Regulating Cocaine
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:41 PM

Here's a short paper on regulating cocaine through a behavioral economics lens, employing the double default approach.

Labels: cocaine, drugs, licensing

 
The Double Default Approach to Re-Legalizing Drugs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:28 PM

In my previous post I mentioned, somewhat enigmatically, my double default approach to re-legalizing drugs. I suspect that I will have more to say later, but a short, ungated description can be found here.

Labels: drugs, licensing

 
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.
Read more »

Labels: drugs, Kleiman, licensing

 
Toward Drug Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:48 PM

A new working paper, related to my TEDx talk, is now available on ssrn. It's "Toward Drug Control: Exclusion and Buyer Licensing." The abstract is below, and the paper can be downloaded here: Here's the abstract:

The uncertainties associated with the precise nature of legalization regimes and with their expected outcomes sometimes are used to justify the maintenance of drug prohibition. This paper details the role that buyer licensing and exclusion might play in implementing a low-risk, post-prohibition drug regulatory regime. Buyer licensing and exclusion provide assistance to those who exhibit or are worried about self-control problems with drugs, while not being significantly constraining upon those who are informed and satisfied drug consumers. Relative to prohibition, licensing and self-exclusion can be part of a drug regulatory structure that is much more finely tuned to the risks of harms stemming from drug use. 

Update, August 2012: The revised, published version is available (for those with access to SpringerLink) here. The revisions are meaningful, in that a "double default" system of legal access to currently illegal drugs is developed; I will post more about this system on Vice Squad soon, I hope.

Labels: drugs, licensing, self-exclusion, solipsism

 
"Re-Legalizing Drugs"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:50 AM

On April 17, 2011, I gave a talk (yes, "Re-Legalizing Drugs") as part of the TEDxUChicago festivities. The whole 17-minute ordeal is viewable here.

Labels: drugs, licensing, Prohibition, self-exclusion

 
Self-Exclusion, Unabridged
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:03 PM

Vice Squad has something of a fixation with self-exclusion, those programs whereby problem gamblers (or people who fear that they might become problem gamblers) can volunteer to be barred from access to casinos. I have a short article in the Winter, 2008 Milken Institute Review on self-exclusion, arguing that parallel programs should be part of the mix when the currently illegal drugs are legalised. That article was a by-product of a longer paper that I let languish in an unfinished state. But now I have finished it, after a fashion, and posted it on SSRN, free for the downloading. The longer version isn't really all that much longer -- it's 20 pages. If that is too daunting, here's the rather tepid abstract:

Gambling jurisdictions around the world have adopted self-exclusion programs in which gamblers can voluntarily agree to be barred from further gambling. The popularity of self-exclusion stems from its aid in combating problem or pathological gambling, along with its non-coercive nature. To bolster the self-control of problem gamblers, exclusion programs combine physical inaccessibility and reward diminution: bettors are supposed to remain (or be kept) away from gambling sites, and the gambling winnings of excluded bettors can be confiscated. Other elements of program design that can affect the workings of a self-exclusion program include the duration of an exclusion, its revocability, and the breadth of gambling activities to which the prohibition applies. Self-exclusion or broader user licensing programs can be helpful for control of vices other than gambling. I argue that self-exclusion should form an integral component of drug regulatory frameworks that offer substantial improvements over drug prohibition.

The title of the paper is tepid too: "Self-Exclusion". But the ideas, well, they are revolutionary (in a tepid sort of way).

Update: There were some annoying ersatz characters at the beginning of the abstract on the SSRN page, so I just made a bid to remove them. We'll see if this works...

Labels: addiction, drugs, gambling, self-exclusion

 
Be careful of those bread rolls if you are flying to Dubai
- posted by Michael @ 8:42 PM

Looks like Dubai might also have the need to fill up some prison cells (see this post for March 6). "News of the Weird" for this week reports:

In February, a court in Dubai ... sentenced Briton Keith Brown, 43, to the standard four-year minimum term in prison for violating the country's extreme "zero tolerance" drug laws, even though the only drug found was a "speck" (0.003 grams) of cannabis caught in the tread of his shoe and discovered only because the Dubai airport uses sophisticated drug-detection equipment.

My guess is that they discovered it because they make people take off their shoes as they go through airport security. Maybe that was the idea of that procedure to begin with. The same little article also said that "[p]reviously, a Canadian man was imprisoned for possession of three poppy seeds (from a bread roll he had eaten at Heathrow Airport in London) that had fallen into his clothing as he prepared for a flight to Dubai." What a country!

[Vice Squad first covered the Dubai airport incidents in early February. -- JL]

Labels: arrests, drugs, zero tolerance

 
Thailand to Legalise Gambling?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:52 PM

The Prime Minister of Thailand seems to have a soft spot for legal vice. He has recently indicated that he would like to legalise daily lotteries, and has followed that up by declaring that he will legalise casino gambling, too. Somehow, he does not show the same liberalising tendencies when it comes to the war on drugs.

[Update: Pete at Drug WarRant has more on Thailand's murderous drug war.]

Labels: casino, drugs, gambling, lottery, Thailand

 
Pro-Active Self-Exclusion
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:32 PM

A couple weeks ago I mentioned my article in the current Milken Institute Review concerning self-exclusion, those systems available in many casinos whereby you can bar yourself from the premises for some period of time. More than 11,000 people have signed up for lifetime bans from riverboat casinos in the state of Missouri. (The voluntary exclusion applies to all of the state's casino boats.) I think that buyer licenses or self-exclusion programs should be part of the regulatory structure when the currently illicit drugs are re-legalized.

I mention in the Milken article that self-exclusion programs do not have to be passive. Casino employees or representatives of the gambling commission can keep their eye on potential problem gamblers, and hold an impromptu chat with them. (Attendance records and betting information from frequent-player programs also can be put to use for this purpose.) This sort of pro-active mechanism is used at Dutch casinos, and many of those gamblers who are approached for a chat choose to self-exclude. I think that active self-exclusion (and involuntary exclusion for bad actors) might be a good idea when drugs become legal, too, as I note in the Milken piece:

Individuals who misbehave under the influence of the drug would have their licenses revoked, or be involuntarily placed on the excluded list. One could even imagine a requirement of annual evaluations for drug-license holders to determine how they are coping with the drug, and to counsel lower limits, complete self-exclusion or treatment admission for those whose drug use appears to be getting the better of them. That is, self-exclusion could be active, like at Dutch casinos, and drug sellers could be drafted into the activity of barring their best customers – a far cry from their current behavior.

When I first mentioned the Milken article, I noted an unfortunate typo in the second word. I just downloaded a pdf from the website, however, and I find that the typo has been repaired! (Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that this alteration was possible -- in a lifetime of typos, what is one more? -- so I did not contact the relevant authorities.) Bravo, Milken Institute Review!

Labels: drugs, gambling, licensing, self-exclusion

 
Steroids and Kids
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:05 PM

Vice Squad is on the road, and has only a few minutes at a public library today. Probably not a good time to bring up a subject that we have studiously avoided in the past -- steroids in sports. (Radley has been posting and debating on this issue.) Our general approach to vice would suggest that if adults want to use steroids, there should be some not-too-onerous legal means of accommodating them. Transfer of steroids to kids could be forbidden, of course. But what about sports leagues, like Major League Baseball. As private businesses, can they make whatever decision they want to with regards to steroids?

Our interest in protecting kids can justify some collateral restrictions upon adults, such as the ban on transfers to youths that I mentioned above. For the "traditional vices" I do not think that this interest can justify prohibitions on adult use or vice activity, however -- and I believe that this is the case with steroids, too.

Nevertheless, I am not sure that a requirement that professional sports leagues ban steroid use would not be acceptable on the grounds of protecting kids. [I acknowledge the controversy over the extent and likelihood of potential harms from steroid use, and then there are issues with the enforceablity of any ban. If a ban on use by kids would be easy to enforce, then any controls on professional sports leagues, presumably, would have to be justified on other grounds. But what if the ban on kid steroid use were quite leaky?] If professional baseball allowed steroid use, promising young teen ballplayers, of whom only a handful would make it to the major leagues and perhaps most would not even make it into the minor leagues, would be faced with a difficult choice. To the extent that those drugs really are performance enhancing, then such kids will feel significant pressure to get a leg up on the competition by using steroids. In the limit, we have the usual positional externality story, where everyone uses steroids without affecting their relative ranking. Of course, the same would be true of major leaguers, too.

It is extremely hard for someone to become a professional athlete if that person was not training for that role at an early age. And professional athletics is a career that, unlike most office jobs, seems to capture the imagination of lots of kids. I also think (following J.S. Mill) that the fact that professional sports league are businesses that offer their wares to the public (and rely on the legal system for their organization, and so on), means that the personal liberty objection to a ban on steroid use by professional athletes is obviated.

Anyway, I haven't really thought this through, as I suppose is obvious. But I seem to be coming down on the side of (or merely rephrasing) Judge Posner's position on steroids.

Labels: drugs, teens

 
A Letter from a Drug Enforcement Agent
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:41 AM

The letter appeared one week ago in the Washington Times. The author indicated that he "served almost 30 years as a federal drug enforcement agent." He was writing to express support for the recent Supreme Court decision that allows judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines for cocaine offenses. In the course of the letter, this drug war veteran avers: "If the U.S. government wishes to continue its futile and counterproductive crusade against illegal drug use, it should regard all illegal drug trafficking and use as equally deserving of punishment." (While I do not think the drug war is futile, I do think it is counterproductive.) Speaking of law enforcers questioning the drug war...

Labels: drugs, sentencing, Supreme Court

 
Vice Legalization as an Anti-Corruption Strategy
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:22 PM

World Bank economist Branko Milanovic discusses all those corrupt countries out there with very poor governance. He sees the spread of corrupt countries to be connected with globalized trade and travel more generally. Thanks to globalization, "In corrupt states, profitability soars in the production of goods and services that are internationally illegal: drugs, sex trafficking, contraband weapons or cigarettes, or counterfeit goods." More trade allows further specialization in production, and some states specialize in the production or distribution of illegal goods, spurring capture of the state apparatus by organized crime. Hectoring politicians in corrupt countries to be more honest ignores the incentives created by these structural features:

A different approach is necessary: legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking. If prostitution and drugs indeed became like haircuts and candies, their production would obey the same rules: Countries that export beauty services and confectionary products are not notably more corrupt than others.

Bad governance harms economic development. Drug prohibition leads to bad governance, even more so now that global trade has become much less expensive. Drug legalization, therefore, can promote economic development.

Thanks to SWOP East Sex Workers Outreach Project for the pointer.

Labels: drugs, Prohibition, prostitution

 
Foreign Policy Gets Letters
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:26 PM

The September/October issue of Foreign Policy featured a cover story by Ethan Nadelmann calling for a look at drug legalization. (There's video updates featuring a debate between Nadelmann and a leading prohibitionist here.) The November/December issue contains three letters responding to Nadelmann, and Nadelmann's response to the responses (only the beginning of the first letter is available to non-subscribers here.) One letter, by renowned drug policy researchers Rob MacCoun and Peter Reuter, notes that legalization will likely decrease harms per use, but possibly could increase drug use so much that total harm will go up -- and Nadelmann accepts their point, claiming that he just wants to start a debate about legalization, not to promote it as "the answer" to drug problems. I also accept their point, but the minimization of "total harm" cannot be the overall goal in drug regulation any more than it can be in automobile regulation or soccer regulation. Admittedly, based on where we are now, I think that most liberalizations consistent with a robust policy regime would reduce total harm -- but if we started with decent policies, as we have, say, with auto regulation, then further moves to decrease harms (think of reducing speed limits to 5 mph) would not be sensible.

[Meanwhile, perhaps to make amends for providing a forum for Nadelmann's dangerous ideas, Foreign Policy this month also presents some data and analysis about methamphetamine. I find the two-page spread to be slightly alarmist. Meth is characterized as "the world's fastest-growing illegal drug" -- the type of locution that always makes me want to ask what time period we are talking about. Fastest growing over the last day? month? year? I thought khat use in Canada was rising pretty quickly. Then there's a bunch of overly precise data on meth prices and supplies, with no discussion of the quality of the data.]

Meanwhile, Radley points us to a post by Belle Waring arguing for decriminalization of all drugs, including heroin. I think that it should be noted that a legal regime could still be quite restrictive, involving things like advance purchase requirements and buyer licensing. Also, drug tastes seem to be such that in the absence of prohibition there would be a substitution to milder (though still dangerous, of course) opiates (such as opium itself) instead of heroin -- the opposite shift occurred with prohibition -- and regulations could encourage this substitution. So I believe that a sensible legalization, which should start with rather strict regulations, would lower total harms relative to our current predicament -- not that lowering total harms is the overall goal!

Labels: drugs, harm reduction

 
Indonesian Insanity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:53 PM

Indonesia's cruelty in the name of the drug war is persistent but, alas, not unique. Here's an article concerning a 21-year old Australian whom the Indonesians hope soon to kill for carrying around an officially disapproved substance when he was 18 -- surely his impending death will be undertaken for the children. Another Indonesian court is showing dangerous leniency in the case of a repeat possessor (not trafficker), an American who has been sentenced to a mere three and a half years in prison. (More than ten years ago his failure to obey rules on what not to possess cost him a year in an Indonesian jail.) I am certain his (surely too merciful) punishment is for the children, because the judge said so: 'The defendant repeated his acts, which could cause the moral damage of Balinese youth.' Throwing people's lives away for a pin's fee, however, apparently is not morally damaging, to children or adults.

Indonesian idiocy is longstanding; it is also widely shared. What did Bertrand Russell say? “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."

Labels: Asia, drugs, heroin, sentencing

 
Drugs Blur Vision...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:48 PM

...oops, I mean, Blur's Drug Vision. David Rowntree, recovering addict, aspiring barrister/politico, and the drummer for the British band Blur has an op-ed on drug policy in Tuesday's Guardian. First, Rowntree points to the ineffectiveness of drug policy, or at least to the paucity of data pointing to policy efficacy: "there seems to be no evidence that any country's policy has had any lasting effect on the number of recreational or dependant [sic] drug users at all. Ever." He then suggests that in shaping policy it is sensible to consider dependent and non-dependent users separately, recognizing that for most users, there are no negative long-run consequences from a standard recreational drug career that fades away by the age of thirty. Eventually, Rowntree proposes "a strategy based on research, education and harm reduction." But en route he offers what I consider to be some profound insights into his own addiction. At first the alcohol and coke seemed to be problem solvers.

However, my experience of life when not on drink or drugs got progressively worse. The world became an increasingly hostile place, relationships got more difficult and an all-encompassing sense of dread and paranoia set in. Drink and drugs became progressively less effective in soothing those feelings. At some point, the drugs stopped working, but life without them had become impossible. It was a catch-22 situation where it was impossible to live without alcohol or drugs but impossible to continue using. I managed to get help before they destroyed my life, and these days I'm active in the recovery community. The key point is that all the way along, I thought my behaviour was normal and it was the rest of the world that had gone mad. I had no idea my experience was different to anyone else's because I had nothing to measure it against.

So if my experience is typical, and I think it probably is, many addicts aren't interested in treatment because they don't believe there's anything wrong with them.

Incidentally, both Rowntree and Blur hail from Colchester, where Vice Squad was happily seconded for a year in the mid-1990s. Speaking of secondments, I have returned (sans luggage) to Chicago, allowing me to pick up the Guardian in one of the too-many airports that I visited today; I hope that more regular Vice Squad posting will ensue.

Labels: addiction, Britain, drugs, treatment

 
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

 
High Profile Vice Revelations
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:27 AM

On the way to Tbilisi a week ago Vice Squad had a layover in London, where the dribbling out of confessions of prior illegal use drug use by leading British politicians was in the news. Guardian columnist Zoe Williams said that she wanted to record the complete tally, but that “it was like trawling through a list of first-world-war dead.” She notes how they never really admit to using pot, only to having “tried” it.

Before leaving the good ol’ US of A, a recurring news item there concerned prominent folks who may have “tried” an escort service or two, though certainly not for what you are thinking. Like the British weed smokers, they can’t come right out and just defend their activity, or announce that they have every intention of continuing in their vices. No, they have to pretend that their behavior was a Very Serious Error, though one that should be excused for some reason or other. (Williams points out that for the druggies, they like to point out that they were young, or the times were different then, or the misstep was so long ago as not to be an issue.) But on either side of the Atlantic, even though these prominent folks don’t actually defend their behavior, they also never seem to say how much better off they would have been if only they had been caught in their illegal act, arrested and jailed. The official, punitive approach is fine for those other folks, though.

Labels: Britain, drugs, Prohibition, prostitution

 
Back in the ex-USSR
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:31 AM

Two weeks ago, Vice Squad was in Kyiv. This week finds us in another post-Soviet Wonderland, Tbilisi, where we will be surveying the local vice scene for one month. But in our last hours back in Chicago, we came across this article on some inspired allocation of policing resources. It concerns MethCheck, wherein someone who exceeds the government's view of how much Sudafed you should be buying automatically has his or her name sent to the anti-drug constabulary. The article does its best to spin this as a wonderful law enforcement tool, as opposed to the ludicrous waste of time and money that it is. But it doesn't sound like MethCheck is really fixing that meth problem, especially if the opening anecdote is the best they could come up with:

LONDON, Ky. - Detective Brian Lewis returns to his desk after lunch, scanning e-mails he missed.

One catches his eye: It says a suspected member of a methamphetamine ring bought a box of Sudafed at 1:34 p.m. at a CVS pharmacy.

Minutes later, Lewis is in his truck, circling the parking lot, searching for the woman. Lewis did not find her that day, but the scenario illustrates the way law enforcement is increasingly relying on computerized tracking systems in their fight against meth, which is often brewed in makeshift labs.

Why are CVS and WalMart participating in these silly rituals?

It seems, incidentally, that former Soviet Georgia only made it to Vice Squad once before, in an inauspicious manner. Tbilisi is very pleasant, however.

Labels: drugs, policing, solipsism

 
Of Guns and Drugs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:54 AM

The tragedy in Blacksburg has once again spurred debate about appropriate policy towards firearms. Gun control does not fit into Vice Squad’s ambit, however, because firearms are fraught with externalities (positive and negative) in ways that go well beyond those associated with many manifestations of the traditional vices. That is, on the negative side, when someone misuses a gun, it is often the case (as in Blacksburg, alas) that other people are directly injured or killed. When someone misuses a drug, the direct costs are borne by the user him or herself (though those close to an addict suffer too, of course, as the Guardian article linked to on Wednesday reminds us). To employ John Stuart Mill’s terminology, drugplay tends to be much closer to a ‘self-regarding’ activity than does gunplay.

Nevertheless, gun control debates are marked by what I find to be an interesting parallel with drug policy discussions. Vice Squad has noted before the logically sound proposition that if there were no drugs, there would be no drug problems. That is sort of the macro version of the proposition; there is a micro version, too, that if person A had never used drugs in the first place, he would not have ended up with any drug problems. While unobjectionable so far, the next step in the supposed syllogism, a step to which these propositions are sometimes put, does not follow as a matter of logic. That step is: ...therefore, we should meet any current drug problems (which, macro and micro, occur under our current drug prohibition) with a stricter, more-assiduously enforced prohibition.

These sorts of propositions identify problems after they arise, and then posit that if we had just done something different, these precise problems would not have arisen. Again, these claims are (likely) correct. But what they fail to look at are all the other problems that might arise when their preferred policy is implemented (or that another set of "different" policies might also have prevented the tragedy at issue).

What I find interesting in the gun control debate is that this sort of inappropriately extended logic seems to be used by both sides. Those in favor of increased firearm regulation sometimes employ a direct parallel: no guns means no gun crime, therefore we should do more to eliminate guns. (Or, no guns available to person A means no gun misuse by person A, therefore...) But there’s another version for those who are sympathetic to some slackening of firearm controls. This has to do with the defensive uses of firearms. Anytime someone uses a firearm to commit a violent crime, it is almost surely the case that, had another person been armed with a gun and been in the right place at the right time, that person could have prevented or mitigated the crime. The unsound (as a matter of strict logic) extension, of course, is that therefore we should have more armed people running about.

Note that I am not claiming that either the stricter or liberalized firearm controls are unsound policies. I am only claiming that one piece of logic that is frequently put forward in their defense is far from dispositive and perhaps even false.

Labels: drugs, guns, Mill, Prohibition

 
War on drugs on NPR
- posted by Michael @ 10:59 AM

A few days ago, NPR started a five-part series on "America's forgotten war on drugs." An overview is here. It is certainly not a very complimentary view of the "war" but at the same time, it is nowhere nearly as critical as I would have liked it to be. For example, one of its major points is that the emphasis on reducing supply hasn't worked and the efforts should be shifted to reducing demand. Demand reduction can be good if it is based on educating people about the harm of drugs, but it can be also bad if the government tries to reduce demand by putting consumers in jail. In general, the approach of the reports seems to be about how we tweak the existing policy to make it work better rather than asking whether the entire policy makes any sense. I must say though that I read only the overview of the series and so I might have gotten a wrong impression of it. I did find one thing quite unteresing. The overview report says that experts estimate the annual cost of the war on drugs to be about $40 billion. That's a big number and I think it understimates the war's true costs, but compared to the other seemingly unwinnable and probably counterproductive war we are in now, it no longer seems so outrageous. I now long for the time when the most expensive war we as society were waging cost us only $40 billion per year. Hope we don't get into another mess any time soon that would dwarf the current ones.

Labels: drugs