Imagine a world in which you were not allowed to tell the truth, make art, or use descriptive words for a legal product that can save lives. By law. Couldn’t happen here—not in Oregon, right? But it has. That’s effectively what the state of Oregon is doing to small business owners like me. I am the owner of a 21-and-over vape shop in Portland, and most of my customers are people just like me: people who have used e-cigarettes to kick a cigarette habit. E-cigarettes are currently the most popular and effective method of quitting smoking. You’ve probably heard this kind of quip from a former smoker: “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve quit hundreds of times.” And so it was for me. I started smokin
Berkeley may be where the campus free speech movement was born, but school officials’ agreement this week to change school speech codes is more a sign of the times—albeit an important one. The Young America’s Foundation and the University of California, Berkeley College Republicans settled a case yesterday against UC Berkeley over the school’s speech codes. YAF and the student group sued the school over its rules for hosting events and the University’s “High Profile Speaker Policy.” In the settlement, the school agreed to pay YAF $70,000, revise its “High Profile” rules, and change policies involving security fees for campus events. YAF reports that the agreement should have the result that
