Decriminalize Prostitution
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 3:21 PM

John Geluardi of the Contra Costa Times reports that a sex workers' rights group (Sex Workers Outreach Project) is mobilizing to put a ballot measure before Berkeley, California voters to decriminalize prostitution. If adopted the measure wouldn't change state prostitution laws, but local enforcement would become a low priority. In addition the city would be required to encourage the state legislature to repeal existing prostitution laws.

Labels: California, Prohibition, prostitution

 
Kansas and Sodomy
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 3:12 PM

While sex with underage children isn't exactly vice--sodomy is--and as this report is linked to sodomy...The AP reports that in one of the first non-marriage cases to interpret the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas ruling (which found sodomy statutes unconstitutional), a Kansas court of appeals ruled that the state can punish illegal sex with children more harshly when it involves homosexual acts. The case involves an 18 year old man convicted of sodomy (and sentenced to more than 17 years) for having sex with a 14 year old boy. Had the 14 year old been a girl, "Romeo and Juliet" laws could have kicked in and the 18 year old could have faced at most 1 year and a few months.

At issue in the case is not whether individuals have a right to engage in sodomy with children--but whether the state should be able to distinguish between homosexual and heterosexual acts--an issue that Justice O'Connor speaks to in her concurrence in Lawrence.

Labels: Kansas, sex, teens

 
Madam's List Revealed
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 2:27 AM

The AP reported a story that a Maryland appeals court ruled that, under the Maryland Public Information Act, the city of Frederick must allow the public to review a "black book" obtained in a raid of a call-girl operation. The "black book" lists the costumers of a prostitution service. Some critics argue that the city didn't want to make the book public because some of the customers included prominent citizens and public officials.

Labels: prostitution

 
Oscars and Vice?
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 10:34 AM

OK Nikkie, you have the Super Bowl--but what about those of us not really into football (american) who still want to gamble? Look to the 76th Annual Academy Awards whose nominations (check out list on eonline!) were announced this morning. While I have no official statistics--it appears that betting on the Oscars is on the rise as online gambling institutions offer betting on novelty entertainment events (from everything from awards shows to who's going to win The Apprentice). Don't believe me? Check out this observation from onlinecasinonews.com--its not the best piece of journalism, but it gives you an idea.

Anyone taking bets on Lord of the Rings?

Labels: gambling, internet

 
From Sodomy to Polygamy
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 1:33 AM

Is Justice Scalia's fear manifesting? Are we seeing a wave of challenges to various states' criminal sex laws in the light of the Supreme Court's June 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas? The Lawrence decision ruled sodomy laws unconstitutional (see this earlier Vice Squad blog on Lawrence.) Alexandria Sage of the AP reports that a civil rights attorney is challenging Utah's ban on polygamy in federal court. The case involves three people who wanted to enter into a plural marriage but were denied a marriage license by Salt Lake County. It seems that we have only begun to see the reach of the Lawrence decision.


Smoke Shops and Cigarettes
The AP has an article reporting that a Native American tribe is appealing a federal court decision that the state of Rhode Island correctly shut down its tax-free tobacco store after a violent raid. The federal trial court ruled that the Narragansett tribe was subject to state taxes on tobacco, while the tribe maintains that RI state officials wrongly executed a search warrant on sovereign tribal lands. The violence resulted when tribal police resisted the RI state officers' advance on the tribe's land. Arguments are scheduled before the 1st Circuit some time in May.

The AP reports that the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by cigarette manufacturer R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co to challenge an award to a widow of a teacher who died of cancer. At issue was whether the Supreme Court should consider blocking a Florida law that allows lawsuits against cigarette makers over their products, because of federal regulations for the making and sale of cigarettes.

Labels: litigation, Native Americans, sex, Supreme Court, tobacco

 
New Resident
- posted by Bernard Bradshaw @ 12:55 AM

Hey Vice Squad Readers, like Nikkie, I too am new to blogging. Most of the posts that you will see from me, will be a bit on the sexy side--pornography, prostitution, sodomy, etc. So stay tuned and have fun!!!

Labels: solipsism

 
Vice Residents
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:18 AM

In the initial Vice Squad post, I mentioned that I have been teaching a course entitled "Regulation of Vice" for some years now. What I failed to mention is that I have been blessed with two excellent teaching assistants during that time: Sheldon Lyke and Nikkie Eitmann. They both are graduate students at the University of Chicago, Sheldon in sociology and Nikkie in public policy. They both have law degrees. And they are both generous enough that they have agreed to undertake guest blogging stints this week at Vice Squad, while I am being shipped off to a distant conference. Many thanks to them, and please join me in welcoming Sheldon and Nikkie to Vice Squad.

Labels: solipsism

 
Sex Toy Saleswoman Arrested
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:31 PM

The saleswomen of Passion Parties hold Tupperware-style parties to peddle, uh, sex toys. (Warning: Not your Mom's Tupperware-style party.) Fortunately, two vigilant undercover officers in Burleson, Texas, grew wise to the caper, and nabbed the Burleson rep for Passion Parties, a 43-year old women who is married and has three kids. Selling obscene devices is illegal in Texas. The International Herald Tribune tells the tale. Recently, law professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy indicated that one federal trial court (in Williams v. Pryor, 220 F. Supp. 2d 1257 (N.D. Ala. 2002)) ruled that laws forbidding sales of sex toys violate the right to privacy.

Labels: obscenity, policing, sex

 
Capsule Summary of European Smoking Regulation...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:33 PM

....from Deutsche Welle. Here's the Greece entry: "Greece: With some 44 percent of the Greeks over the age of 15 confirmed smokers, Greece is the smokiest country in the EU. 2002 laws outlawed smoking in many public areas and introduced designated areas in restaurants across the country. Billboard tobacco advertising will be banned for five months this year to coincide with the Olympics."

Labels: EU, smoking, smoking ban

 
Tobacco Settlement and Non-Participating Companies
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:48 PM

The settlement between 46 state attorneys general and Big Tobacco in 1998 raised the cost of manufacturing cigarettes -- for those who were part of the settlement -- while also promising boatloads of money to the states. What about tobacco companies that did not sign the settlement? Well, states enacted legislation that would raise their costs, too, so that they would not achieve a competitive advantage. The deal had a loophole, however, for small manufacturers that did not have a sales presence in more than a few states. This loophole is beginning to hurt Big Tobacco and its partners, the states, so there are efforts afoot to close it. Those efforts have already been successful in 19 states.

Details can be found in this excellent Kansas City Star story, prepared by an AP writer. The story interviews the owner of Poison, Inc., maker of cigarette brands such as Grim Reaper. Here's a sample that refers to the loophole:

"State laws enacted to enforce the settlement also required cigarette companies to pay money into escrow accounts. Those payments -- about $3.90 per carton this year -- would be used to pay any future claims made against smaller manufacturers, and would also ensure those companies couldn't undercut the Big Four on price.

Those escrow funds were to be paid back after 25 years. But the way the law was written, companies that didn't join the settlement and only do business in a few states could get back most of that money almost immediately.

As a result, Poison can sell Grim Reapers for as little as $1.49 a pack in North Carolina -- about half the price of the Big Four's premium brands."

Vice Squad mentioned the circumvention of the settlement two weeks ago. Update, January 24: Overlawyered comments on this story, too, and rightly points out that the term "loophole" is used rather creatively here.

Labels: Master Settlement Agreement, tobacco

 
Earmarking Gambling Revenues
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:02 PM

When state lotteries are introduced, sometimes the revenues are earmarked for politically popular programs, such as education. There's always the possibility that such earmarking will simply divert other funds that would have gone to those programs, however. To counter this tendency, some jurisdictions set up new programs, such as Georgia's HOPE scholarships and Britain's "Good Causes". Now Richwood, Louisiana, is looking once again at allowing video poker. The funds raised by the poker terminals would not be earmarked, exactly, but they do seem to be destined to pay off Richwood's considerable debt. What is the nature of that debt?: "The town owes the city of Monroe more than $527,000 in sewer service fees. Monroe has sued the town to collect the money after years of trying to work out payment agreements."

Labels: gambling, lottery

 
Updating Alcohol Developments in South Dakota
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:29 PM

For reasons that I cannot understand, Vice Squad is developing an affinity for following alcohol regulation developments in South Dakota. A January 9th post noted the possibility of legalizing alcohol on the Pine Ridge reservation, and an attempt to raise the excise tax for county use. Here are some more recent developments:

(1) The referendum on alcohol legalization on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has been slightly postponed.

(2) The state legislature is considering a bill that would bring South Dakota practices in line with a federal, well, recommendation, but more of a mandate given the grant funds at stake. It concerns juvenile drivers who are caught with a little alcohol in their system (between .02 and .08 BAC). Here's the first line from the AP story at Aberdeen News.com: "The Legislature was asked Friday to approve a bill that would keep drivers younger than 18 from being locked up more than 48 hours when caught drunk or drugged." This sentence is misleading, however, in that a BAC of .02 would not meet the ordinary understanding of "drunk."

(3) Another AP story at Aberdeen News.com notes a proposal to allow special events (like summer festivals) that currently can procure licenses to serve beer and wine to also be licensed for mixed drinks. Are all the liquor interests behind this proposal? No, not all of them!: "...a lobbyist for the state Retail Liquor Dealers Association, said his organization opposes the bill because it would take trade away from businesses that serve liquor and pay taxes year-round. He said some stores depend on revenues from annual events and holidays to survive."

Labels: alcohol, driving, South Dakota

 
Rush Limbaugh Plea Negotiations Made Public
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:02 PM

The on-line Chicago Tribune includes this story (registration required) from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about the prosecutors in the Rush Limbaugh drug and doctor-shopping case holding out for a guilty plea to a felony count. Limbaugh's lawyer, Roy Black, apparently was suggesting a plea bargain in which criminal charges would be put aside in exchange for further drug rehabilitation for Rush. Prosecutors would not go along, though they appear to be willing to pursue probation and not jail time in exchange for a guilty plea to a felony count of doctor shopping.

According to the linked article, Black's December letter to the Palm Beach County State Attorney proposing the rehab deal included this line: "The public is better served by treating addicts as patients rather than criminals." Hear hear. And it is better served by treating non-addicted users as law-abiding citizens than as either patients or criminals.

Labels: addiction, prescription drugs, recreational drug use, treatment

 
Drugs and Police Corruption: Latest Variation on a Sad Theme
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:37 PM

In today's Chicago Tribune (registration required), we learn that...

"A former Chicago police officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing 220 pounds of marijuana and more than $10,000 in cash from a drug dealer while he was on the force in 2001." Now he faces, it seems, at least 18 years in prison.

Just the most recent example of how our drug prohibition presents constant integrity tests for the police, just as it tests the mettle of poor young men in inner cities. (Please forgive this latest recounting of an all-too-frequent Vice Squad theme.) When someone fails the test, we are ready to show them the jailhouse door, more fodder for our voracious prison complex. We rarely ask (certainly our politicians don't seem to ask) if these constant tests are a good idea. How many of us could say with certainty that, if we were officers, we would consistently resist the temptation to make thousands of dollars by looking the other way, or by "informally fining" a drug dealer who is not yet in prison, or by some other rather easy route -- a route that either has no direct victims or victimizes only those (drug dealers) whom we have been taught to revile. What a trap we set for our officers and for inner city poor! Surely such a set-up can be justified only by dire necessity, only if it serves the most pressing social need. But what is our purpose for designing "attractive nuisances" for cops and inner city poor? To make it a little bit more difficult for some of our friends and neighbors to consume a substance that they want to consume.

It is hard to be hopeful, but maybe there is some hope anyway. Here is the description that leads off the Drug Reform Coordination Network's web page entitled "Cops Against the Drug War": "The items posted here describe the growing disillusionment with the War on Drugs in the law enforcement community, the growing support for reform, and some of the ways in which the Drug War corrupts police forces and encourages a war mentality that is at odds with a police officer's intended role as an officer of the peace."

Update, January 23: This week's Drug War Chronicle provides the latest on Detroit's drugs and police corruption scandal.

Labels: Chicago, drugs, policing, Prohibition

 
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

 
Alcohol in Iraq: Non-Governmental Coercion in Vice Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:34 PM

Selling liquor has become extremely dangerous in Iraq, as this AP story makes clear: "...as many as nine liquor store owners, most of them Christians, have been killed in Basra since the fall of Saddam ..."; and "Besides the murders, dozens of liquor stores owned by Christians have been torched in recent months."

When John Stuart Mill crafted his harm principle in 1859, the type of unjustified coercion that he was most concerned about was not coercion by the state, but coercion by public opinion. (Mill's own irregular but presumably chaste and longstanding relationship with a married woman (he and she eventually married after her first husband's death) perhaps contributed to his recognition that social sanctions could be severe on those who didn't follow the usual paths.) And of course, it is public opinion that often empowers the state to persecute "dissidents." Adult vice activity, precisely because it has no identifiable victims (at least in many of its manifestations), seems to be particularly susceptible to private coercion. (Let me note that coercion is different from disapproval or dissuasion -- it is one thing to disapprove of someone else's vice, and something else again to punish him or her for engaging in it or to use force to prevent him or her from so engaging.)

Nevertheless, it is probably the case that in the US we tend to think of coercion as primarily a state activity. But the situation in Iraq with respect to alcohol sales (and playing music, and wearing the veil...) serves as a reminder that the situation is not always a repressive state on one side versus a more lenient public on the other. And so rules like that proposed in France, to outlaw the veil (and other religious symbols) in schools, are not prima facie affronts to liberty. If the alternative to such a law is that everyone will let a hundred flowers bloom, then the law is an affront to liberty. If the alternative to state coercion not to wear a veil is private coercion mandating the wearing of a veil by Muslim women, however, then lovers of liberty have to look more closely.

Labels: alcohol, Iraq, Mill

 
Chemical Determinism?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:03 PM

There was a gruesome mass slaying in Gary, Indiana, last Friday night. Four people (all related) were shot and killed inside a home, including a toddler not quite two years old. The murdered adults may have been involved in the drug trade, according to this article (registration required) in Monday's Chicago Tribune. Here's an excerpt: "Police found about $8,000 in cash, firearms and what appeared to be crack and powdered cocaine inside the two-story building. Investigators believe the house was a drug buying spot, and that the slayings could have stemmed from a heist gone awry."

Once again, it appears that these murders are drug-law-related, in that drug dealers attract robbers precisely because dealers (or even users) cannot easily turn to the police for protection. But in this case, I won't harp on this persistent Vice Squad theme, the huge toll that our drug laws take on our friends and neighbors. Rather, consider the subsequent paragraph in the linked Chicago Tribune article: "Police don't know why the toddler was killed, and theorize that the assailants might have been under the influence of drugs. Gary has a problem with formaldehyde-dipped marijuana joints --known as "sherm sticks"--that can cause bizarre behavior, [a police sergeant] said.

I have never heard of sherm sticks before, but I nevertheless think that it is unlikely that they "cause" bizarre behavior -- even if the people who smoke sherm sticks do behave bizarrely, and even if their behavior tends to be more bizarre when they are under the influence. It is common to attribute criminogenic properties to drugs, especially unfamiliar drugs that are used by unsavory "others." This has been the fate of many drugs over the years, including cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, PCP, methamphetamine, and on and on. But the evidence that drug consumption per se causes violent or bizarre behavior just isn't there, in general. Do you think that the assailants (there probably were multiple assailants, as casings from three guns were found) in the Gary murders would have killed these people if 20 armed police were surrounding them? If not, then the drugs were not the "cause" of the bizarre behavior. Very little crime which typically is described as drug-related is due to the psychoactive properties of the drugs working on the minds of users. (Indeed, most "drug-related crime" is really "drug-law-related.") The most-likely exception might be alcohol.

The general untenability of the claim that some psychoactive drug use causes crime is addressed at length in Chapter 6 of Jacob Sullum's Saying Yes.

Labels: cocaine, Prohibition

 
British Call Girl Blog
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:40 PM

Just to complete today's prostitution trifecta, Vice Squad notes that the winner (announced a couple weeks ago) of the Guardian's 2003 "best written" blog award is Belle de Jour, a blog (purportedly but certainly convincingly) written by a call girl in London. Prostitution is legal in Britain, though street- walking is illegal. (Vice Squad previously noted that liberalisation of prostitution laws is under consideration in Britain.)

Labels: Britain, prostitution

 
Advertising Nevada's Brothels
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:43 PM

Brothel prostitution is legal in some rural counties in Nevada,
though the brothels are subject to a host of state and local
regulations. Among them is a ban on advertising, and Vice
Squad supports both the brothel legality and the ad ban.
The brothels, however, are hoping to have the ad ban
rescinded, and are even willing to support a tax increase
in exchange, according to this article in the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. I think that this is short sighted of
the brothel owners, as I believe that free advertising will
threaten the continued legality of brothel prostitution in
Nevada.

The lobbyist for the brothels believes that the courts will
soon overturn the advertising ban in any case, and I tend to
agree with him. Nevertheless, even if the ad ban ends in
this fashion, I still believe that it will reduce public toleration
for legal prostitution.

Why are the courts likely to overturn the brothel ad ban?
Because Supreme Court decisions have been moving in
the direction of protecting advertising (as free speech) for
legal vices. Here's a brief excerpt from "Vice" Advertising
under the Supreme Court's Commercial Speech Doctrine:
The Shifting Central Hudson Analysis, by Michael
Hoefges & Milagros Rivera-Sanchez, Spring / Summer, 2000,
22 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 345*:
"...the Court has completely reversed its position on "vice"
advertising. Originally, "vice" advertising was effectively
excluded from First Amendment commercial speech
protection. The [Hoefges and Rivera-Sanchez] article argues
that after 1999, the Supreme Court has virtually eliminated
the "vice" advertising distinction and now requires equal
treatment under the First Amendment of all truthful,
non-deceptive advertising for lawful products and services."

As Vice Squad has argued before, full First Amendment
protection for commercial speech should not be assumed
to be a win for those with a libertarian bent.

Incidentally, the ad ban does not exactly pose much of a
barrier for those who are interested in learning more
about "Nevada brothels", as a web search on that phrase
will quickly confirm.

*Thanks to primo research assistant Ryan Monarch for unearthing
the Hoefges and Rivera-Sanchez article.

Labels: marketing, Nevada, prostitution, Supreme Court

 
Social Security for Spanish Prostitutes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:19 PM

Yesterday's Chicago Tribune contained this short item (registration required)
concerning a regional court decision in Andalusia. The court ruled that
the owner of a club has to make social security payments for women
who work as prostitutes at the club. Apparently the club owner
contended that the women were not employees. This is not to say
that they were private contractors; rather, the organization that
represents such clubs maintains that the clubs themselves are
hotels, and that the prostitutes are merely guests. This contention
is bolstered by the fact that prostitution, according to the article,
occurs in the gray market, neither illegal nor regulated. The court
wasn't buying the "guests" line, as these particular "guests" worked
a regular schedule and received a portion of drink revenues -- rather
like employees.

Labels: Europe, prostitution

 
College Kids These Days
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:49 PM

If you think that today's collegiate youth are more drug obsessed than they
were a few years ago, well, you're right. Or at least that is one moral that
can be taken from "Trends in Marijuana and Other Illicit Drug Use Among
College Students: Results from 4 Harvard School of Public Health College
Alcohol Study Surveys: 1993-2001," by M. Kuo, JE Lee, and H. Wechsler.
The abstract is available at the very useful College Alcohol Study
website maintained by the Harvard School of Public Health. Here's a
snippet from the abstract: "The results indicate that the percent of past
30-day, past-year, and lifetime marijuana users increased significantly
between 1993 and 2001 (from 13% to 17%, 23% to 30%, and 41% to 47%,
respectively), with most of the increase occurring between 1993 and 1997.
The past 30-day and past-year use of other illicit drugs also increased from
4% to 7% and from 11% to 14%, respectively."

Labels: marijuana, recreational drug use, teens

 
Singapore Defends Itself Against Amnesty International Charges
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:24 PM

Yesterday Vice Squad noted Amnesty International's report on executions in Singapore, the majority of which are carried out for drug-crime convictions. (Vice Squad failed to link to the actual AI report, however, an oversight that is remedied here.) Friend of Vice Squad Pak Shun Ng brings our attention to this article in Straits Times Interactive (registration required), noting that the Singapore government is defending its actions. A government spokesperson denied that the justice system in Singapore is shrouded in secrecy, and more generally, suggested that safeguards for defendants met international norms. Further, the spokesperson is quoted in the linked article pointing to the benefits of the Singaporean policy: 'Most Singaporeans know that our tough but fair system of criminal justice makes Singapore one of the safest places in the world to live and to work in.'

Singapore is not the only country that executes drug traffickers. Indeed, other Asian nations are said to be increasing their use of the death penalty. China leads the world in the absolute number of executions; from the Taipei Times: "In one particular death frenzy, Amnesty said at least 150 accused drug criminals were executed across China in June, 2002 to mark the UN' International Drugs Day."

Labels: Asia, China, drugs, Singapore

 
Recent Drug War Stuff on the Web
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:39 PM

A couple days ago I updated the potential Venezuelan drug decriminalization story thanks to a link to this week's Drug War Chronicle. The same issue contains a few other stories that are worthy of mention:

(1) The country with the highest rate of executions (in per capita terms) is Singapore. The majority of those executed have been convicted of drug offenses. Singapore hangs people who are caught with quantities of drugs that are sufficient to generate a legal presumption that the possessors are traffickers, though the amounts that trigger that presumption are not huge. Amnesty International has issued a report critical of the workings of the Singapore justice system. (Incidentally, Saudi Arabia is second in per capita (bad terminology in this case) executions.)

(2) The chewing of coca leaves is traditional in parts of South America. Bolivia allows limited amounts of coca to be grown legally to provide a supply for this traditional practice. Now the legal coca farmers are attempting to have those "limited amounts" increased.

(3) Salvia, "a Mexican herb with weird psychedelic properties," is apparently popular at a US Air Force base in Oklahoma. The herb is not illegal in the US, it seems -- funny that the expectation is that a psychoactive plant is illegal! The Air Force base is unhappy, though, and is now threatening to punish military personnel who use salvia. The linked article from Drug War Chronicle provides the Air Force's definition of a drug: 'any intoxicating substance, other than alcohol, that is inhaled, injected, consumed or introduced into the body in any manner for purposes of altering mood or function.' You mean they let folks in the military drink?

Drug WarRant points to a few excellent stories, too. First, there's this LA Times article (registration required) on industrial hemp. Here's a sample: "Among the world's major industrial democracies, only the United States still forbids hemp farming. If an American farmer were to fill a field with this drugless crop, the government would consider him a felon. For selling his harvest he would be guilty of trafficking and would face a fine of as much as $4 million and a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Provided, of course, it is his first offense."

Two other stories that Drug WarRant highlights are drawn from Left Flank Shooters. One is an update on the safe injection site for intravenous drug addicts that was opened in Vancouver in September; a second is an academic paper that looks at the relationship between drug law enforcement and crime using data from counties in New York state. (An exaggerated version of the bottom line would be, More Drug War, More Crime.)

Labels: Asia, coca, drugs, hemp, salvia, Singapore

 
Testing Accused Prostitutes for STDs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:52 PM

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution today links to a
2000 story out of Singapore, concerning deporting
foreign women with HIV. There is a long history
of essentially scapegoating women, particularly
foreigners and prostitutes, for the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As the
Marginal Revolution post concerns foreigners with
HIV, Vice Squad will focus on prostitutes.

The notion that sellers should face stricter regulations
than buyers in vice transactions isn't per se nutty, by any
means, in that the typical seller is involved in a
much higher volume of trades than the typical buyer.
And in vices from gambling to drugs to prostitution,
enforcement efforts are regularly focused on sellers.
(Here's an earlier Vice Squad post on this issue.)

But scapegoating is another matter entirely, and
many of the mandatory testing regulations seem
aimed more at humiliation than at public health.
Recently, a Ukrainian woman accused of prostitution
in Turkey tested positive for HIV. She was then
marched, weeping, in front of television cameras, while
the police encouraged her former customers to get
tested. Then she was deported. The police were
relying on a ruling -- it had been rescinded, but they
didn't know that -- that required public exposure for
HIV-positive foreigners arrested for prostitution.
(Apparently you can't contract HIV from a fellow
countryperson). Here's a Chicago Tribune article
(registration required) about the incident. The article
quotes one local as saying that the town is
conservative and that prostitute women are not
welcome there. Perhaps he should have checked
with the men involved in the more than 1300 sexual
encounters in which the woman was alleged to
have engaged during the previous three months.

Surely such treatment would never happen in America,
no? Well, maybe not, but an article concerning that
over-the-top prostitution sting in Maricopa County,
Arizona, in November claimed that Arizona state law
requires STD testing of those who are accused (not
convicted!) of being prostitutes. Here's the original
Vice Squad post on the Maricopa County incident,
with the article link and a quotation concerning the
presumed state law.

In the late 1860s, Britain was finding that some of
its naval ships were unfit for service because so
many of the crew were disabled by STDs. How did they
respond? They passed the Contagious Diseases Acts that
made it possible for the police to arrest and test
women who happened to be in the wrong neighborhood
or were otherwise believed to be prostitutes. Funny,
isn't it, how punishments for vice crimes have a way
of avoiding that messy due-process-of-law tradition
that requires conviction for a crime before punishment
is meted out?

Vice Squad hero John Stuart Mill, author of (among
other things) The Subjection of Women and On
Liberty, asked to testify before a Royal Commission
formed to look into the Acts. Mill was magnificent,
if years before his time. He basically took an
economic approach. He suggested that men who
frequented prostitutes understood the risks, as
did the prostitutes themselves. Like other
contracts among adults, these exchanges did not
require government intervention. The public interest
was twofold. First, some of the customers might
pass along their diseases to their unsuspecting
wives -- an externality, if you will. So rather than
scapegoat the prostitutes, Mill suggested that those
who passed on the diseases to innocent victims
should be punished. The second public issue was
the fitness of Her Majesty's seamen. Here, Mill
testified in favor of the direct approach, testing the
seamen themselves and punishing those who allowed
themselves to become unfit for duty in this manner.

For the story on Mill and the Contagious Diseases
Acts, see The Life of John Stuart Mill, by
Michael St. John Packe, New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Labels: Arizona, Asia, Mill, prostitution, shaming, Singapore

 
Correction on Venezuela
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:25 PM

Looks as if my sarcasm-drenched post yesterday on Venezuela's drug decriminalization was premature. The Drug War Chronicle explains that it is not yet time to add Venezuela's name to the list of countries that have destroyed themselves via decriminalization.

Labels: drugs, policing, recreational drug use

 
Circumventing Liquor Regulations
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:12 PM

The front page of today's Chicago Tribune brings us an article (registration required) on a controversy in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. A popular gay bar, Big Chicks, has been discovered to be in violation of a state law dating from 1934 that prohibits taverns from being within 100 feet of schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. Apparently, the bar has been in violation of the location restriction for the past 18 years, but it was only noticed (more or less accidentally) recently. The Big Chicks case has driven an attempt this week to amend the state law so that longstanding (but presumably unknowing) violators will not lose their liquor licenses. (Similar situations in the past have led to legal changes that avoided liquor license losses.) A change in state law alone would not automatically put Big Chicks in the clear, as the city of Chicago has the same 100-foot restriction, but the city has indicated that it would mirror any changes to the state law.

A similar controversy erupted a couple years ago over the hallowed Hyde Park (Vice Squad's home) institution of "Jimmy's." An avoidance technique worthy of Portia was found to circumvent the rigor of the law.

Mayor Daley has, by-and-large, been an advocate for fairly strict alcohol control in Chicago. While Vice Squad takes issue with some of the detailed policies, the notion that alcohol is underregulated in many parts of the US is one I subscribe to. (Not everywhere, however.)

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, an all-night gay nightclub had to choose either to remain open until dawn or to have a liquor license. It chose.....

Labels: alcohol, Chicago

 
Vanity Fair and New York Smoking Update
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:15 PM

After mentioning the current issue (February 2004) of Vanity Fair yesterday, Vice Squad felt compelled to break a longstanding tradition by actually purchasing a copy. As reported, there are two articles that touch upon the smoking ban: the "Editor's Letter" by Graydon Carter and "I Fought the Law" by contrarian Christopher Hitchens. What most caught my attention (no, not the Gwyneth picture on the cover -- though it did bring back happy memories of our times together when she was filming Proof on Vice Squad's campus--) was Carter's claim that the New York police have "been given such broadly drawn powers by the mayor that they can enter offices or small businesses in search of an offending ashtray without permission or without notice." Carter should know, as he has received three tickets for keeping an ashtray in his office. I know that I have complained about inroads into Fourth Amendment protections, but surely a mayor does not formally possess the authority to delegate such powers?! -- please tell me I am correct about this!

Policing criminalized vices (at one time, after all, referred to as victimless crimes) almost necessitates questionable police tactics, and the suspect use of informants. Carter says: "The smoking laws have turned New York into a city of stoolies and enforcers."

The Hitchens article recounts a few injustices in the enforcement of various quality-of-life rules, including the smoking ordinance. One Vietnamese restaurant owner received two citations because customers were smoking outside his restaurant. But isn't that what the smoking ban was meant to encourage, you might ask? Well, yes, but you can't smoke under an awning, either. Were they smoking under an awning? Well, yes and no. There was an awning in the vicinity, but it was not open. This restaurant owner received two citations (he beat the second rap in court) for customers smoking under a closed awning. As Hitchens puts it: "Thus, a hardworking Vietnamese was penalized for, in effect, having an awning in the first place."

Crimlaw has more on how the Fourth Amendment is dying a death of one thousand cuts.

Labels: policing, search, smoking ban

 
Venezuela Decriminalizes Drugs [Well, Not Exactly -- See Correction]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:23 PM

According to this story in Big, Left, Outside, possession of smallish quantities of drugs will no longer serve to get users arrested in Venezuela. (Thanks to Drug WarRant for the pointer.) So Venezuela joins the ranks of those benighted lands that have chosen to destroy themselves by refusing to lock up their citizens who walk around with a little bit of some illicit substance in their pocket. Remember how those other countries that previously decriminalized drugs were almost immediately destroyed? One-time countries such as, hmmm, I can almost remember their names, um, Peru, Uruguay, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal...

Major correction, January 16, 2003: Uh, not yet!

Labels: drugs, policing, recreational drug use

 
Civil Disobedience in Bloomberg's NYC?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:38 PM

Friend of Vice Squad Will Pyle informs us of two articles in the latest Vanity Fair (disclaimer: Will saw the magazine at the dentist's office) attacking the New York City smoking ban. Christopher Hitchens spent some time in the Big Apple attempting to break as many minor laws as he could; smoking in bars was one expedient to which he resorted, it seems. The other article is the letter from the editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter. A story in the New York Daily News provides a sample:

"Under current New York City law, it is acceptable to have a loaded handgun in your place of work," Carter fumes in his editor's letter, "but not an empty ashtray."

Labels: New York, smoking ban

 
Obscenity Cases Around the World
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:36 PM

Obscenity cases from all over have hit the airwaves in the last couple of days. Vice Squad primo research assistant Ryan Monarch brings our attention to a guilty verdict against a Japanese publisher of rather explicit "manga" cartoons. The verdict, to be appealed, is the first Japanese obscenity conviction of a comic book publisher. According to the linked article, 45% of the books and periodicals sold in Japan are manga.

Middle America brings us a couple of obscenity cases. In Indianapolis, a woman was driving her boyfriend's car. (The transmission in her car is broken.) On the side of the boyfriend's car is a painting in questionable taste: it depicts two female dancers and two male customers at a strip club, with one of the strippers nude (except for high heels) and the second wearing lingerie. The woman motorist was stopped by police in front of her house. She was driving on a suspended license, though apparently she was stopped because of the painting. She was taken to jail, and now faces two obscenity-related counts in addition to the driving with a suspended license charge. The boyfriend had been driving the car since May with no trouble from the police. The woman and her boyfriend believe that the stop was undertaken in retaliation for a complaint that she recently lodged against the police.

Hamilton County, Ohio, the jurisdiction that brought you the Larry Flynt prosecution, is at it again. This week they convicted the owner of an adult video store for selling an obscene videotape to an undercover sheriff's detective. The lawyer for the defendant noted that the store was actually in the Cincinnati police district, and that Cincinnati police went by the store every day for years and paid it no mind. Not so the Hamilton County Sheriff, who clearly takes seriously his duty to protect his constituents from vile pornography -- OK, except for that they get delivered right to their homes, via cable or satellite or....

[One bonus middle America story, also thanks to Ryan Monarch. Michigan introduced a new state law on January 1 that would require magazines that are "harmful to minors" to be kept away from kids, either by being covered up or by being placed in restricted areas of bookstores. A federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law has now been filed by a group of publishers, distributors, and booksellers. Here's one story from the Associated Press, and one with a slightly different take from Family News in Focus. The comic book industry, an opponent of these types of laws in the past (and, as the Japan case shows, a likely target of enforcement,) is again taking part in the legal fracas.]

And in Brazil, an American commercial pilot made an impolite gesture when he had his picture taken, as all Americans entering Brazil must do (that is, have their pictures taken, not make an impolite gesture.) He was arrested and is charged with disobeying authority. No word if our nation's Attorney General, John Comstock Ashcroft, has responded by introducing a new federal crime of disobeying authority into the draft for an updated Patriot Act.

Labels: obscenity, policing, teens

 
Don't The Voters Always Fall for that Fake Drunk Driving Charge?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:56 PM

One of the mixed blessings of living in Chicago is keeping abreast of the goings-on in the near-suburban town of Cicero. Once home to Al Capone, Cicero continues to try to live up to that heritage. Today's Trib reports that the town has settled a lawsuit, only costing Cicero taxpayers some $400,000. (This figure cannot be substantiated, as the terms of the settlement are confidential.)

The lawsuit was filed by a fellow who was running for town President a few years ago. He alleged that the then-Superintendent of the Cicero police, accompanied by 5 other Cicero officers, staked him out when he hosted a Christmas party at a Chicago (not a Cicero) restaurant. They followed the candidate back to Cicero, goes the allegation, and then called an officer in Cicero with a heads-up. Less than three blocks inside the town border, the candidate was pulled over and charged with, among other things, driving under the influence. Prosecutors dropped the case two months later.

The arrested candidate thinks that the (allegedly false) arrest was concocted by his opponent, the sitting President. She won the election, but now she is sitting elsewhere, in federal custody, having been found guilty of other misdeeds that cost the town a bundle; indeed, $400,000 is a relative drop in the bucket: "The Town Board approved the settlement Tuesday night with no discussion."

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, driving, policing

 
Bubble in the Stripper Pole Market?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:13 PM

Carol Marin's column (registration required) in today's Chicago Tribune concerns, um, teenage girls and stripper poles. It's all the rage, you see, for young women to dance (and presumably strip) with the help of this prop. And not only young women, as this November article in the Washington Post makes clear -- strip dance classes are not unusual in exercise clubs these days, it seems. Here's an excerpt from the Post story:

"The television cartoon "Stripperella" features a superhero exotic dancer. Borrowing from the shock jock principle that nudity makes great radio, the Sports Junkies keep a pole in their WHFS-FM studio. In New York, a group called Cake is devoted to women's sexuality and has encouraged its members to strip for each other. And the national gym chain Crunch promotes the idea of stripping as good exercise by offering cardio striptease classes in six cities."

But really, just how common is this activity, especially among young girls? If Marin's sample is representative, it might not yet be time to proclaim the end of Western civilization (though I am not confident): "... I have yet to find a preteen or teenage girl who owns one or has tried one. Maybe it's not as huge a trend as the trend spotters think."

Prurient addendum: What do you do if you find that your stripper pole is not sufficiently long? Capitalism to the rescue!

Labels: dancing, teens

 
The Supreme Court and Social Science Research
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:44 PM

Since note #11 in Brown v. Board of Education, social science research occasionally finds its way into a Supreme Court opinion. In Lawrence v. Texas (the sodomy case), research indicating that laws aimed at specifically homosexual conduct were not of ancient origin was referenced in the opinion of the court. Vice Squad's grand-boss's work on academic freedom was cited in a dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens (note #4) in the June, 2003 library filters case. And in yesterday's roadblock opinion, the majority opinion cited a November, 2003 article in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention (see page 6 of Justice Breyer's opinion). They are up to date at the Supreme Court!

Yesterday's cited article* concerns reasons why sobriety checkpoints are not used more frequently in the US -- previous research shows that well-publicized checkpoints effectively deter drunk driving. Properly-conducted sobriety checkpoints have been held to be consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, so federal law is not a barrier. According to the article, thirteen states conduct no sobriety checkpoints, however, in most cases because they would violate state law. But many states are unenthusiastic about checkpoints, even though they (1) are legal and (2) appear to be effective at deterring drunk driving. The article seeks to find the reasons for the lack of enthusiasm. This excerpt from the concluding paragraph of the "Discussion" section summarizes the findings:

"In summary, states with and without frequent checkpoints are distinguished by motivational factors and by their approaches to using financial and manpower resources. In the frequent-use states, the motivation for checkpoints comes from a combination of support by task forces, citizen activist groups, police officials who understand the power of checkpoints as a deterrence strategy, and the public. In these states, police resources generally are used efficiently, and various sources of funding are tapped. In states with infrequent checkpoints, available funds often are not sought and too many police officers are used at checkpoints."

The article was cited in yesterday's opinion to defang the potential criticism that roadblocks might unreasonably proliferate if they were found to be constitutional.

So, social science research is cited by the Supreme Court -- but does it actually sway the Court, or is the research just thrown into opinions that are determined on other grounds? Vice Squad thinks that the direct effect of social science research on Court opinions is almost non-existent. Nevertheless, the indirect effect, particularly of a large body of research, might be important. Such a mass of research puts new ideas into the air, and justices breathe the same air as the rest of us (avoid geriatric/Court-based humor here). So, to paraphrase Lord Keynes, it may be that the nine madmen and madwomen in authority are actually distilling their frenzy from the academic scribblings of cloistered social scientists.

*"Why are sobriety checkpoints not widely adopted as an enforcement strategy in the United States?," by James C. Fell, Susan A. Ferguson, Allan F. Williams, and Michele Fields, Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 35, Issue 6, Pages 825-1004 (November 2003). I couldn't get a link to work.

Labels: alcohol, driving, Supreme Court

 
Supreme Court Upholds Unusual Roadblock
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:19 PM

The US Supreme Court declared today (13-page decision in PDF format here) that a police checkpoint of motorists aimed at gathering information of a specific crime (committed on the same stretch of highway almost exactly one week earlier) did not violate the unreasonable search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg in partial dissent.

The case arose because a motorist stopped at the checkpoint was arrested for and found guilty of drunk driving. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a state appellate court ruling that the stop was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decision today overturns the Illinois Supreme Court ruling.

The basis for the state Supreme Court ruling was the earlier Supreme Court decision in Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000). In that case, police roadblocks designed to detect drug trafficking, in the absence of any individualized suspicion, were ruled to infringe Fourth Amendment rights. The Supreme Court today was unanimous in determining that the Edmond decision was not controlling in the Illinois case. Among other reasons, today's case was distinguished because the purpose of the Illinois roadblocks was simply to gather information about a previous crime, not to uncover crimes committed by the stopped motorists. The majority went on to determine that the Illinois checkpoint was reasonable, in that the public concern was substantial and the checkpoint considerably advanced this concern, without being overly broad, and while being only a minimal infringement upon liberty. (The Supremes seem to have more amiable encounters with police than the rest of us do.) The dissenters argued that the case should have been returned to Illinois for the state courts to determine (at least, at first) whether the roadblock was reasonable.

Vice Squad (in his days as a Crescat guest) noted the oral arguments in this case last November. The issue fell into what is becoming an old chestnut for Vice Squad, the threat to Fourth Amendment rights posed by the asymmetry of cases: almost all the relevant cases (including this one) are brought by factually-guilty criminals. A finding that the stop was unconstitutional would be tantamount to letting such a person go free. While some searches are found to be unconstitutional, it would not be surprising for justices to stretch a point (perhaps subconsciously) when faced with the alternatives of either a finding of constitutionality, or freeing a factually-guilty party.

Thanks to Will Baude at Crescat Sententia for the pointer.

Update, January 14: This post at Crimlaw makes an impassioned dissent from the Supreme Court decision.

Labels: alcohol, search, Supreme Court

 
US Tobacco Settlement Under Siege
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:45 PM

The 1998 settlement between tobacco manufacturers and state attorneys general is under attack as being anti-competitive. Of course, the settlement is anti-competitive. It essentially imposes higher taxes on existing manufacturers. The higher prices that result potentially would have created an enhanced incentive for new producers (not subject to the settlement taxes) to enter the market and to gain market share. To prevent this foreseeable development, the settlement commits the states to impose taxes on non-settling firms that gain a significant market share.

One importer has sued in Federal court, and now its suit has an opportunity to move ahead. Overlawyered and the Volokh Conspiracy have more.

Incidentally, the hegemony of the Big Four tobacco manufacturers is already under serious post-settlement attack from competitors. Here's a paragraph from a January 5 report from a North Carolina-based news station: "In four years, the market share of the small cigarette companies has multiplied more than tenfold, from 0.5 percent of cigarettes sold in the United States in 1998 to 6.5 percent in 2002, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. The group said the numbers for 2003 will be more startling."

Labels: Master Settlement Agreement, tobacco

 
Canadian Tobacco Lawsuits
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:12 PM

As they inch towards decriminalizing marijuana, our neighbors to
the north are also having a go at Big Tobacco. In Ontario, court
proceedings are underway to determine if a lawsuit, now nine
years old, can move forward as a class action. The claim is that
three tobacco companies conspired to withhold from consumers
information about the addictiveness and adverse health effects
of cigarettes. If the case achieves class-action status, the
potential liability would be enormous for Rothmans Benson &
Hedges, Imperial Tobacco Canada, and JTI MacDonald.

JTI MacDonald faces another problem over in Quebec, where the
provincial government is looking to collect up to $1 billion (Canadian)
in back taxes from the Toronto tobacco manufacturer. The government
is particularly interested in the years 1990-94, when smuggling was
widespread. (The linked article says, "During that period, it has been
estimated that as much as 60 per cent of cigarettes smoked here
[Quebec] were from black market sources," but Vice Squad has heard
other estimates of 75 per cent.) During this time, Canada had imposed
very high excise taxes on domestic cigarette manufacturing and
imports. Exported cigarettes were exempt from the tax, however,
so an apparently common ruse was to export the cigarettes and then
surreptitiously re-import them, avoiding the high duties. The black
market brought the usual social costs of gangs and violence, until
the Canadian government reduced the incentive to evade by cutting
the cigarette tax. While legal vices can usually sustain quite high taxes,
there are limits: when the taxes become sufficiently high, the sort of
outcomes usually associated with a prohibition are reproduced under
a legal regime.

Labels: Canada, litigation, taxes, tobacco

 
Christiania Threatened (Again)
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:41 AM

In 1971 a land invasion took place in Copenhagen, Denmark:
hippies occupied an area in town containing buildings that
once served as military barracks. They never left, and established
their Chrisitiania as a "Free State," one that refused to pay taxes
or otherwise bend to the Danish crown or the European Union.

Over time, Christiania's relationship to Copenhagen became
regularized but far from normalized. Residents pay for water and
electricity but still remain off the tax roles. Vice Squad's interest in
Christiania lies in the fact that marijuana and hashish use and
sales are permitted, one might even say encouraged, in Christiania.
This, too, flies in the face of Danish law, of course. At one time
hard drug sales and legions of junkies descended upon Christiania,
but in the early 1980s the community adopted a "no hard drugs"
position. When Vice Squad spent 10 minutes in Christiania a few
weeks ago (at night, in the rain, and in the mud (the streets
aren't paved and there are no cars)), the only posted rule was on
a sign proclaiming, in English, "No Hard Drugs".

Christiania has a long history of battles with the state, and now
it is facing a new one. Last Sunday the hash sellers on "Pusher '
Street" burned down their own stalls, to pre-empt further police
action against them. Nevertheless, as soft drug sales and use are
still tolerated by the folks within Christiania, they may not have
seen the end of the Danish police. Drug War Chronicle has the
full story. Christiania maintains a website that includes
some historical background: "The Tale of Christiania".
Vice Squad can't help to admire the spirit of the Christiania residents,
and like John Stuart Mill, thinks that we have much to gain by
encouraging experiments in living. (But he probably would not
be pleased if squatters set up in his own quarters for an experiment
in living.)

Labels: Christiania, Denmark, drugs, marijuana, Mill

 
David Courtwright's Forces of Habit
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:48 PM

Recently Vice Squad read Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making
of the Modern World, by historian David T. Courtwright. The book deals
with how alcohol, tobacco, caffeine (tea and coffee in particular),
chocolate, opiates, cocaine, and cannabis grew into global commodities,
as well as how some other psychoactive drugs (qat, betel nuts, kava)
failed to make the transition from indigenous area to global use. Forces
of Habit is well researched and fluidly written, and Vice Squad
learned quite a bit from it.

There are all sorts of insights from Forces of Habit that I could pass
along, but I will just provide a small, near random sample. Drugs tend
to start as medicines (at least when they spread internationally), and
only later does recreational use (and correspondingly, controversy)
become widespread. This pattern holds for distilled alcohol, tobacco,
cocaine, morphine -- and sugar! Courtwright notes that
sugar has the same habituating qualities as psychoactive drugs, and he
illustrates how the spread of many drugs has been eased by their
combination with sugar. (This has been true for what Courtwright terms
the "Big Three": alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. His "Little Three" are
opium, cocaine, and cannabis.) Taxes have played a major role in spreading
the use of psychoactive substances; in particular, lowered taxes leading to
lowered prices has often led to a surge in a drug's popularity.

Coffee, tea, chocolate, and tobacco owe their popularity in part
to the fact that they cohere well with the capitalist order -- the use
of these drugs does not present any immediate threat to productivity,
unlike alcohol. Drugs are also used to make a life of dull or arduous
labor more endurable; sometimes workers (even slave laborers) have been
paid in part in drugs of one form or another, including alcohol, opium,
and cannabis. Drug consumption and military service have historically
been closely connected, and military personnel have played a role in
spreading drug habits.

Courtwright's main argument about why some drugs spread and why drug
policies have changed so substantially over the years is that these
developments largely depend on interest of the social elites.
From the mid 16th to the end of the 19th Century, the main interest
of the elites was to raise revenue by taxing drugs, and perhaps to
quiet labor by seeing to it that workers had access to drugs. (States
become addicted to drug tax revenue -- and are subject to relapse --
in a manner not dissimilar to addicts' dependence upon drugs.) The
movement from taxation to prohibition in the late 19th Century in
part occurred because industrial processes and a mechanized military
made some forms of drug use -- alcohol in particular -- too costly.
At the same time, the therapeutic value of most recreational drugs
declined, because of improved substitutes and better overall health.
The health costs of drugs also became better established.

Courtwright notes the oft-perceived mismatch between restrictiveness
of control and social costs of a drug. Alcohol brings big problems
but is widely available; peyote is relatively safe but suppressed.
Tobacco's addictiveness and health costs are both very significant.

With regard to current drug policy, Courtwright treads lightly, and
plays his cards pretty close to the vest. He certainly doesn't
endorse calls for legalization, which he associates with "a form
of reactionary libertarianism...[p. 201]" (Vice Squad, incidentally,
believes that there should be legal channels of supply for adults
to all of the currently illicit drugs, though those channels might
be hard to access and be governed by all sorts of regulations,
including quantity restrictions and possibly user licensing and advance
purchase requirements. Vice Squad is not a libertarian, but does
favor this type of drug legalization.) Courtwright also notes that
"legalization would reset the policy clock by more than a hundred
years [p. 201]", but making these drugs illegal (e.g., cannabis
in the US in 1937) reset the policy clock by centuries, so I don't
see that as much of an argument for avoiding legalization. Courtwright
identifies middle class parents as bulwarks of drug prohibition:
they fear cannabis and other drug use by their kids, and see tough
enforcement as protecting their family, with the costs borne by others
who in part they see as deserving the harsh treatment. (Vice Squad
concurs with Courtwright's characterization, and would like to take
this point up in the not-too-distant future.)

Courtwright seems much more comfortable with harm reduction measures,
and rightly notes the significant role of the AIDS pandemic in pushing
the harm reduction agenda. He also seems comfortable with the position
of drug war "owls" (i.e., neither hawks nor doves) who believe in
types of convergence such that laws governing currently illicit drugs
be liberalized while stricter controls are put on alcohol and tobacco.
(By and large, Vice Squad supports stricter alcohol controls (though
in some areas this might just mean higher taxes.))

Well, this post has already become too long. I'll close by recommending
Forces of Habit to all of those interested in the historical
development of today's drug situation. It's a very valuable contribution.

I just found a review on-line from Jonathan Caulkins, a Rand-affiliated drug
policy expert. Haven't read it yet to see if he and I are in agreement, but
the loyal Vice Squad reader can judge for him or herself here. As
Forces of Habit was published in 2001 -- Vice Squad never claimed to be
up-to-the-minute -- no doubt there are many other reviews floating
about.

Labels: alcohol, cocaine, coffee, drugs, harm reduction, opium, taxes, tobacco

 
Alcohol in South Dakota
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:44 PM

Vice Squad's loyal reader keeps asking, "Hey, where are the South Dakota alcohol stories?" From that prodding comes these two quick links on potential changes to alcohol policy in parts of the Mount Rushmore State. First, the Oglala Sioux Tribe is thinking of legalizing purchase and sale of alcohol on the Pine Ridge reservation; second, for the thirteenth straight year, Pennington County in South Dakota wants the state to impose (and earmark for county use) a 5 cents alcohol excise tax increase. Currently, the county receives no alcohol tax revenues, though it runs serious expenses in locking up under-the-influence offenders. The linked report notes: "Commissioners say at any given time alcohol use and abuse accounts for about 80-percent of the Pennington County Jail population."

Labels: alcohol, Native Americans, South Dakota, taxes

 
Pure (or Adulterated) Heroin Deaths in Chicago
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:33 PM

Today's Chicago Tribune (registration required) brings us a brief notice that three Chicago residents have died, and a fourth is hospitalized, apparently as a result of using adulterated heroin. Actually, the Trib speculates that the deaths are overdoses, but I suspect that it was toxic adulterants, and not the dose of heroin per se, that did this damage. In any case, as there is no reason to believe that the damage was intentional, these deaths, too, alas, must be laid at the doorstep of our policy of prohibition. Update, January 10: According to a follow-up in today's Trib, the police are more certain that these deaths are overdoses due to a supply of unusually pure heroin, so my suspicion that the drugs were adulterated was probably wrong. (I changed the title for this post accordingly.) Two men were arrested in connection with this batch of heroin, though there is no precise claim (at least in the Trib story) that one of them sold the drugs to the victims. (One of the arrestees was charged with selling, the other, with possession.) The heroin addict world is not a pretty place; do you know what happens when word of overdose deaths hits the streets? It produces a surge in demand for the responsible product, on the grounds that it must be particularly potent stuff.

Labels: heroin, policing, Prohibition

 
Neighborhood Destroyed By War on Drugs...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:26 PM

...and not in the usual way either, where prohibition confers a comparative advantage on poor neighborhoods to host open-air drug markets. No, this neighborhood's demise comes from a sting operation, in which police set up an informant in a home in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, so they could videotape his purchases of drugs from folks who came by. It's always pleasant when the police encourage drug transactions on your street, no? Alas, it appears that the informant was actually selling drugs, not buying them, but, well, sometimes things don't go according to plan. At least the informant was well-compensated, with money from the same federal program that brought us the Tulia, Texas fiasco/tragedy. Those with strong stomachs can read the details in this fine article from City Pages.com (Twin Cities, Minnesota). Thanks to TalkLeft for the pointer.

Labels: drugs, policing

 
Russia Does Not Believe in Reducing Harms
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:36 PM

Back in his halcyon early-November days as a guest blogger at Crescat Sententia, Vice Squad noted the negative reaction of members of the Moscow City Duma to US-sponsored harm-reduction measures that promoted the use of condoms to combat AIDS. The Moscow legislators thought that the condom information and distribution promoted prostitution along with condoms. Now it looks as if hostility towards harm reduction in Russia has taken another step forward, according to this RFE/RL report (scroll down to the third article for January 8) sent along by friend of Vice Squad Bridget Bukevich. This time, it is needle-exchange programs that have earned the ire of Russia policymakers, and it looks like participants in such programs who do not cease and desist could face jail. Here's a paragraph from the RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) report:

"Aleksandr Mikhailov, deputy chair of State Narcotics Control, sent a letter dated 19 November 2003 to the chiefs of his agency's territorial offices, expressing concern about various organizations "actively imposing on public opinion the idea of implementing so-called 'harm-reduction' programs," involving distribution of disposable needles for drug addicts to combat AIDS infection through the practice of sharing needles, asi.org.ru reported on 16 December 2003. "The leadership of State Narcotics Control views this idea as nothing other than the open propaganda of drugs," wrote Mikhailov. He added that passing out fresh syringes or cleansing packets would be construed legally as providing the means for the use of drugs under 1998 Supreme Court Resolution No. 9 on narcotics, banning "any deliberate actions aimed at causing another person to wish to use drugs (persuasion, offering, provision of advice, and so on)." Under other drug laws, only narcotics prescribed by a doctor may be legally used, and appliances such as syringes can be confiscated."

...and later in the same report: "With the official number of HIV cases registered at 235,000, and estimates ranging from 700,000-1.5 million, and diagnoses almost doubling annually since 1998 according to UNAIDS, there is an urgent need to try anything that might stem the infection, which unlike other parts of the world, mainly comes from drug injection." But, to repeat my uncharitable encapsulation from the previous Russian harm-reduction post, the authorities apparently believe that deterring the use of drugs is so important that they must threaten drug injectors with the death penalty (via AIDS), even though that approach has not been very effective so far -- and those who disagree and attempt to distribute needles (or perhaps even to inform addicts of the importance of using clean needles and not sharing) must face prison for their impudence.

Labels: Crescat, harm reduction, HIV, Russia, sex

 
Back to Thailand
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:50 PM

Prostitution and drugs in Thailand have been touched on by Vice Squad in the past, and Thai underground gambling has nearly made the cut. Asia Times Online now has an article by David Fullbrook with a title sure to attract the interest of Vice Squad: "Thailand: The Economics of Vice."*

The article notes that Thailand is considering legalizing gambling, perhaps by way of a referendum, even though gambling is forbidden within Buddhism. Many Thais cross the border to gamble legally in Cambodia, and the Thai government has some interest in keeping their gaming at home and taxing it. Potential Thai casinos also hope to draw wagering visitors from other countries where gambling is banned, including India and China.

Legalized gambling will probably not eliminate the underground version, which is quite extensive in Thailand. Nevertheless, one of the difficulties of legalizing gambling, noted in the article, is that the illicit earnings of the police from illicit gambling dens might tumble. The police are also heavily implicated in protecting prostitution, which, like gambling, is both illegal and extensive in Thailand. Estimates of the number of sex workers in Thailand range above 100,000. The linked Asia Times Online article notes that Buddhism (as well as feminism) presents a barrier to the legalization of prostitution, too, in Thailand.

*A pedantic note on the article's sub-title, "The Economics of Vice." Vice Squad has used similar titles himself in the past, but in general, he objects to "The Economics Of...." usage. Economics, to paraphrase Lord Keynes, is not a doctrine, but a method of analysis. There can be many (and even conflicting) economic analyses of vice, but there is no economics of vice. (I did promise pedantry, no?)

Labels: Asia, gambling, policing, prostitution, Thailand

 
One-Sided Enforcement of Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:48 PM

In the last few months, Vice Squad has noted movements to liberalize anti-prostitution laws in Thailand, Las Vegas, New Zealand, the Czech Republic (sort of), and Great Britain. Vice Squad friend Pak Shun Ng brings our attention to this article in the Straits Times Interactive (Singapore), regarding a similar dynamic in Taiwan, where the decriminalization of prostitution is under consideration.

Currently in Taiwan prostitution is illegal, though it is not a crime to be a customer of a prostitute. An official with the interior ministry's women's welfare unit is quoted in the linked article: 'There is no justification as to why prostitutes are subject to legal punishment whereas patrons are excluded from it.'

Though I won't argue that such one-sided enforcement of anti-prostitution laws is optimal public policy, I think that one can come up with some potential rationales for this double-standard (beyond the patriarchy). First, for vice crimes in general, sellers tend to be subject to more severe punishments than buyers: drug laws in the US provide a case in point. And this might make sense, on the grounds that an individual seller plays a much larger role in a vice market than does an individual buyer, because there are many more buyers than sellers. But second, one-sided enforcement might be a way to make it harder to conduct vice transactions. When both parties are subject to criminal sanctions, the potential punishments set up a sort of mutual exchange of hostages. A buyer is unlikely to go to the police if the buyer will be punished, too. So, it may be easier for sellers to trust buyers when buying is also illegal, than it is when buying is unpunished. If the goal is to minimize vice exchanges, one-sided enforcement might be the way to go. (This argument is spelled out in J. Lott and R. D. Roberts, "Why Comply?: One-Sided Enforcement of Price Controls and Victimless Crime Laws," Journal of Legal Studies 18: 403-414, June 1989; on hostage exchange, see the wonderful "Contract Law and the State of Nature," by Anthony Kronman, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 1 (1): 5-32, 1985.) At any rate, one-sided enforcement of prostitution laws no doubt has been promoted by the fact that it has traditionally been the men who were making the laws. State prostitution controls in the US generally did not criminalize the behavior of buyers until the last 50 years or so, and in some states the penalties are less severe than they are for sellers.

Labels: Asia, prostitution, Taiwan

 
Gambling Debate in Hampton, Iowa
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:26 PM

Some 330 miles west of where I am sitting in Chicago lies the town of Hampton in Franklin County, Iowa. Monday night, Hampton was the site of a meeting about whether a casino should be opened in Franklin County. The evening was centered around a report presented by the president of the Iowa Gaming Association. The Gaming Association's website greets visitors with this message:

Providing Economic Development Through Entertainment

The gaming industry is one of the most successful and dynamic
sectors of the Iowa economy. With this success comes
responsibility. In addition to tax revenues generated by our
membership, every IGA facility is focused on community support
through a variety of municipal and social projects, including efforts
to promote responsible gaming.


The arguments presented by the president of the Iowa Gaming Association in support of a casino pretty much followed this script. One tidbit taken from the linked Hampton Chronicle article: "Gaming facilities [in Iowa] purchase nearly 1.5 million pounds of beef, over 1 million pounds of pork, 1.2 million pounds of poultry, 133,000 gallons of milk and 3.3 million eggs annually". In the ensuing discussion -- in which it sounds as if the president was rather beleaguered -- he noted that methamphetamine presented a bigger problem in Iowa than did gambling. That feint was none-too-successful, judging from the linked article. Eventually, he trotted out a version of the futility argument: gambling is going to take place in Iowa whether or not this new casino is approved. The linked news article provides a wonderful look at one community's struggle with legalized gambling.

Labels: casino, gambling, taxes

 
Britain Examines Prostitution Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:26 PM

Prostitution is legal in the UK, but street walking and other prostitution-related activities remain illegal. The current prostitution control regime is under review, however, with an eye towards loosening restrictions, and perhaps even setting up "zones of tolerance." Part of the reason for the review is that the current regime is perceived as putting prostitutes at increased risk for assault. (In September, 2003, a man with a history of mental instability was found guilty of killing three London prostitutes.) Once again, pressure to reform also comes from looking at vice control elsewhere; here's an excerpt from the linked BBC article:

"The head of Scotland Yard's homicide squad was quoted as telling a conference in Birmingham: 'There is a need now for an informed debate.

'We know that sex workers are vulnerable. I know that attacks, violence, drugs and criminal control are lower in tolerance zones. We can learn from the Dutch.'"

Labels: harm reduction, Prohibition, prostitution

 
Two Updates
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:55 PM

When the students return on Wednesday to Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina, they will not be met (or frisked) by their former principal, George McCrackin. He is being reassigned (same salary and benefits) following his voluntary resignation. McCrackin, who is the only principal Stratford has had during its 20 years of existence, earned international attention (and Vice Squad disapproval) for instigating a police raid in November in which officers with drawn weapons and dogs searched students for drugs. Access to the Charleston Post and Courier story requires free registration. Incidentally, Vice Squad has no idea if Principal McCrackin was or was not a fine principal; the claim here has always been only that the decision to approach the presumed drug problem with the heavy-handed raid showed very poor judgment.

Another over-the-top piece of vice law enforcement was undertaken by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Arpaio in November. Sheriff Arpaio conducted a large number of anti-prostitution stings, raids that seemed designed to garner publicity. (For instance, the media was invited along for some of the raids, and the suspects were taken to the parking lot of a mall to be booked.) Arpaio is now defending his decision to permit his detectives to disrobe when they were setting up the alleged prostitutes; apparently, he also approved some touching. (Sure beats rousting drunks.) And don't think these raids have claimed their final victims: "Arpaio said the prostitution investigation isn't complete, and customers who weren't picked up in the first round of arrests can expect to be contacted soon." It just gets better and better in Maricopa County.

Oops, make that three updates on stories that broke in November. In another piece of first-rate vice law enforcement, police set up a mock bachelor party at a strip club in Fremont, Nebraska, and arrested two dancers on prostitution charges. One of the arrestees was found not guilty, but a second was convicted. The convicted dancer has now been sentenced to six months of probation and, interestingly, "was ordered to find employment where alcohol would not be served." Prostitution and alcohol have a long history of complementarity. The same article that reports the sentencing of the dancer also lists sentences in many other court cases, the majority of them involving vice. One that catches Vice Squad's attention is that a 20-year old "was sentenced to serve 10 days in jail for minor in possession of alcohol. His driver's license also was impounded for 30 days. [He] was fined $50 for zero tolerance." Wow, ten days in jail for being 20 years old and having some alcohol in your possession. That's two days more than another fellow in the same report, who: "was sentenced to eight days time served on two driving while under suspension charges. His driver's license was suspended for one year. He was fined $100 on the driving while under suspension charges. [He] also was fined $50 for no proof of insurance."

Labels: dancing, drugs, policing, prostitution, search, teens

 
College Aid and Drug Convictions
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:45 PM

Vice Squad friend Pak Shun Ng brings our attention to this front-page story (registration required) in today's Chicago Tribune concerning the attempt to amend the Higher Education Act to expunge or dilute the provisions denying federal aid money to students with convictions for drug-law violations: "On average, about 47,000 of the 10.5 million federal aid applicants lose their eligibility every year, according to the American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for the nation's higher education institutions." The provisions could influence many other students, though, by deterring them from applying in the first place -- there's one such case discussed in the article. Affected students can regain their eligibility by waiting (one year for a first possession conviction, two years for a second) or by completing an approved "treatment" program. (Whether they need treatment is not a consideration.) As far as I can tell, alcohol or tobacco offenses are not included, nor are violent crimes: possessing a joint makes you ineligible for a Federal loan or grant, but aggravated assault or drunk driving doesn't? (I will try to look into this, but if I am wrong, please let me know.)

Two possible amendments are under consideration. One (presumably less likely) is that the drug conviction section will be eliminated. More likely is that the section will be amended to ensure that only convictions that occur while receiving the funds will count; i.e. prior offenses will have no bearing on the aid decision. According to the article, such was the intention of the provision's original author, anyway.

Yes, we care so much about our youth that we want to keep them from the evils of drugs. We have 18 years to explain to them that taking drugs is wrong (well, except for caffeine and, when you are 18, nicotine, and when you are 21, alcohol, and when a doctor tells you you could benefit from antidepressants, and...) If a youth somehow fails to get this message then we look to fine and imprison him or her -- you see, we care about our youth -- and then to augment that insufficient deterrent by taking away a subsidy that we have chosen to provide to all the otherwise eligible youths, including the assaulters and the drunk drivers. Incidentally, how is it possible that these drug offenders could have enough wits about them to be admitted to an institution of higher learning?

The article notes that: "Some institutions--including Yale University, Western Washington University, Hampshire College in Massachusetts and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania--are so opposed to the policy that they will reimburse students who have lost aid because of it." Not mentioned is the John W. Perry Fund, set up by the Drug Reform Coordination Network Foundation and others, that also provides assistance to some of those who are affected by the anti-drug provision in the Higher Education Act. Recipients are entitled to use the Perry funds for treatment if they wish, but they are encouraged to do so only if they actually need treatment.

Labels: drugs, teens, treatment

 
Addicted to Nicorettes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:03 PM

Yesterday's New York Times includes an article (registration required) about the writer Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors; Dry: A Memoir). (Yes, Vice Squad now admits to actually paging through the "Sunday Styles" section.) Burroughs had a heavy drinking problem, his tackling of which (with a shove from his then-employer) forms the basis for Dry: A Memoir (so far unread by Vice Squad). Like many heavy drinkers, Burroughs also was addicted to cigarettes. When he decided to quit smoking, he tried using a nicotine patch, but quickly gave up on that. Unlike cigarettes, nicotine patches deliver nicotine continuously, rather than on demand, and many humans enjoy the "spikes." So Mr. Burroughs was a natural candidate for Nicorette, a chewing gum containing nicotine. A box of 168 pieces of Nicorette, according to the article, costs $53, and Burroughs goes through three boxes a week. Though Nicorette is designed for short-term use aimed at smoking cessation, Burroughs has been taking it habitually for 5 years -- and apparently he is not alone. Is this unhealthy? "Studies have yet to demonstrate serious adverse effects to chewing the gum longer than indicated..." (With rules on public smoking tightening up, the demand for Nicorette could get a boost.) The author of the article, David Colman, concludes with some words that might be good advice for many addicts:

"So when it comes to giving up your old bad habits, it's best not to aim for perfection. Just make room for some new not-so-bad habits.

It's what they call progress."

Colman also notes that current wisdom suggests that the best way of improving your chances of successfully quitting smoking is to combine an antidepressant with a source of nicotine replacement and counseling.

Labels: addiction, alcohol, harm reduction, tobacco, treatment

 
Uncivil Disobedience of NYC's Smoking Ban
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:39 PM

Today's New York Times reveals (registration required) that many bars in NYC are ignoring the smoking ban when the conditions are right. Those conditions seem to have something to do with the time of night and the composition of the crowd. In one case, there is a British pub-style "lock in," where the door is locked and the crowd inside lights up -- a sort of informal transition from public house to private party. In other cases, the transition occurs without any attempt to preclude entry. Apparently winter also helps to bring about the right environment, in that the alternative of stepping outside for a smoke is less attractive in cold weather.

Vice Squad friend Will Pyle informs us of last Sunday's smoking-ban article in the Times, in which an unanticipated consequence was revealed: bartenders were cleaning off drinks from patrons whom were thought to have left, but in reality had only stepped outside for a smoke. (The bars then replace the drink gratis, cutting into profits.) Today's article notes that NYC smokers have adopted the Southern California custom: place a napkin over your drink when you leave your seat for a smoke break.

Labels: New York, smoking ban

 
Alcohol Harm Reduction?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:15 PM

Ever-vigilant Vice Squad friend Dima Masterov brings us this word on a pill (officially, a dietary supplement) that seems to serve as a hangover preventative. Marketed under the name RU-21 (get it?), the pill is taken (perhaps multiple times) during an evening's drinking, and is claimed by some to remove the usual next-day ill effects. There's a legend tying the invention of the pill to the old Soviet KGB.

The author of the linked article attempts a controlled self-experiment, and proclaims that the pill worked as advertised for him. But his final take is far from an unqualified endorsement: "Over the course of my highly unscientific experiment, RU-21 had indeed made an impressive showing. I marvelled at the possibility of a world without hangovers, a world in which pleasure need not be counterbalanced by pain. After some consideration, however, the idea struck me as hollow. I hate hangovers as much as the next man, but as crazy as this may sound, they may be a necessary evil, the thing that keeps consumption reasonable and, by extension, fun. Maybe the smart thing would be to learn to regard throbbing heads and churning stomachs, once our mortal enemies, as our friends..."

Economists like to distinguish between "internal" and "external" costs of drug use. Internal costs are those that accrue to those who are deciding about drug consumption; external costs are those costs that one's drug use imposes upon others. In the case of alcohol, the major external costs are injuries and deaths to others from drunk driving, and violence. If RU-21 works as advertised, it presumably lowers the internal costs of getting drunk (and hence, as the author speculates, should raise consumption), without reducing most forms of the external costs. So the author's concerns about the pill leading to more immoderate (and hence, as he writes, less fun) drinking might even be magnified when the external effects are considered.

How does this rather negative assessment jibe with Vice Squad's often enthusiastic endorsement of harm reduction measures? In the case of heroin addiction, the main harm reduction strategies are needle exchange and methadone (or heroin) maintenance. Much of the rationale behind these measures is to reduce the incidence of communicable diseases, chiefly AIDS and hepatitis C. But reducing the probability that a drug user will become infected with such a disease has not only a large "internal" benefit, but an external benefit, as having fewer "infecteds" helps to slow the spread of the diseases to others. Further, maintenance can help reduce the petty crimes that addicts frequently engage in to hustle their way to their next hit. So in general, I believe the case for these types of harm reduction is stronger than for RU-21. Nonetheless, I don't favor a ban on this supplement, or anything of the sort. But we might have to direct more resources into severing (or reducing) the link between drinking and violence and drinking and driving if RU-21 works as advertised. (Incidentally, this post should not be taken as an endorsement of RU-21 -- indeed I would be wary of any relatively untested substance that has profound physical effects. Who knows what the long-term consequences of RU-21 use are? More generally, Vice Squad concerns public policy, and is not intended (nor should be used) to alter the private vice policy of the loyal Vice Squad reader.)

Labels: alcohol, externalities, harm reduction