In the U.S., 29 states and Washington, D.C. have access to medical marijuana, but there’s only one state and one place in the entire country where medical researchers can go legally to get marijuana for their work: Mississippi. The University of Mississippi holds the one government contract that permits the growing of cannabis for medical tests.

This monopoly has many obvious drawbacks: it holds back research and eliminates the positive effects of competition. There is one positive, however: in the 50 years that Ole Miss has had this contract, they haven’t had any security problems — possibly because you can get better quality weed somewhere else on Ole Miss’s campus.

This week, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know heads down to D.C. to drain the swamp for some light-hearted politics: from foreign cars to the last state in the union. Our panelists are:

Major Garrett, CBS Chief White House Correspondent, who once threw-up in front of John Boehner.

Alexandra Petri, Washington Post humor columnist, who ran for office on a Hapsburg prince-based platform.

Robby Mook, former Hillary Clinton campaign manager, who got his start as a garbage dump politician.

Femi Oke is fact-checker.

The post Politickling: TMSIDK Episode 18 appeared first on Freakonomics.

via Finance Xpress