Making Self-Exclusion Work Better
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:40 AM

While Vice Squad is a big proponent of the principle of vice self-exclusion programs, the practice in US casinos leaves much to be desired. It seems to be relatively easy, for instance, for some self-excluded gamblers to return to a casino without much hindrance. A check of IDs for all gamblers, or a more universal use of smart cards that hook into gambling machines, might help to make self-exclusion programs more reliable.

One of the standard features of a self-exclusion program is that someone who has volunteered to join the excluded ranks is removed from the list of those who are sent promotional material. This is another area of slippage between theory and practice, apparently. The Illinois Gaming Board is fining a casino $800,000 for not sealing off the self-excluded from marketing appeals. The same casino received a $600,000 fine for similar activities two years ago. I would think that these significant fines will concentrate casino minds on providing a more effective barrier between their promotions and self-excluded gamblers.

Labels: gambling, Illinois, self-exclusion

 
Smoking Bans
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:11 PM

Someone with more patience than I have could probably keep track of all the legislative and judicial developments worldwide with respect to public smoking bans. I'll offer a small subset instead:

(1) Wyoming and Virginia have scuttled, for now, attempts to establish statewide smoking bans. In the linked Washington Post story concerning Virginia, the following facts are provided: "About two-thirds of restaurants in Virginia ban smoking. In Northern Virginia, that figure is 80 percent, and in Fairfax County, almost 95 percent." I was surprised by this. I have long been puzzled over why more restaurants and bars do not go smoke free voluntarily in the absence of a ban, given that about 80 percent of American adults do not smoke. (I can think of lots of plausible stories, but I am not convinced by any of them.) These Virginia data make me think that maybe I just didn't give things enough time.

(2) The Illinois smoking ban has been a boon to Missouri riverboat casinos. Illinois is considering exempting its casinos from its new smoking ban.

(3) A bar somewhere in remote Minnesota has found what appears to be a legal means around the smoking ban. The state law exempts actors in theatrical productions, so Tennessee Williams' plays are still available in Minnesota. But what is a "theatrical production," anyway? The state law offers no clue. So on Saturday nights, the employees of the Minnesota bar dress up in Renaissance-style costumes, while the customers can become actors -- and hence smoking-eligible -- if they purchase for $1 and wear the appropriate button: a robust response to a non-robust law.

Labels: casino, Illinois, robustness, smoking ban

 
Internet Porn Stats
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:36 PM

Top Ten Reviews hosts a webpage that is chock full of statistics relating to pornography generally and internet pornography specifically. For instance, it seems that China is the largest market (in value terms) for pornography, though in per capita value terms, South Korea is dominant: porn "revenues" in South Korea exceed $500 per-capita per year, versus less than $50 in the US of A. (Revenues for porn may well be falling in the US.) Search engine requests for "sex" are most prevalent (in per capita terms?) in Pakistan, whereas South Africa is top of the table for "porn" searches. Among US cities, one stands out for naughty internet searching, leading the country in the "sex", "porn", and "xxx" categories. I am sure that by now you have guessed that this hotbed of perversion is, er, Elmhurst, Illinois.

Do you think that Elmhurst (located in the Northern District of Illinois) leads in those searches because some Elmhurst residents are trolling for potentially obscene material to pass along to the Feds? Or maybe there is one very active fellow who lives in Elmhurst?

Incidentally, I am uncertain about the provenance of many of the numbers reported on the Top Ten webpage, so I would take them with a grain of salt. (I am pretty confident about the "Elmhurst factor," however.)

Update: Please drop what you are doing right now and go watch Michael Pollan (of, among other things, The Omnivore's Dilemma) give a TED talk. Just in case you are new to this, TED talks are the best things on the web; while there, check out Freakonomics guru and general good fellow Steve Levitt. [I almost forgot: Pollan has been mentioned on Vice Squad before (surely his greatest honor) in part for the following quote: "As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today." Levitt, too, has had his days in the Vice Squad sun.]

Labels: Illinois, internet, obscenity, pornography

 
Smoking Ban Winners, Illinois Version
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:44 PM

Years ago Vice Squad offered its first take on businesses that have been helped by public smoking bans -- prominent among them are outdoor heater manufacturers, and, in countries where it is legal, snus. The Chicago Tribune this week pointed to another business that is profiting from public smoking bans: makers of little smoking huts, shacks that are similar to some bus stop shelters and that cannot be fully enclosed (to comply with the law). The huts, according to the Trib article, can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000, depending on how elaborate they are:

The shelter manufacturers won't release numbers but said their business has soared.

One leading supplier, Tafco Corp. of Melrose Park, estimates that Illinois orders for shelters have doubled.

How long will these shelters be tolerated? After all, look at what is happening to those early smoking ban winners, the outdoor heating manufacturers.

Labels: Illinois, smoking ban, snus

 
Taxing Live Erotic Shows [Updated]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

Vice Squad was out of town in late December when (links in this post are not safe for work) an Illinois appeals court ruled that Chicago could not exempt small live entertainment venues, except for strip clubs, from a tax on ticket sales. Such a provision discriminates against erotic businesses based on the content of their expression, the court ruled, and that sort of discrimination has to jump through high and multiple hoops to be constitutional. On New Year's day, a $5 per customer tax went into effect for Texas strip clubs. The first constitutional challenge to the tax was brushed aside in mid-December, before the Chicago ruling. The Texas law looks for Constitutional cover from the "secondary effects" doctrine, which did not seem to come into play in the Chicago tax.

Update: This week's Economist also has an article on Texas's "pole tax". The article mentions the recent popularity of earmarking the proceeds for new taxes. (Part of the controversy surrounding the Texas strip club tax is that the proceeds are directed to programs aiding sexual violence victims, despite there being little in the way of hard evidence that strip clubs increase sexual violence.) Beyond the Texas case, all of the earmarked taxes that are mentioned are vice-related: (non-diet) sodas, tobacco, and video games have all recently been singled out for taxes with earmarked revenues -- an approach frequently used for gambling taxes, too. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania state senator is looking at an earmarked tax on adult businesses (link not safe for work).

Labels: Chicago, dancing, Illinois, tax, Texas

 
Ringing In Another Set of Smoking Bans
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:52 AM

Chicago and Paris join the public smoking ban club today; in Paris, the city authorities are distributing "pocket ashtrays" so smokers won't throw their butts on the ground. (Another new law further reduces the Paris-Chicago cultural divide: dogs are now welcome to the outdoor sections of Chicago restaurants.) The Illinois smoking ban does not exempt casinos, so some fiscal authorities are already budgeting for reduced tax revenues from existing casinos -- though the plans to expand gaming in Illinois continue to develop. Fort Worth's new smoking ban does not extend to bars -- and in a last-minute alteration, bingo parlors (a Vice Squad obsession) are exempt, too. Speaking of bingo, in New York, as of January 1, you can organize a fun bingo game in a senior center without fear of imprisonment -- just don't let the players smoke.

Labels: bingo, Chicago, France, gambling, Illinois, smoking ban

 
Vice Governor
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:23 PM

Sam's Wine and Spirits is a very large seller of alcoholic beverages with two locations in the Chicago area, and it comes highly recommended from Crescateer Will Baude. In recent months it has been facing a slew of allegations about illegal practices from the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. Don't be too worried, Sam's has a lawyer, and just hired a second one: former Illinois governor James R. Thompson. Where is the case against Sam's being argued? At the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, of course.

It is amazing that the former Governor could spare some time for Sam's, given his involvement with tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris. His name even comes up when casinos are mentioned.

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, Crescat, Illinois, tobacco

 
New Solution to Illinois Prostitution: Sue the Pimps and Johns
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:18 PM

The Illinois House has passed a bill that would allow civil suits by prostitutes against their pimps and customers, even if all such relationships were completely consensual. Windypundit sent along the pointer -- thanks! -- and indicates the potentially perverse outcomes. It is already the case that laws against 'living off the proceeds' make it harder for prostitutes to find legitimate roommates or non-pimping live-in boyfriends.

Labels: Illinois, litigation, prostitution

 
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

 
Boring States Lead in Binge Drinking
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:43 PM

About 54 million people, 22.6% of the population nationwide, participated in binge drinking at least once during the past 30 days, the study estimated. Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks in one sitting during the previous month. The percentage of people binge drinking far exceeds the national average in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin.

The preceding quote comes from this story in USA Today. The article employs SAMHSA's new state-by-state estimates of substance use and abuse based on the 2002 and 2003 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. The SAMHSA press release is here, and the report itself, which I haven't had a chance to look at yet, is here.

Labels: alcohol, Illinois, SAMHSA, South Dakota

 
Blogger-Inspired Updates
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:39 PM

(1) Pete Guither of Drug WarRant, apropos of yesterday's post about carding senior citizens, notes that the same practice goes on in many places, including in his own Normal, Illinois. One reason is that businesses have been fined after sting operations in which mature-looking youths managed to purchase their age-specific contraband. The business owners want to eliminate the possibility of incurring those fines again.

(2) Harry Hutton of Chase Me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry, apropos of a recent post about Cuba's public smoking ban, reminds us that Mr. Castro (whom I take it is some big muckety-muck in Cuba) gave up smoking cigars in 1985, and later talked tobacco with Cigar Aficionado magazine.

Labels: alcohol, Illinois, teens, tobacco

 
Illinois Senate, Under Pressure, Agrees to Obey the Law
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:45 PM

The Chicago Tribune reports today that the Illinois Senate, following a week of justly deserved criticism, will no longer allow smoking on the Senate floor. Somehow our elected representatives had managed to avoid the state building smoking ban for the past 16 years. (Vice Squad noted the growing brouhaha a few days ago.)

Labels: Illinois, smoking ban

 
Smoking in the Illinois Senate
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:15 AM

It's always the other guy's vice that requires prohibition. Many a supporter of laws that penalize users of marijuana or cocaine is himself or herself a frequent consumer of alcohol, nicotine, or wagering. It is especially tempting to prohibit the other guy's vice if that other guy is a member of a group that you find to be a little bit shady or criminogenic anyway -- maybe a foreigner or a member of a suspect religion.

But the Illinois Senate goes even one better. They are happy to prohibit their own vice, too -- as long as the ban doesn't apply to them. Smoking is prohibited by law in state-owned buildings in Illinois, except in the occasional, unpleasant "designated smoking rooms." Oh, and in the chambers of the Illinois State Senate. Many senators take advantage of their rare indoor smoking privilege, as do others toiling in this workshop of democracy. The public? Well, as the Athenians explained to the Melians, the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must: "But visitors in the gallery above [the Senate floor], where several 'no smoking' signs are on display, are restricted to partaking of the habit only second-hand."

I am back from Senegal, where my main accomplishment, alas, was that I managed to be sick. Many thanks to co-blogger Nikkie for keeping things running here at Vice Squad -- especially for relating the dismissal in the Extreme Associates case, which otherwise might have passed me by (my other accomplishment in the last 12 days consisting of being cut off from virtually all news.) Perhaps more on that soon, especially if my health is restored.

Labels: Illinois, obscenity, smoking ban

 
Youth Will Not Be Served
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:29 AM

The state of Illinois is making it harder for people under the age of 21 to pass for legal alcohol purchasers. Driver's licenses for those under 21 will be arranged "vertically," instead of the standard "horizontal" design. So changing that birth year won't be enough to get you past the scrutiny of alcohol sellers.

The rule of verticality has already been adopted by some other states. Authorities expect that this device will eliminate underage drinking in Illinois. (OK, maybe not. Vice Squad supports enforcing underage alcohol restrictions, at least if the punishments were not overly severe -- and if the drinking age were itself rational. I lean towards an age of 19 for beer and wine, and 21 for harder stuff, but a voluntary licensing system for those 19 or above might be helpful, too. People of sufficient age could choose whether to be licensed to purchase alcohol or not; then, employers and insurance companies could discriminate on the basis of possession of a drinker's license, if they so chose.)

Apologies for neglecting Vice Squad recently. I have now returned to Chicago, though if things go according to plan, I will be out of town quite a bit over the next month. I continue to cling to the myth that come February, sanity will be restored.

Labels: alcohol, driving, Illinois, teens

 
Trib on Vice
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:14 PM

Sorry for the blogging lapse! Alas, I am leaving town shortly, if all goes well, so I am afraid that blogging will be in the light-to-non-existent range for a few days.

But first, some stories from today's Chicago Tribune (registration required):

(1) FCC Does In Private Ryan: It is a potential violation of FCC guidelines to air the violence and profanity in the film, "Saving Private Ryan," before 10 PM. The movie is slated to be shown tonight on ABC, in conjunction with Veteran's Day. But some ABC affiliates will not be broadcasting SPR, to avoid the risk of fines. They asked the FCC to clear the film in advance (i.e., to promise no fines for broadcasting it), but the FCC wouldn't take such a radical step -- despite the fact that the movie has been aired, uncut, in 2000 and in 2001, without any fines, though someone was moved to file a complaint. Vice Squad has repeatedly indicated that the "respond after the fact to complaints" approach of the FCC is poor public policy; I am shocked that the FCC hasn't altered its methods accordingly. Incidentally, it looks like lucky viewers in Des Moines, Sioux City, and Lincoln (NE) will get to see "a music program and the TV movie 'Return to Mayberry.'" Come to think of it, Return to Mayberry is a pretty good description of the FCC's renewed vigilance.

(2) NASCAR has announced that it will begin to accept sponsorships from hard-liquor companies. Turns out that NASCAR got its start, sort of, thanks to the liquor trade. Much of the impetus to "soup-up" regular cars came from a desire to outrun anti-moonshine agents.

(3) A 23-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department is now facing 10 or more years in prison, plus a slew of asset forfeitures, after being found guilty yesterday of charges related to the theft of cocaine from a police evidence warehouse. The officer's explanation for his surprising wealth was that it came from gambling winnings, but casino records didn't back that up.

(4) In a story from November 7, the Coast Guard announced that its cocaine haul for the fiscal year 2003/04 amounted to more than 37 tons. It isn't clear how much of that was seized from the evidence warehouse in Chicago.

(5) "Secret research conducted by cigarette company Philip Morris in the 1980s showed that second-hand smoke was highly toxic, yet the company suppressed the finding during the next two decades, according to an online article being published Thursday by The Lancet, a British medical journal."

(6) Philip Morris is also arguing before the Illinois Supreme Court to try to get that little matter of a $10.1 billion judgment against it thrown out. I guess they just picked a lawyer at random from the yellow pages, but surprisingly, it turned out to be former Illinois governor James Thompson.

Labels: alcohol, driving, FCC, Illinois, indecency, litigation, tobacco

 
Chicago Suburbs That Have "Decriminalized" Pot
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:12 PM

There has been a lot of talk lately in Chicago about ticketing (as opposed to arresting) people who are found to have a little bit of marijuana on them. Today's Chicago Tribune has one of those front-page-on-Monday stories (registration required) about some Chicago suburbs that have gone the ticketing route for some time now. The article starts by telling the tale of a driver and two passengers who were stopped in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette for a "minor traffic violation":

A Wilmette officer searched the vehicle and discovered a small bag of marijuana--about one joint's worth--in the glove compartment.

If a Chicago police officer had stopped them, they could have been arrested, fingerprinted and assigned a court date.

Instead, each received the equivalent of a parking ticket, a $100 fine under a village ordinance regarding the possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana.

While the driver is happy that he didn't get arrested, what gets my goat is that no one in the article mentions how absurd the search was in the first place. Presumably this was a "consent search", where at some point during the discussion of the minor violation the officer asked for permission to search the car, and the permission was granted (as it almost always is). Why would the officer bother searching if there's just a small fine for marijuana possession? To concatenate my presumptions, I'll suggest that what the officer was hoping for was to find a significant pile of some illegal drug, i.e., to make a "major drug bust." So here are a few folks driving home after dinner, who aren't actually doing anything wrong (the traffic stop was probably pretextual, undertaken solely to yield a search), who nevertheless end up having their automobile rifled through by an armed agent of the law. This scenario has become so common that no one in today's story even bothers to point out the irrationality of the entire episode. These unwarranted (literally) assaults on our freedoms seem to be accepted as part of the background, as Just The Way Things Are. Such searches should be intolerable, yet somehow, they are tolerated, and we are even pleased to find that we are "only" fined when some unapproved substance turns up.

Decrimwatch comments on the Trib story, too.

Labels: driving, drugs, Illinois, search

 
Naperville Considers Limiting Its Collective Punishment Law
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:33 PM

On Friday we mentioned the town meeting that was to be held on Saturday in Naperville, Illinois, about their law that tickets non-drinking individuals under the age of 21 who are in the vicinity of underage drinkers. Show up at the door of a party to offer a safe ride home to your indulging friends, and pay the price. Well, the meeting has now been held, and it looks as if the majority sentiment is to use the collective punishment technique only for kids 17 and younger. Naturally, the current law has its supporters, who think that it saves lives. Perhaps they are even right, but so might throwing the non-drinkers caught in the presence of drinkers in prison for two years -- so that argument is not dispositive. (For that matter, why not fine everyone in the town if any underage person is caught drinking? Such a measure would essentially convert every citizen of Naperville into a deputy law enforcer!) The mayor is a proponent of the current law, but for him, it's not about logic, it seems:

Mayor George Pradel, a former police officer, has been a staunch supporter of the law.

"Maybe we should be the first in the country to have this ordinance and maybe we should be the leader," he said. "Maybe it won't be popular, but I know in my heart it will be right."

Many other people, though, have hearts that "know" that collective punishments are problematic.

Labels: driving, Illinois, sentencing, teens

 
Reducing Harms of Teen Streetwalking Through Decriminalisation?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:49 PM

Adult prostitution per se is legal in Canada, though streetwalking is not legal. (And of course, the sexual exploitation of children and youths under 18 is prohibited.) A youth-issues advisory body to the Quebec government has issued a call, however, for the decriminalisation of streetwalking as a method of improving the living conditions for young adult prostitutes. The current criminalisation of streetwalking pushes that activity into areas with less police presence, saddles young prostitutes with criminal records, and also promotes a bad relationship (or worse) between prostitutes and the police. The report, by the Conseil permanent de la jeunesse, is available here, in pdf format and en francais.

My own state of Illinois is taking a different tack-- the state house and senate are considering sealing the criminal records of those "convicted of some less-serious felonies such as drug possession and prostitution..." How did these activities ever become felonies?

Labels: Canada, harm reduction, Illinois, prostitution, teens

 
More Tobacco Lawsuits (Yawn)
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:36 PM

OK, surely that last post wasn't long and rambling enough, so I will mention two more tobacco company lawsuits. The first is a class action suit in the Illinois state courts, where at the trial level last year the judge ordered Philip Morris to pay, uh, $10.1 billion for misleading smokers into thinking that "light" cigarettes were safer. (Here's an earlier Vice Squad post relating to that case.) Similar cases have been filed in other states, but according to yesterday's Chicago Tribune (registration required)...:

"Since the [Illinois trial court] ruling, Philip Morris, the nation's largest tobacco company, has won pretrial judgments in three states, stopping those class-action suits in their tracks. More than a dozen nearly identical cases are pending across the country.

The company's recent victories place even greater significance on the Illinois class-action case, originating in Madison County, which Philip Morris has appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

The case, accepted by the high court in September, remains the only light cigarette class action to go to trial, providing a road map to other trial lawyers on how to win such suits.

A reversal would be a setback not only for Illinois plaintiffs but for others in other states."


In a battle of the vilified industries, tobacco won one today against asbestos producers in the Supreme Court of Mississippi:

"[Asbestos producer] Owens Corning was trying to recover billions of dollars paid out in asbestos settlement cases by arguing the tobacco industry shared some of the blame for the health problems.

The justices, in a 5-1 decision, sided with Jefferson County Circuit Judge Lamar Pickard, who dismissed Owens Corning's lawsuit in May 2001.

Asbestos companies have blamed cigarette smoking for thousands of workers' injuries costing them millions of dollars in damages."

Labels: Illinois, litigation, tobacco

 
Illinois Casino License
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:53 PM

The saga of the state of Illinois' ill-fated tenth casino license continues. On Monday afternoon, the five members of the Illinois Gaming Board announced their 4-1 decision to award the license to Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc., which bid to place the casino in Rosemont, a Chicago suburb next to O'Hare airport. The license is available because the current holder of the license, Emerald Casino, never actually was allowed to open their proposed Rosemont casino, amid allegations of organized crime infiltration. As the in-bankruptcy Emerald still owns the license, the award to Isle of Capri is far from final: not only does the bankruptcy court have to agree to the sale, the transfer could meet a legal challenge from the Attorney General of Illinois. The award of the license to Isle of Capri is particularly controversial because of its Rosemont connection, and because the staff of the Gaming Board had recommended that the license be awarded to a different, non-Rosemont bidder. I find this politically-charged soap opera to be rather tiresome, but readers with stronger stomachs can learn more from two articles (here and here) from today's Chicago Tribune (registration required), as well as this Trib editorial and especially this op-ed column by Carol Marin, entitled "A Scam, a Sham and a State's Shame."

Labels: casino, Chicago, gambling, Illinois