Cigarette Sales Plummet in Italy?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:35 PM

A public smoking ban went into effect in Italy in mid-January. Less than a month later, cigarette sales in Italy are claimed to have fallen by 19 percent, but in the absence of any tax increases or other complementary measures, that decline seems almost unbelievably steep. Time will tell, I suppose.

Labels: Italy, smoking ban

 
Italy Joins the Public Smoking Ban Parade
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:00 PM

And why not? All the cool countries -- Ireland, Norway -- are doing it.

The Italian ban went into effect on Monday. The politico who prepared the law defended it by appealing to majority sentiment. One suspects that the opponents will not find his arguments, as quoted in this Reuters story, all that compelling:

"Those who want to smoke can do it in the street or at home but not right next to people who can't stand it and who cannot tolerate being poisoned," said the author of the new law, Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia.

"The majority of the population is tired of being poisoned by the smoke in the air where they work or where they play ... the majority, three quarters of Italians, is with us."

Soon to join the parade are the countries(?) of Scotland and Quebec.

Labels: Italy, smoking ban

 
Please Close the Lavatory Door, But Don't Break the Lock
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:07 PM

That's the word from an Italian judge about how to avoid public obscenity charges. Oh, the problem wasn't that anyone was using the bar's lavatory in the standard way; rather, it seems as if a couple thought that the loo would offer a little more privacy than the barroom itself for, um, their intimacies. (At least I don't think that's the standard use for a restroom, but I have never been to Como.) Bar patrons in Italy, upon seeing serious public displays of affection, have taken to shouting, "Hey, get a bathroom." (OK, I made up that last part.)

Labels: Italy, obscenity, sex

 
Drug War Chronicle Highlights
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:45 PM

Drug War Chronicle, a newsletter produced at Stop the Drug War.org (now linked
on the Vice Squad sidebar) is chock-full of interesting items this week. I'll mention
four of them here:

(1) A driver was stopped on Interstate 95 in Georgia in 2001 for a traffic
violation. After being told that he would receive only a warning ticket, he
was asked to consent to a search. The motorist refused. The officer then
quickly called for a drug-sniffing dog to join the party -- a common tactic
that is employed against those few motorists who actually exercise their
right to refuse to a consent search. About twelve minutes later, the dog
arrived and "alerted" to the trunk of the motorist's car. A search ensued,
in which some marijuana and more than 10,000 ecstasy pills were found.

Now a federal appeals court has ruled that the search violated the Fourth
Amendment. The opinion (pdf version here) is based primarily on the
belief of the court that reasonable suspicion for the dog sniff did not exist
prior to the motorist's refusal to consent to a search. That is, the dog
sniff appeared to be brought on not by other reasonable suspicion, but
rather by the exercise of the Constitutional right not to consent to a
warrantless search. So this opinion, it seems, does not make dog sniffs
unconstitutional in the Eleventh district; rather, it requires that there be
reasonable suspicion prior to such a sniff, and that refusal to consent to
a search cannot itself provide the reasonable suspicion.

Vice Squad earlier wrote about a state of Illinois case that similarly mandated
reasonable suspicion for dog sniffs.

(2) Italy appears to be on the brink of a significant rollback of it drug
decriminalization by instituting administrative penalties for those
found in possession of small quantities of currently illegal drugs. This is
not the first about-face for Italian drug policy: a 1975 decriminalization
(actually, depenalization) was reversed in 1990, and then reinstated in
1993. (This is a microcosm of vice policy generally, and not just in Italy --
recurring, significant swings seemingly unrelated to new scientific
evidence. ) Vice Squad noted the potential for the Italian rollback a few
months ago, here.

(3) Argentina appears to be headed in the opposite direction,
considering a bill that would decriminalize drugs (not just pot) for
personal use. According to the Drug War Chronicle story, "If the bill is
enacted, Argentina would join Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay as Latin
American countries that have decriminalized, or in Colombia's case,
legalized drug use and possession." But the decriminalization adoption
in Argentina seems to be much less of a sure thing than the Italian
repenalization. [Furthermore, I believe that the claim that drug
possession has been legalized in Colombia is false.]

(4) Meanwhile, Bhutan is going the drug prohibitionists one better, by
banning the sale of tobacco products. Many US states banned
cigarette sales in the early part of the 20th century; for that matter,
Uzbekistan has banned billiards. The urge to prohibit other people's
vices appears to be one of the enduring, unifying themes of mankind.

Labels: dogs, drugs, Italy, policing, Prohibition, search, tobacco

 
Italy Rethinks Drug Depenalization
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:32 PM

It is hard to be satisfied with any regulatory regime towards potentially addictive drugs.
Italy decriminalized drugs (even hard drugs) for personal use in 1975, and then re-criminalized
them in 1990; come 1993, decriminalization for personal use was reinstated. (MacCoun and
Reuter's book, Drug War Heresies, pp. 230-6, provides a good description and analysis of
the Italian experience. They more accurately refer to the Italian approach not as
decriminalization but rather as "depenalization." Apparently a similar regime is in effect in Spain.)
Now, according to a brief article on page 6 of today's Chicago Tribune (which I could
not find in the electronic version), the Italians are rethinking the decriminalization.
The current situation means that drug users need not fear prison, though substantial
penalties still remain for sellers and traffickers. As a result, according to Deputy Prime
Minister Gianfranco Fini, "Today it is virtually impossible for law enforcement to distinguish
between personal use and trafficking."

It sounds as if the Deputy Prime Minister would be OK with decriminalization for adult users
if it didn't undermine enforcement of rules against trafficking and selling. He practices, to borrow
a phrase from MacCoun, Reuter, and Schelling, "reluctant denial." (The more typical rationale
forwarded for reluctantly denying a drug to adults is that failure to do so might make the drug
too available to children.) The more general issue is, what regulatory distinctions are stable and
enforceable? Can a drug widely available to adults be made unavailable to adolescents?
The cases of alcohol and tobacco in the US give one reason to pause, though it may be that
there hasn't been all that much effort put into enforcing the barrier against distribution of
these drugs to kids -- only in recent years has the ban on kids purchasing cigarettes been
given much attention. (When I was in first grade, my friends were often sent to
the 7-11 by their parents to buy cigarettes.) But it isn't clear that adult prohibition offers
an improvement: despite the limited enforcement of underage alcohol rules, surveys indicate
that marijuana is more widely available to many American high schoolers than alcohol.


The phrase "reluctant denial" is from Robert MacCoun, Peter Reuter, and Thomas Schelling, "Assessing Alternative Drug Control
Regimes." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 15(3): 330-352, 1996.

Labels: drugs, Europe, Italy