Bingo and Smoking; Bingo or Alcohol
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:11 PM

Vice Squad has been trumpeting the smoking-ban induced decline in bingo for so long now that it is amazing there is any bingo left. But there is, and today the New York Times catches up to bingo/smoking ban complemetarity: "[Managers of charity bingo parlours] say smoking goes with bingo like peanut butter with jelly."

For the vice policy aficionado, however, this week's premier bingo-related story derives from Carlisle in the UK. Remember those ASBOs of questionable constitutionality (British constitutionality, that is)? One 23-year old gentleman had a history of being a troublesome drunk, so he was given an ASBO prohibiting him both from drinking and from patronising drinking establishments in Carlisle city centre. (Incidentally, the idea that a troublesome drunk can have his drinking privileges revoked is consistent both with Vice Squad's robustness principle and with John Stuart Mill's interpretation of his harm principle.) But this particular yob, er, gentleman, also enjoys a bingo hall in Carlisle. Alas, the bingo parlour is a drinking establishment (no longer a smoking establishment in England!), so the terms of his ASBO would keep him from bingo-ing. This will not stand, cried the Cumbrian magistrates, and voila, an exception was granted: he can go to the bingo hall, but he cannot drink there. (Vice Squad is touched by this act of mercy.) If the exception is abused via bingo-hall drinking or other unseemly behavior, there will be consequences to pay -- perhaps a curse will be imposed.

Vice Squad has been on the road, or at home, nodding; apologies for the interregnum.

Labels: alcohol, bingo, Britain, complementarities, licensing, Mill, robustness, smoking ban

 
Nudge
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:49 PM

Vice Squad was in the audience this evening when Cass Sunstein spoke about his new book with Richard Thaler, Nudge. Sunstein and Thaler are the impresarios behind Libertarian Paternalism, an approach towards public (and private) policy that is fairly congruent, in the case of vice, with the Robustness Principle. ("Nudge" is a less off-putting synonym for Libertarian Paternalism: the authors also considered "One-Click Paternalism," the idea that you could override a default setting pushing you in a presumably desirable direction with one click of your mouse.) Nevertheless, Nudge does not address policy towards illegal drugs, though it looks as if alcohol, smoking, and gambling receive some attention; I am relying upon the index here.

Sunstein provided a bit of a road map about how he and Thaler were led to collaborate on Libertarian Paternalism and then Nudge. By the late 1990s, behavioral economics (with Thaler in the vanguard) had established fairly convincingly some common shortfalls from rationality, including over-optimism and a rather general disability in dealing with risky situations. Two types of interventions seemed to offer some hope for better results: (1) changing default options to those presumably desirable settings, as many people would just stick with the defaults, even when it was almost costless to choose differently; and (2) allowing people to precommit to putting some of their future raises into savings (Thaler is a co-inventor of "Save More Tomorrow" plans, of which I am a beneficiary). Since then, the idea that "Choice Architecture," the setting in which choices are made, is a powerful determinant of the choices that actually are made, has taken on equal prominence in Nudge. (Shades of "Drug, Set, and Setting.") Sunstein talked about the desirability of "Give More Tomorrow" plans that would allow people to precommit part of their future raises to charity. He also suggested that those of us (the vast majority of the audience) who had not bothered to sign up for automatic bill-paying options were mistaken and paying more (via late fees) while enduring higher transaction costs, too -- we were being overly influenced by the inertia that he also attributed to his continued paid subscriptions to five magazines that he originally received on a temporary, no-charge basis. In the question and answer period -- the architecture was such (involving a walk to a centrally placed microphone) that I did not trouble him with any queries -- Professor Sunstein mentioned the difference between thin and thick concepts of consent. A miner (to use Professor Sunstein's example) can be said to give thin consent to the risk of working underground by taking the job. Thick consent requires more, the notion that adequate information should be absorbed as well -- with the fact that a job was accepted without force or fraud being insufficient to establish thick consent. I am a fan of measures to assure thick consent for legal participation in some vices.

Professor Sunstein currently is guest-blogging about Libertarian Paternalism at the Volokh Conspiracy; his initial contribution is here. [Update: Nudge has its own blog!]

Labels: robustness

 
Regulating Vice: Chapter 3 (part 2), "The Robustness Principle"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:10 PM

Recall that surprise bestseller Regulating Vice calls for the robustness principle to govern vice policy. Policies are robust if they work pretty well independently of the extent to which vice participants are rational. That is, the policies should be serviceable if everyone is completely rational in their vice-related choices, and they should work pretty well even if lots of folks are wacky. From Chapter 3 (footnote omitted):


The main rationale for the robustness principle lies in ignorance. We can’t easily judge when a habit becomes an addiction or when rational consumption involves dynamic inconsistency or shades into compulsion. Therefore we want to avoid a regulatory regime that only makes sense if there is no such thing as vice rationality, or an alternative regime that only works well if everyone makes considered, sober judgments about his or her vice participation. What we tend to end up with when we avoid these extremes is vice controls that offer some assistance to those who are misinformed or struggling with self-control issues, as long as those controls do not impinge significantly upon those who are rationally vicious. In the realm of adult self-regarding vice, robust public policies can inform, entreat, and induce – but not compel.

Robustness is a sort of insurance against our own propensity to error. Policies that harshly punish private vice participation -- which in many manifestations has no obvious externalities -- would be inconsistent with robustness. But so might an unregulated market for highly addictive goods, because such a market would bring significant costs if myriad folks are addicted or diseased with respect to their consumption of the good.

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness

 
Regulating Vice: Chapter 3, "The Robustness Principle"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:38 PM

Enough time has elapsed since the, er, five-part summary of Chapter 2, for Vice Squad to move on to summarizing Chapter 3 in surprise bestseller Regulating Vice. Recall that we started by looking at John Stuart Mill's harm principle. Then we explored addiction, to see if there is any reason to alter the harm principle because of the addictiveness and self-control problems (or just plain shortfalls from rationality) associated with many vices. Chapter 3, "The Robustness Principle," argues that yes, Mill's approach -- which would rule out policies that have as their motivation the reduction of adult vice -- should be replaced by that pesky Robustness Principle, long foisted on the loyal Vice Squad reader. From Chapter 3:


Some adult vice-related consumption is harmful and (arguably) less than rational; further, we cannot easily distinguish rational from irrational choice with respect to vice. This leads us to the robustness principle.... Public policy towards potentially addictive activities should be robust with respect to departures from full rationality. Vice policy for adults should hold up pretty well if everyone is always well-informed and fully rational, and it should work well, too, even if some or many vice-related choices are irrational. We require this robustness precisely because we cannot ascertain how much vice is rational, nor distinguish the rational component from that which flows from a degradation of the reflecting faculties.

A robust vice policy will provide some support for those who are uninformed or struggling with self-control in their decision making. The provision of such support should not impose substantial costs upon those whose vice-related decisions are marked by rationality. One example of a policy that satisfies the robustness principle is a requirement for purchases of heroin, say, to be made with at least three days’ notice – where the notice would be revocable by the adult would-be purchaser at any time during the ensuing waiting period. Rational heroin consumers, and even rational addicts, can then assure themselves of a steady supply, but those struggling with self-control issues will not be able to immediately satisfy an unforeseen craving and can cancel an impulsive order when their decision-making faculties are controlled by their more considered selves.

I suspect some more Vice Squad discussion of the Robustness Principle in the days (weeks? decades?) ahead. [Update: Here's the brief follow-up post.]

For those keeping score at home, here's the Regulating Vice Posts Roundup:
(1) Announcement
(2) Introduction (part I)
(3) Introduction (part II)
(4) Introduction (part III)
(5) Erratum, Page 2!!
(6) Chapter 1, The Harm Principle (part I)
(7) Chapter 1, The Harm Principle (part II)
(8) GMU Talk (part I)
(9) GMU Talk (part II)
(10) Chapter 2, Addiction (part I)
(11) Chapter 2, Addiction (part II)
(12) Chapter 2, Addiction (part III)
(13) Chapter 2, Addiction (part IV)
(14) Chapter 2, Addiction (part V)

Labels: heroin, Mill, Regulating Vice, robustness

 
Designing Slot Machines for Harm Reduction
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:32 PM

The designers of slot machines are amazingly adept at prodding gamblers to have another spin. Are there any modifications that can be mandated for slot machines that would lower the harms that arise when gambling addicts interact with these machines, without appreciably diminishing the enjoyment of recreational gamblers? (Such mandates would be consistent with vice policy robustness.) Maybe. A November, 2005 article in International Gambling Studies reported on an Australian experiment which tweaked three features of slot machines, alone and in combination: (1) the maximum rate of play; (2) the maximum bet size; and (3) the maximum value of banknotes that could be read by the slot machine's banknote acceptor. (Previously it has been shown that allowing slot machines to accept banknotes directly (instead of coins or tokens or some such contrivance) is a good way to increase the amount that gamblers spend. Allowing smoking, too, seems to help.) As it turned out, most gamblers didn't even notice the different set-ups of the machines. (Each gambler played a control machine and a tweaked version.) Another finding was that problem gamblers -- after they played, the participants filled out a standard survey designed to uncover troubled gambling behaviours -- received less enjoyment from playing, relative to non-problem gamblers. Smaller bet limits combined with lower denominations for bill acceptors didn't appreciably reduce gambler satisfaction. There was a small decrease in enjoyment associated with playing slower machines. Nevertheless, there was no difference in players' reported interests in continuing to play the control or tweaked machines. In some settings, problem gamblers preferred lower maximum bets, even when recreational gamblers did not -- as if the problem gamblers are sophisticated about their control problems, and appreciate machine alterations that help them combat those problems or lower the harm from succumbing.

Labels: Australia, gambling, harm reduction, robustness, slot machine

 
EU Snus Ban Safe
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:03 PM

Last week an EU committee, the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, released a report (available here) on snus, a smokeless tobacco product popular in Sweden but not legally available for sale in the rest of the EU. The committee noted that snus carries some health risks, and that its apparent success in Sweden at lowering the harms from smoking is not necessarily reproducible in other countries. So the EU's snus ban -- from which Sweden negotiated an exception at the time it joined the EU -- appears to be safe for now. Swedish Match, a major snus producer, tries to put a brave face on the committee report, but it seems to be a setback to their interest in ending the ban.

One of the attractions of a principled approach to vice policy is that it sidesteps the sort of special pleading that seems to dog vice control. Vices that someone disapproves of see their harms emphasized and their benefits minimized, while an approved vice receives the opposite treatment. And for many folks, the special pleading takes an obvious form: their own vices should be legal, but those unfamiliar vices of troublesome others, well, those vices should be suppressed.

Labels: EU, robustness, snus, Sweden

 
WHO's Tobacco Message
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:39 PM

A couple weeks ago the World Health Organization issued a new report on the "Global Tobacco Epidemic" and what steps to implement to counter it. The toll that tobacco takes (and will continue to take in the future) on health is staggering, with more than 5 million tobacco-related deaths annually, supplemented by the threat that the tab will rise to more than 8 million by 2030. The cumulative impact over the course of the 21st century, according to the WHO, will be hundreds of millions of deaths, and (if that is not sufficient), the toll could be an attention-grabbing 1 billion tobacco-related deaths. (There are more than one billion smokers currently on planet earth.) Today, the New York Times picked up on the WHO report in a special Week in Review graphic, following an editorial earlier in the week calling for the US to submit the 2005 Tobacco Control Convention to the Senate for ratification.

The WHO offers six policies (read about them in this 19-page pdf) to try to stem the tobacco health cataclysm. My concern, of course, is that at least two of the WHO's suggested policies -- public smoking bans and high tobacco taxes -- do not meet standard Vice Squad precepts. (The higher taxes might be OK if the starting point is low.) Eventually, as I note in Chapter 3 of Regulating Vice, harm minimization (or health maximization) and vice policy robustness must always part company. Robustness accepts that there might be benefits available from vice consumption, but a strict harm minimization strategy ignores these putative benefits. There should be limits on how much an adult who chooses to smoke (or drink, or gamble, or sell/buy sex, or...) should be punished or inconvenienced, in the absence of harm to others.

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness, smoking ban, taxes, tobacco, WHO

 
Indoor v. Outdoor Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:17 PM

Today we covered prostitution policy in our Regulation of Vice class. The assigned readings were articles by Weitzer and by Murphy and Venkatesh. Both make a compelling case that indoor prostitution is much safer than outdoor sex work, and also less connected with public nuisance. It is my impression that the extent of violence directed at prostitutes, and its severity, is significantly greater for streetwalkers than for indoor sex workers. Today also brings news of a conviction in the trial of the man who was charged with the December, 2006 murders of five outdoor prostitutes in the Ipswich area in Britain. I recognize that legalization and regulation of indoor commercial sex work, and possibly even of some streetwalking, is no panacea, but the shortcomings have to be immense to counteract fully the almost assured fall in fatal violence directed at prostitutes that would accompany legalization. Incidentally, the convicted murderer had frequented massage parlours for 25 years, and as far as is known, without incident; he had been familiar to outdoor sex workers in Ipswich for about three years prior to the murders. A not-too-long paper (29 pages, double-spaced) presenting an overview of my thoughts concerning regulating pornography and prostitution is available here.

Labels: Britain, prostitution, robustness

 
A Smoking License
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:37 PM

There are a couple features of current tobacco regulation that do not satisfy Vice Squad's approach to vice regulation, the notion that rules should work well if everyone is completely rational with respect to their vice-related decisions -- and the rules should work well, too, if lots of folks are addicted or irrational or exhibit self-control shortcomings when dealing with vice. In particular, cigarette taxes in "western" countries (along with, in the US, the Master Tobacco Settlement effective surcharge) are too high (too punitive for rational smokers), and those public smoking bans are too broad (besides creating problems for Vice Squad fetish Bingo). But the idea that a bar or restaurant, or an individual smoker, might have to pay a small amount to acquire a license for smoking privileges -- well, that warms our self-exclusion heart. And no doubt as a Valentine's Day present to Vice Squad, Britain is considering instituting a licensing system in which would-be cigarette smokers would first have to purchase a tobacco-buyer's license, at a fee of 10 pounds for one year. They also want to make the license application form unwieldy to fill out, it seems, but that can go too far; perhaps better would be an easy form, but a three-day waiting period between when you submit the form and when you pick up your license -- with the possibility of cancelling for a full refund at any time during those three days.

Incidentally, between taxes and the exchange rate, cigarettes are too expensive for Americans in the UK.

Labels: Britain, licensing, Master Settlement Agreement, robustness, tobacco

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: casino, Illinois, robustness, smoking ban

 
Self-Exclusion
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:46 PM

Just a few days ago I called for the US military to set up a self-exclusion system for the slot machines that it operates on some of its foreign bases. (No word back yet -- apparently they have higher priorities.) But this whole self-exclusion thing is really catching on. Check out the fine article (available from this page after free registration) in the current Milken Institute Review. The author notes -- oh, wait, I am the author. I note that self-exclusion systems typically combine two features, physical unavailability and reward diminution. In the case of casinos, the physical unavailability is supposed to come about when the casino bouncers prevent you from entering their fine establishment, or even have you charged with trespassing (as happens in some jurisdictions) when you try to evade your voluntarily chosen personal ban. Reward diminution occurs when you find, once you have managed to slip past security, that you will not be allowed to collect large jackpots. I don't think that self-exclusion systems currently work all that well in US casinos -- the system is better in the Netherlands -- but I think the general notion of self-exclusion holds significant potential. In particular, I think that when the currently illegal drugs are legalized, some sort of self-exclusion system -- perhaps licenses for drug users, and a chosen purchase limit -- will (and generally should) be part of the mix.

The Milken Institute Review article starts off with a delightful anecdote (by golly, it is delightful) about famed poet and opium addict Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who tried (unsuccessfully) to set up his own self-exclusion system by hiring goons to bar his entrance into pharmacies. (At the time in the UK, opium was legally available without a prescription.) When Coleridge really wanted opium, however, he would fire his agents on the spot, leaving them befuddled as to whether to obey the previous or the current Coleridge.

It is embarrassing when you make an error on the second page of a long publication. How about the second word? Somehow in the relating of this delightful anecdote, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was rendered, in large font, as Samuel Tyler Coleridge. Sigh. [Update: the wonderful folks at the Milken Institute Review corrected the typo, without bidding!]

Vice Squad has spoken about self-exclusion occasionally in the past, and hopes to speak more in the future -- assuming physical inaccessibility and reward diminution do not kick in.

Labels: Britain, gambling, licensing, Netherlands, opium, robustness, self-exclusion

 
More on the Swedish Approach to Prostitution Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:14 PM

In Sweden, sales of sex are decriminalised, while the (mostly male) purchasers are behaving illegally. This approach, which does not comport with standard Vice Squad precepts, has been receiving substantial attention in Britain. (The "opposite" approach of criminalising sales of sex while giving a de facto pass to the johns also fails to pass through the Vice Squad filter.) A recent Guardian article opens with a story about a purported john ("torsk" is the Swedish term) who is contacted 8 months after his alleged assignation, and eventually fined about $2,400.

Street prostitution seems to be well down in Sweden since the 1999 adoption of the new rules. But street prostitution seems to be declining in many places, in part because of the rise of the internet. Trafficking of sex workers into Sweden from abroad, according to the article, has increased in recent years, though perhaps not by as great an extent as in some nearby countries.

Last week the Guardian's Sunday sister publication, the Observer, contained an op-ed arguing against the Swedish approach. Some letters in rebuttal -- including one from the MP who is sponsoring British legislation that moves prostitution control in the direction of the Swedish model -- appear in this week's Observer.

Labels: Britain, prostitution, robustness, Sweden

 
Robust to What?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:45 PM

One of the participants in the George Mason workshop yesterday asked why I focused on policies that are robust to the amount of rationality or self-control shortcomings among vice participants, when there are many other dimensions along which we might want robustness. For instance, we might want regulations that are robust to potential capture attempts by the regulated, or are robust to government empire-building. Once again, I did not have much in the way of ready response. Now, I think, I would mention that these other sorts of robustness, which may well be important, apply to essentially all areas of regulation. Self-control problems are central to the "traditional vices" -- a phrase itself that rightly came under some scrutiny -- and so it makes sense to reflect this centrality in thinking about desirable vice policies. One and one-third of the standard three and one-third vice concerns are addiction and "internalities," and these are largely missing from most other policy areas, such as antitrust or environmental policy. The robustness principle is aimed directly at these one and one-third concerns.

What I did mention is that while I am confident that attention to "robustness to rationality shortfalls" is essential to desirable vice policies, I often find myself less certain about the importance of some of the other purported problems. For instance, some people argue against a special sin tax on alcohol because once you start taxing alcohol in an exceptional manner, you will pave the way for higher and higher taxes and eventually serve a neo-prohibitionist agenda. But other people worry about a nearly opposite problem, that any special regulations will be undermined by moneyed alcohol interests. Which way do these political economy arguments cut, that sin taxes tend to rise, or to fall?

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness

 
Regulating Vice at George Mason
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:46 PM

Thanks to Pete Boettke, I was able to give a talk (or participate in a discussion, rather -- the majority of my talk outline was skipped entirely) at George Mason University today, in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics workshop. My negligible sleep Monday night was poorly compensated for by lots of caffeine, but I managed to learn a lot and to enjoy the experience (which might make me unique among today's workshop participants). I'd say the most recurrent issue with my general approach to vice was a concern that my embrace of regulations might lead to all sorts of matters being declared to be vices, whereupon government would generate tons of new, counterproductive controls. [I am tempted to make a bad historical pun by saying that George Mason was constitutionally opposed to my approach to vice.]

My general response to the potential overinclusiveness of the definition of vice was along the lines of, "Maybe, but the robustness principle ensures that the costs of taking the notion of vice too far will not be very high. Further, even without the robustness principle, your favorite activity could be declared to be a vice, and then it might even be banned." (Ask the folks who enjoy alcohol inhalers, or marijuana.) [I should mention, though, that one friend in the audience reported that after an hour and a half, he still didn't really understand this robustness principle, so I must have been pretty incoherent -- maybe I shouldn't have skipped most of the outline?]

There was more at GMU, of course, and perhaps I will blog again as I process it. But one point that I find interesting is how different audiences respond in such varied ways to the robustness principle. Non-academics (or perhaps non-economists) focus on the fact that I would allow legal (though regulated) markets for heroin and adult prostitution; economists typically don't bat an eye at the legal heroin, but are concerned that my approach might be used to tax fatty or sugary foods. There's something to be said for perturbing everyone, no?

George Mason, of course, is (among other things) ground zero for econoblogs, and Pete's workshop has a very nice vibe.

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness

 
Regulating Vice: The Introduction (part III)
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:15 PM

After wading through Zero Tolerance versus Harm Reduction approaches to vice policy, the Introduction sashays towards a conclusion with two sections, one (provocatively?) entitled "Futility?" and the other "Toward a Thesis." (The original title of the final section was "Towards a Thesis" but my towards were deemed untoward by the copy editor.) "Futility?" points out that it is not uncommon to hear people make claims of complete vice policy ineffectiveness, along the lines of "Prohibition can't work, because market forces are too strong for mankind's meager regulations." As you might guess (and as the loyal Vice Squad reader knows), "Futility?" argues that this sort of claim generally is overstated. As for "Toward a Thesis," this section will not be news to the Vice Squad reader, either. In it, I foreground what becomes the organizing structure of my approach to vice policy, and to Regulating Vice. I...

...suggest that a type of “robustness principle” should govern the regulation of vice: public policy toward [sic!] addictive or vicious activities engaged in by adults should be robust with respect to departures from full rationality. That is, policies should work pretty well if everyone is fully informed and completely rational, and policies should work pretty well even if a substantial number of folks are occasionally (or frequently) irrational in their vice-related choices. “Working well” entails coming to grips with the 3⅓ standard vice concerns of kids, addicts, externalities, and harms to nonaddicted adult users.

(The word "nonaddicted" started out as non-addicted, but the copy editing involved some extreme hyphen cleansing along with the towards-shortening.)

I get the sense that these sort of lengthy summaries of Regulating Vice have found an unfortunate middle ground between a bare-bones recitation of the argument and an engaging presentation keeping with the spirit of the book. As is standard in the vice world, I have every intention of reforming.

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness

 
Legal Sales of Magic Mushrooms Threatened in the Netherlands
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:44 PM

Tourists have been coming to Amsterdam, ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, and ending up in the hospital, with some frequency. The national government is considering a prohibition on sales, but the mayor of Amsterdam is being more creative. He has proposed a three-day waiting period between the time you order the mushrooms and when you can pick them up. This would put a barrier in the way of mushroom overconsumption by the (often British) weekend tourists, while maintaining fungi availability to the sensible Dutch. The Times has the story.

Labels: mushrooms, Netherlands, robustness

 
Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:33 AM

The (imminent?) release of a new book, Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada, by controversial anti-prostitution scholar Melissa Farley, has occasioned lots of high-profile commentary. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert seems to wholeheartedly endorse the Farley approach, seeing coercion throughout the sex industry. An intemperate but effective rejoinder is provided by Mark Kernes of Adult Video News.com. Farley, who supports the Swedish approach of making the purchase but not the sale of sex illegal, can be viewed talking about her new book in a video (available here) from a Las Vegas tv news program. The Guardian provides an article that is quite informative, focusing on Farley's characterization of the legal brothels in Nevada.

I support some forms of legal prostitution, and I do not endorse the Swedish model. I believe that it is important to separate coercive from non-coercive prostitution in terms of appropriate public policy (as well as separating adult from underage prostitution), while recognizing that coercion resides along a continuum. Nevertheless, some of the issues raised by Farley do not simply disappear through legalization -- they require active policy responses. First, I think that she is right in pointing out that legalization of some forms of prostitution in itself is not effective at undermining illegal or informal prostitution. (This is unlike the situation with alcohol, for instance, in the US, where the legal market, despite specific taxation, comes close to wiping out the illegal market.) Second, the conditions under which legal prostitution takes place, such as the sort of extra-legal constraints on the movement of prostitutes that are applied as informal conditions of licensing, need to be addressed. Third, drug, alcohol, and financial counseling, as well as ongoing efforts to ensure that coercion is not being applied, should be part of a robust regulatory regime. Fourth, protections for the privacy of licensed prostitutes are required, in part to ease exit from the sex industry, and in part to provide incentives for choosing the formal market over the much more dangerous informal alternative.

I hope to return to this topic soon -- a promise or a threat?

Labels: Nevada, prostitution, robustness, Sweden

 
Anti-Anti-Tobacco
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:56 PM

Slate's William Saletan argues that in some dimensions the war against smoking and tobacco has gotten out of hand. (OK, maybe that isn't quite strong enough. The article is entitled "Kicking Butt: The International Jihad Against Tobacco.") One of Saletan's leading examples is Vice Squad obsession snus:

The latest target is snus, a tobacco product that delivers nicotine without smoke. Despite studies showing it's far safer than cigarettes, most European countries allow smoking but prohibit snus. In the U.S., sponsors of legislation to regulate tobacco under the FDA are resisting amendments that would let companies tell consumers how much safer snus is. The president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids complains that snus will "increase the number of people who use tobacco," letting "the big companies win no matter what tobacco products people use." But the goal shouldn't be to stamp out tobacco or make companies lose. The goal should be to save lives.

Though Saletan and Vice Squad feel similarly about snus, I am not sure that adopting as a general goal that of saving lives is necessarily a good idea (though to argue against it, admittedly, makes one sound uncharitable or worse). There are lots of things that people enjoy that are a bit risky, and perhaps more lives could be saved (or prolonged, rather) by using coercion to curtail these activities. But the decision to pursue these risky activities might be perfectly reasonable; maybe some sort of compromise might be appropriate?

If you click over to the Slate article, check out the links on the left side to some previous Saletan articles that deal with non-tobacco vices, including coffee, sex, and fatty foods.

Labels: robustness, smoking, snus, tobacco

 
Reducing Alcohol Consumption via Inconvenience
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:13 AM

The licensing of vice sellers as a method to help enforce regulations and police externalities such as public nuisances passes muster with no less a fan of individual liberty than John Stuart Mill. Vice Squad might even go beyond Mill, and support seller licensing as a way to place a small barrier to vice availability. But the licensing restrictions upon carry-out alcohol in St. Georges, Utah, are beginning to put a substantial barrier in the way of alcohol acquisition.

The problem has worsened, according to this AP article, because of rapid population growth in the St. Georges area: there is one state liquor outlet for the town of 126,000 people. In Utah, wine, distilled alcohol, and any beer that contains more than 3.2 alcohol by weight can be sold only from a state-owned store.

Why don't they open more stores? Well, they are getting around to it, but state law doesn't require another store -- it only establishes the maximum number of stores across the state (one per 48,000 people), and doesn't concern itself with the intrastate liquor store distribution. Of course, you could drive for half an hour from St. Georges to Nevada to buy your booze, but according to the linked article, you could then face 6 months in prison when you cross back into Utah with your alcohol on board. (Recall the second section of the 21st Amendment: "The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.")

3.2 percent (by weight) or lower alcohol beer is more widely available in Utah. Few beers in the US, in their regular form, are this low in alcohol, but big brewers tend to manufacture 3.2 versions of their beers for sale in Utah and the other (three, according to this 2001 article) states that use the 3.2 figure for regulatory purposes. The 3.2 threshold is an artifact from the end of Prohibition. After FDR became president, he moved to amend the Volstead Act, the law which implemented the 18th Amendment's national alcohol prohibition. In April 1933, the Volstead Act was amended to permit 3.2 percent beer; before the end of the year, national prohibition was history. The state whose ratification put the 21st Amendment over the top, and hence ended Prohibition, was Utah.

Labels: alcohol, licensing, Mill, Prohibition, robustness

 
Norway to Follow Swedish Model on Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:28 PM

In Sweden, since 1999 it has not been illegal to sell sexual services, but it has been illegal to purchase them. This Swedish version of one-sided prostitution enforcement differs from that which often has been (and is) the norm, criminalising the behavior of prostitutes while giving a (de facto or de jure) pass to johns. Sweden's prostitution laws also differ from the more usual approach to criminalised vices of all sorts, where sellers are treated more harshly than buyers. During Prohibition in the United States, for instance, alcohol sales were illegal, but purchases were legal.

It now appears that Norway intends to follow its neighbor's example.

I do not support the Swedish approach, nor the standard US approach; rather, I believe that channels for legal and regulated adult prostitution should be available. (This is in keeping with my support for application of the "robustness principle" to all of the traditional vices; here's a paper that applies the principle to prostitution and pornography.) Over the centuries, anti-prostitution laws have suggested more than a hint of the demonisation of prostitutes; the Swedish approach (which defines prostitution as a form of male violence against women and children -- 4-page pdf available here) suggests different demons, but the demonisation continues. The robustness principle shields (some forms of) adult consensual prostitution from legal demonisation, though individuals can apply their own standards.

Incidentally, the Swedish approach, like just about all prostitution regulatory regimes, is rather controversial, of course. Here's a supportive view, and voices of opponents can be found here.

Labels: Norway, prostitution, robustness, Sweden