harmed without a stay.”

"In April, a Federal District Court in Louisiana had declined to pause the availability of pills by mail, instead saying that the proceedings should be delayed until the F.D.A. completes a safety review of mifepristone that is underway and is expected to take until late this year."

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And here's the NYT on the appeal by pharma companies to the Supreme Court:

Supreme Court Asked to Restore Access to Abortion Pill by Mail  By Ann E. Marimow and Pam Belluck

 "Administration officials recently told The New York Times that the review would not be finished until the end of this year, a time frame that would fall after the midterm elections.

"The mifepristone case puts the Trump administration in a politically tricky position, given that many of President Trump’s supporters oppose abortion."

Amazon's list of best non-fiction books coming out in May

 Here is Amazon's list of  Best Nonfiction books of May. 

(You have to scroll to the right to see Moral Economics, but I'm still glad to see that it's there:)

Publication day is May 12, just over a week away. 

 

Introduction to market design and medicine: video of my public lecture in Taiwan

 Here's a video of the talk I gave in Taiwan on Markets, marketplaces and medicine. My talk begins at around minute 9:35, after introductions and photographs, and the camera focuses on me rather than on my slides, but I think you can follow the talk well even without seeing the slides.  A Q&A session begins at around minute 59:45, with the first question being about marriage (in which I get to quote Claudia Goldin on dads versus duds:)*

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* See, earlier

Tuesday, September 23, 2025  The Downside of Fertility by Claudia Goldin---Dads versus duds

 

Australia has more unpaid beekeepers than blood donors

 If only there were some way for Australia to become self-sufficient in blood plasma, so it could stop having to buy it from the US...

The Financial Times has the story:

Australia’s drive to get more blood flowing
The country has more recreational beekeepers than regular donors and is forced to rely on imports  by Nic Fildes 

" Australia needs 100,000 new donors every year to meet its need for blood and plasma. But there are more recreational beekeepers in Australia than people who have actively donated their blood three times or more.

"This is not only an Australian challenge. Most countries have a supply gap. One problem is that the legion of older donors that has kept donations flowing for decades is dwindling and younger generations are not donating or do not return after they’ve tried it once. 

...

"The situation is particularly acute for plasma — the yellow-coloured component of blood sometimes called liquid gold — which is a vital ingredient for 18 different life-saving procedures ranging from immune deficiency treatment to heart surgery. 

Australia supplies only 38 per cent of its own plasma and spends about A$600mn a year to import it — more than double what was spent a decade ago. A report published by the state of New South Wales suggests imports needed could rise to 66 per cent of the total by 2030, meaning taxpayers are set to foot an even larger plasma bill.

For now, Australia relies on the US, where people earn up to $70 per donation, which supplies about 70 per cent of the world’s plasma."

 

Stanford celebrates Ran Abramitzky's studies of immigration

 The Stanford Daily interviews Ran Abramitzky, on the occasion of his winning a Guggenheim fellowship:

Guggenheim fellow Ran Abramitzky sees the American Dream as an ‘intergenerational story’  By Angikar Ghosal

"TSD: Your research program combines economic history, big linked microdata and policy relevance. Where do you see the next frontier for this kind of long-run, data-driven immigration research?

RA: A key frontier is linking together large-scale datasets to follow individuals and families over time and across space.

Much of my work relies on linking millions of individuals across U.S. censuses to study mobility across generations. The next step is to connect these data to other sources — such as college records, administrative data, and historical archives — to better understand how specific institutions shape economic outcomes.

For example, we are digitizing and linking records for millions of college students and faculty from over 100 institutions and connecting them to census data to study how socioeconomic background shapes access to higher education and elite professions.

Another frontier is using new tools, including AI and large language models, to systematically analyze large bodies of text — such as congressional speeches — to better understand how policies and public narratives around immigration evolve over time.

TSD: Given the current political moment around immigration policy, what do you most wish the public understood from the historical evidence?

RA: A key lesson from the historical evidence is that immigrant mobility is a long-term, often intergenerational process.

Many immigrants initially work in manual or low-paying jobs and do not move quickly from poverty to prosperity. However, their children often experience substantial upward mobility despite a challenging start.

What I think is often missing in today’s policy debate is this long-term perspective. Discussions tend to focus on newly arrived immigrants and their short-run outcomes. But historically, much of the economic success of immigrant families has occurred in the next generation.

A more long-term view would recognize these patterns and the contributions of immigrants and their children, and could lead to policies that are more supportive of immigrant integration and opportunity." 

 

 

Moral Economics: a brief review in the Sunday Times ("fascinating and very different":)

 A column (on unemployment) in the Sunday Times by it's economics editor  David Smith, ends with a brief review of Moral Economics, as a postscript:

 PS
"A lot of economics books cross my desk, but a new one, by the Nobel prize-winning economist Alvin Roth, grabbed my attention. Called Moral Economics: What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work, to be published soon by Basic Books, it is not a title designed to send it racing off the shelves.

However, it starts in an arresting way with a story I had not heard before of another celebrated Nobel prize-winning behavioural economist, Daniel Kahneman, known to many for his bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Two years ago, he celebrated his 90th birthday with family in Paris before flying to Zurich and ending his life in an assisted suicide clinic. “Danny,” Roth recalls, “was still in relatively good health, but he wanted to avoid the prospect of a long, disabling decline.”

...

It is a fascinating and very different economics book, from which I may bring you more as I find it."