Don't Mess With Taxes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:10 PM

Remember Texas's "pole tax," the $5 per customer fee applied to strip clubs in January? Turns out that a state judge has ruled the tax to be a violation of the First Amendment. The Attorney General intends to devote more public funds to appealing the ruling, while other supporters of the tax are investigating reforms to the legislation that would help it pass constitutional muster. (Incidentally, I haven't read the court opinion, but I am surprised that a case decided on free speech grounds also seems to hinge (if the published reports are correct) on the earmarking of the revenues from the tax.)

In unrelated news, via Pete at Drug WarRant we learn of a wonderful series of videos concerning heroin. The presenter is Michael Jourdan, a leading Danish drug researcher. Heroin (like methamphetamine) is a word that for many people is so evocative of danger as to preclude marshaling facts or reasoning about policy. Jourdan provides the facts, and some fine reasoning along the way, too.

Labels: dancing, Drug WarRant, heroin, taxes, Texas

 
Don't Discuss This Book
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:02 AM

Vice Squad has heard from the author of You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos. The subject matter overlaps with Vice Squad on the drugs and sex front, though a glance at the Table of Contents also will show you the non-vicious (but fully taboo -- mucus makes an appearance --) topics covered by You Will Die. The third section of Chapter One has the intriguing title "Definition of Taboo: Shut Up". The website hosts lots of other helpful stuff, too, including a page on prostitution legalization links that is easily the best of its kind that I have surfed upon. And I just noticed -- really -- that the drug legalization links page includes (along with Pete's indispensable Drug WarRant) our own modest corner of the blogosphere. You Will Die (at least the website -- I haven't read the book yet, though I have high hopes for it) is even more insightful than I suspected.

Labels: Drug WarRant, drugs, prostitution

 
The War on Khat in the US
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:02 PM

Pete at Drug WarRant points us to an article that indicates the extent of federal resources that have been put into service to fight the relatively mild stimulant in the US. Turns out that despite the prosecutorial ardor, it might be hard to lock the defendants in cages for significant periods of time. The 'problem' is that the the 'bad' compound in khat, the one that is categorized with heroin in US drug scheduling, breaks down within a few days into another compound that just doesn't command the same amount of hard time. The article also is noteworthy for revealing, in passing, as it were, just how weak the arguments are for criminalizing khat possession at all. It is suggested that the khat crackdown might have something to do with fighting the war on terror in East Africa -- a crackdown on a drug produced in a potential terrorist-breeding ground always being a smashing policy choice (April 25, 2007).

All is not irrationality, however. The latest figures from TRAC indicate that the post-9/11 decline in federal drug prosecutions continues apace.

Labels: Drug WarRant, khat, policing

 
First Afghanistan....
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:16 PM

Pete Guither of Drug WarRant and many others have been protesting the DEA-sponsored exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The connection between drugs and terrorism is an artifact of prohibtion -- note that there does not seem to be a connection between alcohol and terrorism. Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy has been making a similar point, arguing that prosecuting our War on Drugs in Afghanistan is bolstering the Taliban and hindering our ability to fight terrorists. Here's the final paragraph of today's post on this topic by Somin:

I recognize, of course, that it is politically unrealistic to expect the Bush Administration to abandon the War on Drugs completely. But I hope they can at least recognize the wisdom of stopping the poppy eradication campaign in Afghanistan. They need not even make a public announcement about it or admit that they were wrong. Reasonable people can differ about whether or not the War on Drugs is a good idea. But even those who support it wholeheartedly should consider whether it is really important enough to risk undermining the War on Terror.

Before I started working on vice policy I worked on Soviet/Russian reform, and one thing I learned from that exercise is that political constraints can shift quite quickly: look how many people forecast the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe even six months before it occurred. I have no insight into, or really any interest in, political strategy, but... presumably President Bush must think about his legacy. Right now it does not look as if history will treat his foreign policy as a shining success, though there are no guarantees on future judgments. What about his domestic policy legacy? Again, right now, I don't see it as being strewn with obvious success, and images of Katrina look like they will linger. In his final two years in office, why shouldn't President Bush take a few bold steps to relieve us from some of the worst of the War on Drugs? For instance, he could start by reclassifying marijuana and by calling off the DEA from harassing people operating legally under state laws with respect to medical marijuana. (OK, these aren't very bold -- they should be easy sells.) If political cover is needed, there are plenty of conservatives who are against the War on Drugs, including Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, Jr.; indeed, de-escalating the drug war can legitimately be viewed as enhancing national security and being a form of compassionate conservatism.

Labels: Afghanistan, Drug WarRant, marijuana

 
Why are Drugs Still Illegal?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:15 PM

A couple weeks ago I was in cold Russia for the Global Development Network conference. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times provided the kick-off address, and in it, he surprised me by twice referring to the crazy narcotics control policies of the US (and other developed nations) and their deleterious consequences upon developing countries. (Maybe the tide is turning?) His timing was fortuitous for me, as just prior to his remarks I was struggling through a drug policy debate with others at my table who were not particularly receptive to legalization. The juxtaposition of the discussion at our table and the Wolf remarks got me to thinking that I had never fully articulated (at least in a single post) why I thought drugs were still illegal, given that the prohibition is extremely costly, largely ineffective, and (most importantly) unjust. (Pete at Drug WarRant has provided a definitive discussion of why marijuana is illegal.) So, how is it that this "insane" (or "crazy" – Wolf used one or both of these terms but I do not trust my notes) policy remains in place?

Let me suggest four reasons. The first is simply the tyranny of the status quo. In the case of drug prohibition, the usual status quo bias is bolstered by the fact that the currently illegal drugs are not all that popular (relative, for instance, to alcohol during national Prohibition in the US), and there is essentially no memory (in the case of opiates and cocaine) of a regulatory regime that does not involve prohibition. This lack of pertinent experience is itself partly a cause and now also an effect of the UN conventions that render drugs illegal on a global basis.

Second, there is a dose of logic which is persuasive (on the surface, at least) and irrefutable, but not dispositive – though the fact that it is not dispositive apparently is subtle. That logic goes along the lines of “if there were no drugs, there would be no drug problems.” Because this logic is absolutely correct, any tragedy that occurs under the current prohibitory regime – instead of discrediting prohibition, which would seem to be the obvious response – can be met, without conspicuous senselessness, by a call for a more committed prohibition. The notion that the drug-free world that the logic calls for is itself either a chimera or not worth the cost seems to be less than immediately accessible. So prohibition becomes a self-justifying policy.

Third, parents in the middle and upper classes in developed nations might believe – and they might be right to believe – that prohibition (relative to some undelineated alternative) makes it a bit less likely that their kids will become enmeshed in drugs. (This might be true even of parents who are former or current illegal drug users themselves.) Certainly the bulk of the observable costs of drug prohibition tend to be foisted upon lower class neighborhoods, because these are the neighborhoods in which open markets for drugs are likely to arise. The less obvious costs of prohibition – for instance, that there are black market sellers who have a significant financial interest in selling to the underaged, that the purity of the product is compromised (leading to unintentional overdoses), that stronger forms of the drug (heroin instead of opium) become relatively more available, and that ridiculously severe jail sentences are imposed – are, well, less obvious, though they are brought home quickly when it is your kid who pays one of these prices.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, people don’t have a good idea about what a legal alternative entails. (This point obviously parallels point one.) Legal channels for the distribution of opiates to adults for recreational purposes do not imply that every convenience store sells heroin to all comers. Kids will remain prohibited, licenses can be required for both buyers and sellers, advance purchase agreements can be mandated, significant taxes can be imposed, and so on. Perhaps the time has come for the legalization advocates to coalesce around some very specific policies that spell out, on a drug-by-drug basis, the precise regulatory regime that we have in mind.

And the day we prevail, we can celebrate the end of a supreme injustice. The next day, we have to redouble our efforts to help those whose drug consumption is problematic, and to penalize those who are unwilling to play by the liberalized rules.

Labels: Drug WarRant, drugs, Prohibition

 
Vice is Elsewhere -- More-or-Less Permanently
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:38 PM

Our final class meeting in the 2005 version of the Regulation of Vice course at the University of Chicago took place last week, and the exam is scheduled for Tuesday. With the summer ahead and a semi-sabbatical in store for next year, I will try to devote myself to finishing up the book I have been composing (decomposing?) on vice policy. Ryan has elected to graduate on Saturday, instead of hanging around as my research assistant -- there's no understanding the priorities of youth. And so, for me at least, it seems to be a propitious moment to step aside from blogging. Yes, to the delight of dozens, Vice Squad as we have come to know it will cease to exist. For your vice policy fixes, please visit the links on the sidebar. Pete at Drug WarRant will be particularly worth checking out as the implications of today's Supreme Court decision filter down.

If I may, let me take a second to mention how enjoyable this blogging gig has been for me. I feel close to many people whom I have never met, thanks to their e-mails or their blog posts. My co-bloggers, Nikkie, Mike, Ryan, and the taciturn Bernard have been wonderful and supportive. Many readers wrote in with suggestions and criticisms -- I am much obliged. Will Baude, despite his own stubbornness in graduating last year, deserves thanks for showing me the blogging ropes and leading by example. In this case, I will ignore Hamlet and use a man after his desert: thanks Will.

The end of Vice Squad as we know it does not mean the end of Vice Squad categorically. I hope to continue to post occasionally, and welcome the co-bloggers to continue to post whenever they are so moved. But I think that we will do a better job of backing away from blogging than Andrew Sullivan appears to have done, though not as well as Jacob Levy has managed. Will Baude and Jacob Levy, incidentally, are jointly responsible (via blog posts) for my current reading of Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind -- more evidence of the beneficial influences of blogospheric activity. I hope that somewhere along the line, Vice Squad has had some positive influence, too.

Labels: Crescat, Drug WarRant, solipsism, Supreme Court

 
Drug WarRant's Public Service
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:41 PM

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant continues to amaze with his coverage of our shameful drug laws. Recently, Pete exposed a serious flaw (OK, or fly) in the ointment of a high-profile prohibitionist; today, he reports on the happenings at a hearing on medical marijuana at the Illinois House -- wouldn't you know it, the drug czar showed up.

Labels: Drug WarRant, Illinois, marijuana

 
Drug War Victim
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:55 PM

Pete at Drug WarRant brings the sad news of a woman shot dead by police during a completely unnecessary drug raid. All great Neptune's oceans will not wash this blood clean from the hands. Our hands, the hands of our indefensible, criminogenic drug laws. We could step back, but we go on, like Macbeth, so steeped in blood that "Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

This latest tragedy took place in my native neighborhood, less than half a mile from where I grew up. I have been by the raided house many times.

Labels: Drug WarRant, drugs, policing

 
Afghan Sanity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:59 PM

No one is stepping up to take the credit for the recent aerial spraying of poppy fields and environs in Afghanistan, according to this article in today's New York Times. But surely we can all be pleased that the vicious criminal (impoverished) poppy growers are finally paying a price, can't we? I mean, our own drug czar wrote less than two weeks ago that:

Our fourth pillar [of our five-pronged anti-drug "assistance" to Afghanistan] will help the Afghans launch eradication programs to destroy poppy fields. Farmers in the past faced little threat from growing poppy and were able to reap three to four times more profits than those from food crops. Destroying poppy fields outright will be a powerful tool to discourage any future planting of illicit crops.

It turns out, though, that the Afghans themselves think that not all means of eradication are fair game -- at least judging by the comments of Jawed Ludin, President Karzai's spokesperson, as related in the Times article:

"We do not support aerial spraying as an instrument of eradication," Mr. Ludin said at a news briefing this week. "We have never in the past, at present, and never will in the future authorize the use of poppy-spraying chemicals."

Pete at Drug WarRant has more. And I should note that in the Drug Czar's op-ed, although he enthused about crop eradication and "Colombia's dramatic progress," he did not explicitly endorse aerial spraying.

The Times article referred to a 45-year-old Afghan poppy farmer as a "village elder". Why, he's only 45, I thought, he's practically a kid. But alas, life expectancy at birth for Afghan males: 42.27 years. Such are the folks who get to bear the burden of poppy eradication.

Labels: Afghanistan, Drug WarRant, opium

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:38 AM

(1) Last One Speaks points us to this story about one of our favorite topics, absinthe. The article mentions efforts to recreate the taste of 19th Century absinthe. How could one do that? Some of the original (full) bottles have turned up. Another point mentioned in passing is that the recent liberalization of anti-absinthe laws is largely due to EU pressure on member countries. While I am all in favor of legal absinthe, I am less enamored of liberal vice policies being foisted upon reluctant countries under the precepts of free trade, because I think that such a practice holds the long-term potential to harm both vice and trade policy. (One relatively recent example of this tendency was the trashing of the WTO by some US politicians after the internet gambling case was not going the US's way.)

(2) Mark Kleiman notes the absurdity of the concern that some drug traffickers might take advantage of a semi-amnesty that has been floated for paramilitary fighters in Colombia. The dealers would qualify if they also had engaged in some killing, but some of them who didn't so engage might try to claim that they are cold-blooded killers to be in on the deal. Declare a substance to be evil, and all perspective is lost: there are no obvious standards by which to judge activity related to the evil commodity. So otherwise outrageous policies -- such as arresting people for possessing small quantities of the substance -- are seriously considered and adopted. Speaking of such arrests, Alan Heymann of D'Alliance points to an article out of the University of Maryland about the duty of dorm resident assistants to call the cops when they get a whiff of an unapproved substance. The resident assistants must be very proud of their contribution to law and order as they see their 19-year-old charges led out in handcuffs on a Friday night.

(3) Oral arguments in the medical marijuana case at the Supreme Court took place yesterday, of course; Pete keeps us posted.

Labels: absinthe, Drug WarRant, drugs, EU, marijuana

 
Drug WarRant Wows Us...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:19 PM

..this time more than usual, with this guide to Raich v. Ashcroft, the medical marijuana case that will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on Monday. Kudos to Pete Guither for going way beyond the bounds of duty or of blogospheric standards.

Labels: Drug WarRant, marijuana, Supreme Court

 
Will Lawrence v. Texas Help Obscenity Defendants? [Updated Twice]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:14 PM

A couple of porn purveyors from California are currently on trial in Pittsburgh for violating federal obscenity laws. The defendants run Extreme Associates, which markets hardcore pornography -- as their ads say, "The Hardest Hard Core on the Web." They could be jailed for 50 years each if they are convicted. That's right, 50 years for mailing some nasty videos to western Pennsylvania. This AP article at the Miami Herald.com has an update on trial developments:

When the indictment was announced, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said the lack of enforcement of obscenity laws during the mid- to late-1990s "led to a proliferation of obscenity throughout the United States."

Time to crackdown upon it, then. Reminiscent of Angelo in Measure For Measure, no?: "Those many had not dar'd to do that evil/If the first that did th'edict infringe/Had answer'd for his deed."

The defense attorney has asked for the case to be dismissed. He argues that Lawrence v. Texas indicates a right to view pornography in the privacy of your home; the right to view must extend to the right to distribute, as otherwise the right to view would be nugatory. The lawyer also noted that "community standards," part of the test for whether something is obscene, has changed its meaning in the age of the internet -- what is the relevant community?

Here's an interesting tidbit from the AP story: "Extreme Associates is still doing business and offers the movies at issue for sale as a package deal with money going to its defense fund."

We've been loosely tracking the Extreme Associates trial, beginning with a guest post last November and most recently with a brief item in April. I previously have expressed skepticism about Lawrence's applicability to another commercial sex case.

Update: Pete Guither of Drug WarRant also has looked at the implications of Lawrence for currently illegal drugs, and points to Professor Randy Barnett's analysis of Lawrence (22 page pdf).

Second Update: Will Baude of Crescat writes in. Will wonders if the defendants' lawyer really believes his own Lawrence-based argument. Quoting Mr. Baude (whom I wish would hurry up and finish law school in case I need a lawyer): "Stanley v
Georgia recognized the first amendment right to view pornography in your
home, but the court has repeatedly rejected any view that it would entail
a right to distribute it."

Labels: Crescat, Drug WarRant, obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Blog Life Imitates Life...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:25 PM

...in that I am late sending birthday greetings to my blog buddies, too. Happy Belated Birthday to Pete Guither of Drug WarRant, who has ramped up his usual public service by preparing state voting guides for the election. May you find much to celebrate come next Tuesday night, Pete.

Labels: Drug WarRant

 
Law Enforcement Breakthrough!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:31 PM

You see, what we'll do is, see, whenever we arrest some crook, we'll itemize his pornography collection, or if we are at a crime scene, we'll note all the pornography in the vicinity! 'Like gangs, people who use pornography have associated traits, and we'll define them so we can link them to crimes and pornography.' This will be bigger than DNA!

OK, I have absolutely no idea how this porn file is going to solve crime. (Hmmm, maybe crime reduction isn't the real purpose?) Click on the link and read the whole article, and maybe you can figure it out. Thanks to Drug WarRant's own Pete Guither for the pointer; in turn, Pete points to Tbogg.

Labels: arrests, Drug WarRant, policing, pornography

 
Vice Policy Commentary You Shouldn't Miss
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:12 PM

(1) Drug WarRant explains what bad laws are, and how one should behave in their presence. Shades of Thoreau, who in Civil Disobedience asked "Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?" His answer was that if the injustice of the law "is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." But earlier in the same essay, Thoreau also noted the habit of subservience to the state:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it [footnote omitted].

(2) OK, got carried away on that bad law theme. Last One Speaks updates the ongoing horrors at a "drug rehabilitation" center in Yekaterinburg, Russia. I didn't know it was still operating; if it is, they have been at this sadism for at least three years now. It's a private group, and ostensibly the "patients" have consented to the torture. [Incidentally, Yekaterinburg, known as Sverdlovsk during the Soviet period, is where Boris Yeltsin lived prior to his move to Moscow. It is also known for being the place where the last czar and his family were murdered. (The last czar, that is, not counting, well, the later ones.)]

(3) Last One Speaks also brings us word about the poker craze among our nation's youth. I have been suggesting blogging as a poker alternative, with few takers.

(4) We have not yet mentioned the tragic death of a quadriplegic while in custody in Washington, DC; he had been convicted of marijuana possession. He was given a ten-day jail sentence, but he only ended up serving half of it. He needed a ventilator while sleeping, it seems, but he wasn't provided one. D'Alliance has been particularly assiduous in keeping us informed as the details concerning the inmate's death emerge.

Labels: Drug WarRant, drugs, marijuana, poker, Russia, sentencing, teens, treatment

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:21 PM

(1) Baylen Linnekin at D'Alliance provides an update on the suggestion from a police sergeant that Chicago decriminalize possession of small quantities of pot. Seems that Mayor Daley supports the notion, arguing (as did the police officer) that the courts have effectively decriminalized anyway. But as all Chicagoans know, Mayor Daley's is just one voice in this debate, and he rarely is in a position to influence policy. Baylen also took kind notice of Vice Squad's b-day.

(2) Walter Olson at Overlawyered notes today's beginning of the federal trial seeking, oh, $280 billion from Big Tobacco. Walter and his co-blogger Ted Frank were inexplicably left out of Vice Squad's (admittedly partial) anniversary list of blogger buddies, but that oversight has been corrected.

(3) Radley Balko at The Agitator is on a vice policy roll. Here's Radley's synopsis of the remarks of one speaker at last week's pain treatment forum. (The comments section includes an offering from Drug WarRant's impresario Pete Guither.)

Labels: Chicago, Drug WarRant, litigation, marijuana, pain, tobacco

 
Search and Seizure, etc.
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:01 AM

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant has up a couple of posts that point to developments that I would find depressing -- at least if it weren't for the fact that Pete and others on the sidebar are presenting the case against the prohibitionists so well. The first concerns a Utah case on whether the police, without a warrant, can swipe your doorknob with a cloth and then analyze the cloth for traces of drugs. The idea is that if traces are detected, the police could then use that "evidence" to support the probable cause necessary to obtain a warrant to search the house. Pete's analysis: "I lean to the notion that either the doorknob is private, in which case a warrant is needed to test it, or it's public, in which case there's no way to know who touched it and a positive test is not justification to search the house."

But mainly I want to second the final thought in Pete's post, namely, how did it come to such a pass, that many American citizens apparently approve of such methods? First we learned in a drug case that police can search our trash without a warrant, even though the personal nature of our trash hardly needs explicating -- though for an explication, one could start with Justice Brennan's dissent in the trash case: "Scrutiny of another's trash is contrary to commonly accepted notions of civilized behavior." And later, from the same dissent: "A single bag of trash testifies eloquently to the eating, reading, and recreational habits of the person who produced it. A search of trash, like a search of the bedroom, can relate intimate details about sexual practices, health, and personal hygiene. Like riffling through desk drawers or intercepting phone calls, rummaging through trash can divulge the target's financial and professional status, political affiliations and inclinations, private thoughts, personal relationships, and romantic interests." And now they want to scrutinize our doorknobs -- perhaps they are mad that they can't check out our interior temperatures. Anyway, I am rambling, but the problem here is the same old problem, that once you define some substance as evil, then almost any measure to combat it, no matter how tyrannous, seems to make sense, as long as it offers the remotest chance of decreasing the availability of the evil substance. So you will be willing to go through people's trash, scrape particles off their doorknobs, shoot down small planes, and of course, lock folks up for walking around with a little bit of the evil substance, even if they only intend to consume it themselves. As Clarence Darrow said (talking about an earlier prohibition), "The tyrant believes that if the laws do not fit the people then the people must be bent to fit the laws and forced to obey."

Pete's second post concerns a DEA exhibit that is breathtaking in its wrongheadedness.

Labels: Drug WarRant, search, Supreme Court

 
Marijuana Treatment Referrals
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:59 PM

Earlier today I noted the new information available from SAMHSA on referrals to substance abuse treatment. Pete at Drug WarRant, however, goes many extra miles, re-analyzing the original data and further demonstrating the extent to which the claim that high-potency pot is driving kids into treatment is prohibitionist myth.

Labels: Drug WarRant, marijuana, teens, treatment

 
State Marijuana Taxes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:25 PM

The blogosphere has been jumping about the fact that many US states officially tax marijuana, even though it is an illegal product. Here is the webpage from Kansas, which explains:

A dealer is not required to give his/her name or address when purchasing stamps and the Department is prohibited from sharing any information relating to the purchase of drug tax stamps with law enforcement or anyone else.

Purchasing drug tax stamps does not make possession of drugs legal.

Two things that seem to be overlooked in the discussion of these taxes are (1) taxing illegal vices is not novel and (2) the prohibitionists better watch out, despite what Kansas claims, because this can lead to legalization. After the 21st Amendment ended national alcohol prohibition in the US, many states maintained their own prohibitions. Mississippi prohibited anything stronger than 3.2 beer, but in the 1940s passed a tax on stronger stuff. In the mid-1960s (following a high-profile alcohol raid), a judge ruled that the fact that taxes were being collected meant that alcohol was de facto legal. The state legislature followed by making the de facto legalization de jure, and in 1966, Mississippi became the last state to get rid of statewide alcohol prohibition. Along similar lines, brothels became legal in Nevada because an illegal brothel owner was fined (as I recall, $1000 per month for the previous three months that the brothel had been in business.) He didn't go out of business, but kept sending $1000 per month to the relevant (Storey county, as I recall) authorities. Eventually, the courts again said, you have been cashing the checks, so it's de facto legal. The state then passed a statute setting up the broad rules for legal brothels in those rural Nevada counties that were willing to have them.

Pete at Drug WarRant has more. Also, a couple of months ago a federal court ruled that Wisconsin's marijuana tax law violated the double jeopardy clause of the US Constitution, so it is doubtful that any tax evasion charges brought in addition to criminal charges would stick (especially in the 7th Federal district)!

Labels: Drug WarRant, Kansas, marijuana, taxes

 
Happy Anniversary to Drug WarRant
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:31 PM

Pete Guither's excellent blog turned one-year old today. The care with which Pete has put forth the case for liberalization of our drug laws, his rejoinders to the claims made by prohibtionists, and his cataloguing of the costs of the drug war, are an inspiration. Congratulations, Pete, for work that is helping, I hope and believe, to one day render itself (and much of Vice Squad) unnecessary.

Labels: Drug WarRant