Low-Risk Legalization Experiments
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:32 AM

One of the main anti-legalization arguments mustered by drug prohibitionists is that any legalization experiment is so fraught with the prospect of producing huge numbers of new addicts that legalization cannot safely be tried. Here is my response to one such claim, that appearing in Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken. This response does not spell out my full "double default" model of drug re-legalization, but is consistent with it.


Low-Coercion, Low-Risk Drug Policy Experiments

In their recent book, Drugs and Drug Policy, Mark A. R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken (Oxford University Press, 2011) examine what they call (pages 18-21) a “no coercion” drug policy. Their description of such a policy is that drug buying and selling would generally be left unencumbered, though there would be dissuasion from immoderate use of drugs and help for people seeking to limit consumption that had spiraled out of control. “No coercion,” then, is a fairly full-bore legalization policy: presumably drug sales to children would remain proscribed. Kleiman, Caulkins, and Hawken (henceforth KCH) note that a no coercion policy might – or might not – be preferable to the current prohibition. They warn against undertaking a no coercion experiment, however, because either the experiment would have to be so limited in scope that it would not provide good evidence of what would be wrought by a full-scale legalization, or because a broad experiment might lead to a substantial increase in the number of heavy users, such that the compelled cessation of the experiment would result not in the status quo ante, but in a prohibition with many times the addicted users, and many times the social costs, as we have now with our current drug ban.

There’s an air of futility about the KCH analysis, a feeling that we are more-or-less stuck with drug prohibition, even though it might be a lot worse than feasible alternatives. But all is not futile. There are experiments that can offer evidence on whether some forms of legalization might dominate prohibition, and that do not run serious risks of inciting huge increases in addiction. These might not be “no” coercion experiments, but they are nearly-no-coercion, at least for users.

Even if drug prohibition did not entail so many baleful consequences – half a million prisoners, more than a million and a half arrests annually (mostly for small-scale drug possession), violent black markets – a workable low-coercion drug policy would be desirable, for many reasons. First, you don’t have to be some evil, alien being to be interested in taking drugs. Many reasonable adults want to use the currently illegal drugs, and are willing to pay high prices and run not-insignificant risks to do so. Second, most use of drugs, even under the adverse conditions fostered by prohibition and even for harder drugs, is not particularly detrimental, either personally or socially. Third, people have a strong incentive to avoid or end addictions, which are terribly costly. These three observations suggest that appropriate policy regimes can harness self-interest to do most of the work in controlling drugs, while saving coercive measures for socially harmful elements of drug consumption, and focusing treatment resources on those with the greatest medical needs.

What might a low-risk, low-coercion experiment look like? Sellers would still be licensed and regulated, as they currently are for alcohol or for prescription drugs. The low risk comes from the fact that drugs would not be available for purchase by every adult (unlike alcohol or tobacco). Rather, adults would apply for a license that would allow them to acquire their drug of choice through legal, regulated channels.
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Labels: drugs, Kleiman, licensing

 
The Unfolding Afghan Anti-Opium Calamity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:03 PM

Recent events:

(1) "Last week, 11 Afghans working on a U.S.-sponsored project to encourage farmers not to grow poppies were killed in two attacks."

(2) Yesterday's New York Times reports on a leaked US internal memo, dated May 13, criticizing President Karzai for not doing enough to eradicate poppy production.

(3) On Sunday and Monday, an anti-drug operation in Afghanistan nets up to 15 arrests and more than, oh, 5 tons of opium.

And as Mark Kleiman notes, all of this anti-opium frenzy will not make much difference to the drug problem in the US.

Labels: Afghanistan, Kleiman, opium

 
Lazy Link-Based Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:04 PM

(1) Hallucinogen hoasca legal (for now) in US when taken for approved religious ceremonial use. From Mark Kleiman.

(2) The New York Times looks into "dirty driving," where DVD-equipped motor vehicles play porn movies that are clearly visible to pedestrians or those in other cars. Will Baude at Crescat Sententia provides the pointer and the legal analysis. Concerned Women for America have a legal analysis, too -- in which the fact that possession of (adult) porn cannot constitutionally be criminalized in the US is lamented.

(3) While at Crescat, keep up with Will (here and here) on Chicago liquor regulators and a major Chicago wine store.

(4) More bad news for moi: even one cup of coffee per day can harm you. From a blog by Edward Staines entitled "One More Cup of Coffee"

(5) Vice Squad hasn't had too much to say about the recent vice Supreme Court cases, medical marijuana and interstate wine. I think that the "liberalizers" are going to have a hard time in both cases, but especially in the cannabis case. But if my pessimism proves to be warranted, I hope that the losing sides nevertheless use the resulting publicity to make the case that the laws in question -- the federal demonizing of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, and the protectionist wine shipment bans -- should themselves be repealed. (Of course they make these cases all the time, but I hope they will "redouble their efforts.") Bad laws that are Constitutional are still bad laws.

Labels: alcohol, caffeine, Chicago, coffee, hallucinogen, Kleiman, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Vicewire, 9/20/2004
- posted by Ryan @ 10:22 AM

1) Check out Mark Kleiman's excellent post on drug policy.

2) A New York judge has ruled it is ok to be drunk or high while performing jury duty. She cited the 1987 Supreme Court case that ruled mind-altering substances could not be considered outside influences on jurors.

3) Rockport, MA (dry since 1856!) is considering lifting its ban on alcohol.

4) California is being sued by in-state racetrack owners, who say that the government gave special treatment to American Indian reservations in allowing more slot machines to be built there in exchange for $1 billion a year.

5) In Colombia, the largest pharmacy chain was shut down by police, who say that it was funded by money from drug traffickers. It entailed taking over 400 stores in 28 cities.

Labels: alcohol, Kleiman, slot machine, Vicewire

 
Pharmacotherapy
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:06 PM

On July 27 Vice Squad briefly mentioned the possibility of "immunizing" children against illicit drug use. Updates included a link to a post by Mark Kleiman that questioned whether a mass immunization along these lines would ever be practical, and a link to a more chilling post from Last One Speaks. The Last One Speaks post mentioned this recent report (52 page pdf) from the Center For Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE). I have finally gotten around to reading the report (entitled "Threats to Cognitive Liberty: Pharmacotherapy and the Future of the Drug War"), and I recommend it to Vice Squad readers interested in the pharmacotherapy issue.

The first 15 or so pages of the report explain the various developments in anti-drug "vaccines" that are out there. Antabuse (or disulfiram) was an early entry that fights alcoholism, by rendering someone sick if he consumes alcohol. Nicotine gums and patches are other now-venerable pharmacotherapies, but more are on the way, possibly including some aimed at cocaine and marijuana.

It is in section 2 that the report begins to indicate the extent to which such agents could become "threats to cognitive liberty." They quote this chilling paragraph from the second section of the 2003 National Drug Control Strategy:

And yet the disease [of drug use] spreads. It spreads because the vectors of contagion are not addicts in the streets but users who do not yet show the consequences of their drug habit. Last year, some 16 million Americans used an illegal drug on at least a monthly basis, while 6.1 million Americans were in need of treatment. The rest, still in the "honeymoon" phase of their drug-using careers, are "carriers" who transmit the disease to others who see only the surface of the fraud. Treatment practitioners report that new users in particular are prone to encouraging their peers to join them in their new behavior.

The CCLE report notes that between 1907 and 1978, more than 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized by states, and argues that people within the criminal justice system, as well as those on public assistance, might be the first to see coercive application of pharmacotherapies. And schoolkids, too:

Under the totality of the circumstances, the CCLE is thus concerned that government rhetoric equating the use of illegal drugs with infectious disease, combined with the already watered-down constitutional rights of children who attend public school, may set the stage for requiring the use of various pharmacotherapy "vaccines" as a precondition to attending public school or to participating in sports and other extracurricular activities.

More on this report tomorrow, probably.

Labels: addiction, drugs, Kleiman, teens, treatment

 
Publicity Mushrooms Concerning DOJ Crackdown on Porn...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:26 AM

...and not just in the blogosphere. But to be honest, perhaps mostly in the blogosphere! Amy Lamboley at Crescat and Eugene Volokh at you know where have some of the more penetrating posts. Today's (er, Sunday's) Observer lets the British in on this latest American policy oddity. Here's an interesting (though admittedly hard to interpret) snippet from the Observer article: "A CBS News investigation into America's porn industry last November claimed that 50 per cent of guests at the Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn hotel chains purchased adult movies, contributing to 70 per cent of in-room profits."

No doubt this firestorm of interest in the porn crackdown was a direct result of this February 6th Vice Squad post, or perhaps this November 9 contribution as a Crescat guest. Or maybe not. Certainly Mark Kleiman's post last week did much to stir the blogospheric reaction.

Labels: Kleiman, pornography

 
(Warning: Lazy Blogger Post) Around the Blogosphere
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:55 PM

(1) Mark Kleiman has prepared a study (24-page pdf here) on the links between illicit drugs and terrorism. He talks about it here, and includes a topic not in the report, the question of whether the terror links might suggest legalizing cocaine and regulating it a' la alcohol. Mark offers a tentative "no" to that question, but Drug WarRant begs to differ, while suggesting that a legal regime for cocaine more strict than that generally applied to alcohol in the US might be a possibility, too.

(2) Last One Speaks provides the latest on the DEA's war on pain treatment: a mandatory 25-year prison sentence facing a wheelchair-bound Florida man self-medicating with painkillers acquired through forged prescriptions. Another level of cascade: once you declare a substance to be evil when not used in the precise, officially approved manner, you become willing to put multiple sclerosis sufferers, 45-year old fathers of three, in prison for a loooong time if they ignore your strictures. And to think, there are Americans alive today who were also alive when there was no prescription system at all, not even for narcotics. What progress we have made in the span of one lifetime! (Mark Kleiman also notes the Florida story. Most recent related Vice Squad post is here. Home page of the Pain Relief Network here. I can't seem to find out what has happened to the March on Washington on behalf of pain treatment that had been planned for next week.)

(3) Reason online offers a fine article on the current federal crackdown on obscenity, with a good deal of attention paid to the prosecution of Extreme Associates. [Most recent related Vice Squad post here. Update: BuzzMachine and Mark Kleiman, and Volokh have more.]

Labels: cocaine, Drug WarRant, Kleiman, litigation, obscenity, pain

 
Playing Catch-Up
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:57 PM

During the past week of slow blogging here at Vice Squad, lots of exciting vice-related stories have appeared on blogs to which we link. We can't possibly make good the arrears, but I will mention just a few of the highlights:

(1) Mark Kleiman offers a fairly detailed post about personal alcohol licenses, which would be revoked (for some period of time) if a person is convicted of misbehavior under the influence of alcohol. Mark suggests that to be efficacious, sellers would have to do the enforcing, that is, check all potential buyers for a valid alcohol license. Related systems now in use in the US as conditions for probation or pre-trial release rely on such things as random tests to provide a modicum of enforceability.

Vice Squad has mentioned the possibility of personal licenses for drug use many times in the past, most recently, here. Such licensing, which could be used for heroin and cocaine as well as alcohol, also would create an environment conducive to some private drug policy responses: some employers might be unwilling to hire someone with who has a heroin license, while life, health, or auto insurance rates might vary based on the licenses a person holds. People might even use the license to control their consumption, perhaps by agreeing to be licensed for only limited purchases (that is, below some maximum that would be established by law) of their drug per month.

Mark also links to and comments upon this fine LA Weekly piece on the use of psilocybin (the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms) to reduce death anxiety.

(2) Tyler Cohen at Marginal Revolution brings word of the World Trade Organization decision that the US cannot legally ban Internet gambling by US residents from web-based casinos located abroad. The case pitted the nation of Antigua and Barbuda (population: under 70,000; Internet betting operations: 30) against the most powerful nation on earth, and the underdog has won the first round. Some members of Congress won't take this lying down, however, as this NY Times article (registration required) linked by Tyler makes clear. (Vice Squad occasionally comments upon the regulation of Internet gambling.)

(3) Belle at Belle de Jour offers an FAQ-style post that provides some information you probably didn't know about the call-girl business in Britain; for instance, only about one-quarter of her customers tip. (Keep in mind, as you read the linked post, that commercial sex is not illegal in Britain, though Belle's "manager" is on the wrong side of the law. ) Belle's award-winning blog has led to a book deal for her. Those of us who will never earn a dime can try to take the moral high ground: making money off of a blog? Isn't that a sort of, er, prostitution?

Labels: alcohol, Antigua, Britain, drugs, gambling, internet, Kleiman, licensing, mushrooms, prostitution, WTO

 
The Flawed Ecstasy Study
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:29 PM

A few days ago, in passing Vice Squad mentioned the flawed ecstasy study -- where the drug that actually was tested turned out not to be ecstasy at all -- and its lingering effects on our nation's drug policies. The full story, which involves other questionable, government-sponsored research into the harms of ecstasy, is provided in an excellent article in the February 27, 2004 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I think that it is a great article, but OK, I exaggerated when I said it told the "full story." For more of the story, see this post by Mark Kleiman, to which Vice Squad is indebted for alerting us to the Chronicle tale.

Labels: ecstasy, Kleiman

 
Recent Vice News From the Blogosphere
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:16 PM

Adopting, yea, even perfecting the lazy person's guide to vice blogging, let me pass along some pointers to vice policy activity at better blogs:

(1) Mark Kleiman notes the suspension of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, source of much of our information about heavy drug use in the United States. Reasons for the suspension of ADAM remain murky, but Kleiman does mention that our nation's President found time in the State of the Union address to propose more funds for high schools that would like to administer drug tests to their students. (Remember South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings's response when a challenger for his senate seat asked Hollings if he would take a drug test? It was along the lines of: "I'll take a drug test if he takes an IQ test.")

Over at Crescat, Peter Northrup makes a less than half-hearted, second-best argument that maybe losing the data on heavy users isn't so bad: "If all drug policy officials looked at--all they could look at--were the data on casual users, maybe we'd have a drug policy that was merely bad, rather than inexcusable."

(2) At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok joins the Free Tommy Chong forces. While at Marginal Revolution, check out Tyler Cowen's post on how smokers who cut down partially offset the reduction in cigarettes by smoking more intensely. For more on this topic, and evidence that the offset (in this case, brought on by increased excise taxes that induce a shift to higher tar and nicotine cigarettes) is more than complete for young smokers, see William N. Evans and Matthew C. Farrelly, “The Compensating Behavior of Smokers: Taxes, Tar, and Nicotine,” Rand Journal of Economics 29: 578-595, Autumn 1998.

(3) Ken Lammers at Crimlaw documents the most recent (and most outrageous?) inroad into Fourth Amendment rights, in the service of ensuring that factually-guilty defendants will not walk. Naturally, the case involves (in part) drugs.

Labels: Crescat, Kleiman, search, testing, tobacco

 
A Different Sort of Fake Drug Scandal
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:52 PM

Mark Kleiman gives a harrowing report of the use of fake
drugs by informants in order to receive larger payments
for their disinformation. As it played into everyone's
interests except for some innocent immigrants, the fake,
planted "evidence" managed to remain undetected for
quite a while.

The undermining of policing via drug prohibition has been
something of a theme on Vice Squad, and as I cannot devote
much time to it now, let me encourage you to read Prof.
Kleiman's account and the linked news story.

The officer just found not guilty of six charges related to
lying about the arrests in the case will apparently get his
job back, at least temporarily. I am an unbridled supporter
of the standard of proof -- guilt beyond a reasonable doubt
-- that must be met to send someone to jail. I'm not so
sure it is the appropriate standard for whether you should
remain a licensed law enforcer.

Labels: drugs, Kleiman, policing, Prohibition

 
Vice Blogs are Elsewhere
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:37 PM

Vice Squad has successfully survived the notorious Canadian customs
officials (oops, no, sorry, it's the Ukrainian ones who are notorious)
and returned to his home in Viceville. It might take a while to catch up,
however, so let me just mention a few vice-related stories out there
in blogistan....

Mark Kleiman comments upon Rush Limbaugh's potential legal liability.

Amanda Butler at Crescat Sententia informs us that Los Angeles is
backtracking on its attempt to separate exotic dancers from their
customers. (Earlier Vice Squad post here.)

Overlawyered links to this story concerning a smoker's lawsuit in Germany.
The initial line of the story: "A German court has rejected the country's
first compensation claim by a smoker against a cigarette maker
because of a lack of evidence."

Rantfarm links to this story about how, well, the French wine
industry wants to convince motorists that they needn't completely abstain
from drinking alcohol to comply with the legal BAC limit of .05. Seems
the French government has been stepping up enforcement of drunk-driving
laws. Here's a sample: "The government says road deaths fell more than
20 percent to under 5,000 in the first ten months of 2003 from the same
period last year -- still among the highest rates in Europe relative to
population size.

Amid the tightened enforcement and government warnings, sales of wine
in restaurants have also fallen by about 15 percent in just months, wine
producers say."

Labels: alcohol, Crescat, Kleiman, litigation, smoking

 
Crack Cocaine and a Stillborn Fetus
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:07 PM

Vice policy, alas, involves more than it share of unhappy and unsettling
stories. Mark Kleiman reports that last month the Supreme Court issued an
order denying the appeal of a South Carolina woman who was convicted
of homicide when her pregnancy of 8.5 months ended with a stillbirth,
and who tested positive for cocaine. The woman was given a 20-year
jail term, with 8 years suspended. A Christian Science Monitor story
(linked by Kleiman) on the court order can be found here.

The ingestion of any drug by a pregnant woman, including legal drugs like
alcohol and nicotine, generally is not a good thing for the fetus, and in
significant doses, is almost assuredly not a good thing. Perhaps surprisingly,
however, the evidence that there is substantial damage to a fetus from
maternal cocaine use is rather scanty. (Read Stanton Peele's summary here.)
Professor Kleiman notes: "...there is precisely no medical evidence that
maternal cocaine use can cause stillbirth."

Labels: cocaine, Kleiman

 
A Bit More on Drug Pricing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:29 PM

Professor Michael Alexeev of Indiana University's economics department has written in about
my warning against immediately interpreting lower drug prices as evidence of the failure of the
drug war to reduce supplies. My claim was that quantity or prevalence information is also needed
(sometimes "availability" is assessed via surveys, such as, "is marijuana easily available in your high
school?"), because lower prices could be due to decreased demand, not increased supply. Prof.
Alexeev notes that in any case, we would not expect the price to be below "marginal cost," as in
any market. So, if the market for illicit drugs is more-or-less competitive, and assuming (as seems likely)
that the marginal costs of supplying drugs are not steeply rising, the radical reductions in price noted
by Prof. Kleiman should be a very good indicator of the effectiveness of the interdiction effort.

(Economistas will recall that in a perfectly competitive, constant-cost industry, marginal costs of
supply are constant and equal to the equilibrium market price.)

Labels: drugs, Kleiman, recreational drug use

 
Victory is Just Around the Corner
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:55 AM

Mark Kleiman had an interesting post a few days ago about prices
for illicit drugs. Here's an extended excerpt, with an internal link omitted and a couple spelling changes:

"Now, after twenty years of intensified drug law enforcement, the wholesale price
[for heroin] is about $70,000 a kilo and the retail price in New York about 20 cents
per pure milligram, a factor-of-three reduction at wholesale and a factor-of-ten
reduction at retail, reflecting a greatly reduced markup. The general price level,
as measured by the CPI, has roughly doubled over that period, so the inflation-
adjusted price of a pure milligram of heroin is actually down about 95%.

The price drop for cocaine has been a little bit smaller: from about 80 cents per
pure milligram in 1980, the price fell very rapidly until about 1988, and has since
stabilized (in nominal-dollar) terms at about 15 cents per pure milligram, which
adjusted for inflation is a decline of about 90%.

All of this happened in the face of an enforcement effort that increased the
number of drug dealers behind bars from about 30,000 in 1980 to about
450,000 today."

Price declines do not imply increased supply, of course. Among other factors, decreased demand
for illicit drugs could drive lower prices; so, prevalence figures would be helpful in interpreting
these stunning price declines. More on the prices of illicit drugs in the near future!

Labels: drugs, Kleiman

 
Kleiman on Limbaugh
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:37 PM

Mark Kleiman comments in a wise way on the alleged opiate addiction
of Rush Limbaugh.

Labels: Kleiman, opium