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

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

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

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

Labels: drugs, licensing, self-exclusion, solipsism

 
BDSM Phone Sex and Faculty, Grad Student Relations
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:10 PM

Via SWOP-East Vice Squad learns of some ongoing controversy at the University of New Mexico (while generating a much more sensational blog post title than is the Vice Squad norm). Most of our information comes from a series of three articles at Sex in the Public Square (Here are articles one, two, and three.) Seems that a (tenured) faculty member in English was also engaged in some phone sex work with a BDSM angle. The phone sex, of course, is completely legal. (Everyone involved in the story is an adult.) Photos were taken for advertising purposes, and in (at least?) one of the photos, the professor was shown with one of her female graduate students. That student was also working for the phone sex company. News of the photo leaked, some colleagues were outraged, the university investigated, and found that there was no reason to sanction the prof. Then the director of the creative writing program resigned the directorship in protest at the lack of university sanctions; the resignation did not extend to her faculty position, only to the directorship.

The second of the linked articles consists of an interview with the professor involved. (The third article features the voice of the grad student.) She makes a couple of points that cohere with my own personal experience. First, that unmarried faculty often are socially more connected with (mostly unmarried) graduate students than they are with their married faculty colleagues. ("...as an unmarried woman in a department of married people with families, I often find I have more in common with the graduate students than I do with my colleagues.") And second, that vice (or vice policy) work leads to increased recognition and tolerance for other people's "vices". ("I also learned to be even less judgmental than I had been before about other people’s sexual choices. So many callers had felt years of shame for their particular interests, and often it was a relief for them simply to be able to talk without being judged.")

Labels: sex, solipsism

 
In Which My Forgetfulness Plays a Role
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:48 PM

The loyal Vice Squad reader will recall that a mere two days ago, we posted about a memoir by a British prostitute. I had picked up a copy of the memoir at Heathrow, I think, in December. (I cannot resist those 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 or other book 'sales' at the airport -- even though with the current exchange rate, an American ends up paying $25 per paperback.) But it seems that I had picked up another copy of the same book on an earlier trip, and had managed to forget all about it. (I have a tendency to have a few bags of books lying about, unopened since purchase.) So I have in my possession an extra, unread copy of Confessions of a Working Girl, and would be happy to send it to a good home. If you are 18 or over and live in the US, and are the first person to e-mail me at vicesquad_at_gmail.com, I will send you the book. [Update -- the book has been claimed, and is en route to Charlottesville.]

Labels: Britain, prostitution, solipsism

 
More Reason to Legalise Khat?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:14 PM

I just realised that I somehow went through the day without a single cup of coffee. (Oh, there was some tea, and even half a can of Vanilla Coke, so I can't claim caffeine withdrawal.) This was unplanned. Perhaps I am subconsciously responding to higher coffee prices?:

Large coffee roasters including Folgers owner Procter & Gamble Co., and Kraft Foods Inc., which sells Maxwell House, said they are raising the price they charge supermarkets and mass retailers for their coffee by about 7%, or 20 cents for containers in the 11- to 13-ounce range. The price of instant coffee also is going up.

This was the second round of price increases this year. Just last month Procter & Gamble and Kraft added 15 cents to what they charged supermarkets for a typical can of ground coffee. Combined, the two increases raised Kraft's suggested retail price for Maxwell House by almost 10% to $3.94, and Southern California supermarkets often charge more than that.

At least the absence of coffee (and decline, though not to zero, of caffeine consumption) kept me from being as dehydrated as usual. What? That's a myth, too? "Most studies have found that in moderate amounts, caffeine has only mild diuretic effects -- much like water."

Incidentally, did you know that Snickers now is offering a version of its delicious treat that is specially caffeinated? It is called Snickers Charged; I might experiment by consuming only Snickers Charged bars for a week. (On a serious note, are we going to start seeing legal controls on sales of highly caffeinated products to children?)

Labels: caffeine, coffee, solipsism

 
Three Updates
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:53 PM

(1) Following up on this February 22 post.... the Missouri Senate has voted to ban those alcohol vaporizers that have been shown to cause untold -- oh wait, that is right, they haven't been shown to be problematic:

'That's just death waiting to happen if we don't ban these,' said Sen. Luann Ridgeway, R-Smithville, whose bill prohibiting the devices received initial Senate approval by voice vote.

Ridgeway said she hasn't heard of any problems in Missouri as a result of the machines and described her legislation as a preventive measure that would allow law officers to confiscate them.

Senator Ridgeway, I have my suspicions about Meat Lover's Pizza -- would you get to work on that, please? And at this time of year, especially, I think all of us need to know that the law stands ready to protect us from these.

(2) Today's Chicago Tribune's front page includes this story about the swell of states questioning the minimum drinking age of 21 -- no doubt the Trib is channeling Vice Squad's March 1 post. The online version includes this map showing state drinking ages before 1984. [Earlier in the week, the Trib apparently forgot that alcohol and nicotine are drugs: "... methamphetamine, the narcotic scourge that has wounded middle America as no drug ever before...."]

(3) Today's New York Times points to the attractiveness for some intellectuals of drugs like Adderall that might be performance-enhancing (recalling, of course, Vice Squad posts from February 23 and January 19). Time for a Congressional investigation!

Labels: alcohol, inhaler, solipsism, teens

 
Nicotini
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:24 PM

From Alcohol and Drugs History Society comes word of a Chicago Tribune article about a nicotine-infused alcoholic beverage -- the "nicotini" -- that one Chicago bartender has unveiled in response to the smoking ban. Vice Squad had noted a nicotini in Florida as early as November, 2004.

I mention Vice Squad's ahead-of-the-curviness on the nicotini to deflect justified criticism for recent blog neglect -- other duties, alas, have taken precedence. To further maintain the goodwill of the loyal Vice Squad reader, however, let me mention that a little while ago Vice Squad completed a long term project. Around the beginning of 2007 the Blogger software offered the possibility of applying "labels" to individual posts, and Vice Squad has been duly labelling subsequent "contributions". The problem was the stock of some 1100 prior Vice Squad posts that were unlabelled. After fourteen months of painstaking toil, I am happy to report that the backlog has been eliminated, and except for a possible handful of posts that were overlooked, the entire Vice Squad oeuvre has been catalogued. Time and date of the parade will be announced.

[Update: What labels are most popular? (1) alcohol; (2) drugs; (3) prostitution; (4) gambling; (5) Britain; (6) Prohibition; (7) policing; (8) teens; (9) tobacco; and (10) obscenity. What sort of blog is this, anyway?]

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, smoking ban, solipsism

 
The End of an Era
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:21 AM

OK, maybe not an era. More like a streak. Every day in 2008, Vice Squad had produced one (and precisely one) post for you, faithful reader. Until Monday, February 18, 2008. On that day, well, indolence reigned supreme. But...but..."this inconstancy is such/As you too shall adore". Maybe. Vice Squad was delayed, having met a visitor to Chicago who is here precisely to clarify the issues surrounding the taxation of alcohol and tobacco (here's a 26-page pdf). I wonder what he thinks about taxing cocaine? Not sure yet, but after our visitor presents his paper on Wednesday, perhaps I will have learned enough to say something.

Those who are concerned that taxing illicit drugs might somehow make them more legitimate might have a point, incidentally.

Labels: alcohol, solipsism, taxes, tobacco

 
Off Topic? -- Virtue
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:55 PM

Vice Squad was in the audience tonight when renown philosopher Jonathan Lear lectured (primarily to University of Chicago undergraduate students) about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I'll just note a sample of what he had to say, though I imagine that some mangling of the original will unintentionally slip in.

Spiders have no difficulty being spiders -- they go about their spidery business automatically, as it were. But we humans can't just go about our human business automatically. We must know what life is about before we can determine how we should live, before we can flourish in our humanity. This flourishing comes from a lifetime of acting virtuously.

Behaving in accordance with virtue gives us a principle to guide our actions, but not a detailed rule. Part of acquiring a specific virtue is understanding what that virtue requires no matter what life circumstances are thrown in our paths -- and it also requires that with that understanding comes motivation to undertake the virtuous act. For instance, consider the virtue of kindness. A kind person has to understand what kindness requires in a specific circumstance. Sometimes it is kind to help an elderly person board a bus -- but not every elderly person desires help, so a kind person must choose not to offer or provide help in some circumstances. Simply taking the appropriately kind actions is not enough, either, for virtue -- we must take those actions for the right reasons. Being habitually kind in order to avoid punishment is not virtuous. But being kind in order to live up to what is fine, what is noble, what is beautiful, is virtuous. Once a virtuous person sees that an action is shameful, he or she has no interest in taking that action, irrespective of other costs and benefits.

Towards the end Professor Lear began to draw upon his most recent book, one that concerns the Crow nation. (This part of the talk was the most fascinating for me; for some of the flavor, see this New York Times review of his book.) The Crows -- a nomadic, warrior, buffalo-hunting people -- saw their traditional way of life erased, and erased permanently, almost overnight. Think about those who most achieve the Aristotelean virtues within the Crow civilization. They have become habituated to behaving virtuously, but those virtues are specific to the Crow way of life. The virtuous Crows seem to be in the worst position to flourish in the new environment. Lear suggested that the Crows met the challenge by transforming their understanding of the virtue of courage. Before, courage was associated with warfare; in the nineteenth century, however, courage came to be associated with weathering the storm. Those who made the transformation achieved a higher Aristotelean virtue -- they were able to adjust their idea of virtue itself to the circumstances that life had thrown at them.

Labels: solipsism

 
Obamamania
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

OK, Illinois's favorite son Barack Obama did not win today's New Hampshire election. Nevertheless, his candidacy is quite a phenomenon. Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler notes how a former MR guest blogger pointed to the considerable Obama upside back in May of 2004. The loyal Vice Squad reader recalls, however, that our own Nikkie was ahead of the curve on this, writing of Obama in late March of 2004: "This guy is awesome - great ideas, level-headed, rational."

Moved to swearing by Obama's second place finish today, or perhaps want to dance at your table to celebrate the McCain or Clinton victories? Don't try any of that in St. Charles, Missouri, which "is considering a bill that would ban swearing in bars, along with table-dancing, drinking contests and profane music."

Labels: Prohibition, solipsism

 
Save British "Bingo"?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:55 PM

As the loyal Vice Squad reader knows, the British bingo industry is facing hard times, in part due to the smoking ban and to competition from lower-taxed forms of gambling. Also, the bingo halls do not hold the same number of slot machines that used to grace their premises. The Financial Times tells of the growing pressure to reduce the tax burden on bingo. The government is sympathetic, it seems, but are bingo's problems deeper, perhaps even reaching to the name of the game?:

...the government believes the industry faces endemic problems - including an ageing customer base and competing leisure and gambling activity - that taxation relief, on its own, cannot cure.

According to one industry analyst, bingo companies need to apply radical surgery to their industries, including rebranding the pastime in a way that sheds the "bingo" tag.

In Vice Squad news, I am back in Chicago after two vice-free days in Ann Arbor, which I want to "rebrand" as Annushka Arborka.

Labels: bingo, Britain, gambling, solipsism

 
Coffee in Kyiv
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:24 AM

Vice Squad is relocating today, first to London and then to Kyiv. The loyal Vice Squad reader is concerned that sans Starbucks, it might be hard to stay properly caffeinated in Ukraine. Fear no more, comrade: Gloria Jean's has come to Kyiv.

Actually, one of the more obvious changes in Kyiv in recent years has been the burgeoning of coffee shops, as the linked article mentions. The Coffee House and Coffee Time chains are particularly prominent, and at least one of them (Coffee House, if memory serves) has pretty good food, too. One thing that is glaringly absent is a public smoking ban. While Vice Squad does not support such a ban, as the bans proliferate, those places that do not have them do begin to stand out.

The temporary relocation will lead to even less frequent blogging through the end of 2007, alas.

Labels: coffee, solipsism

 
What I Have Been Up To
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:14 AM


In the initial Vice Squad post of September 18, 2003, I noted that I had "recently started to write a secondary text" for my Regulation of Vice class. On June 6, 2005, Vice Squad entered a year and a half of semi-hibernation, which I claimed was undertaken largely "to devote myself to finishing up the book I have been composing (decomposing?) on vice policy." Today, about four and a half years after starting work on the book, I am happy to report that Regulating Vice has sprung (or stumbled) into existence. The Amazon page (for the paperback) is here.

There are no kind words from famous folks on the back of the book -- hmmm, was this intentional, or despite heroic efforts, was the publisher unable to conjure up such encomia? In any event, I will provide my own ringing endorsement of Regulating Vice: "All the tedium of Vice Squad, without the brevity." Everyone should buy a copy -- er, two copies, one hardback ($85 at Amazon, so appropriate for the library at Alexandria) and one paperback (for you, dear Vice Squad reader, only $29.99 at Amazon.) When I return to Chicago from the conference in New Orleans I'll have lots more to say about Regulating Vice; for now, though, I must dance.

Labels: Regulating Vice, solipsism

 
Slots in Maryland
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:54 PM

Vice Squad was in Baltimore this past weekend, perhaps explaining the blog neglect. But the news in Baltimore is pretty similar to the news in Chicago -- lots of talk of government budgetary shortfalls and slot machines as one way of dealing with them. Maryland lawmakers seem ready to pave the way for the number of legal slot machines in the state to rise from zero to 15,000. Millions of dollars in lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions from gambling interests have not affected the political debate, of course. Illinois and Chicago also appear to be headed towards a gambling expansion. Is there any ceiling to how much gambling can expand? Yes, but Illinois and Maryland are probably below that threshold right now. In Las Vegas, on the other hand, August 2007 gambling revenues were 4.4 percent lower than in August, 2006.

Speaking of gambling, Vice Squad is slated to attend a conference in New Orleans later this week. New Orleans contains a casino that holds a local monopoly but somehow managed to go bankrupt twice. Posting will remain limited until next week, I am afraid.

Labels: gambling, slot machine, solipsism

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

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

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

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

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

Why are CVS and WalMart participating in these silly rituals?

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

Labels: drugs, policing, solipsism

 
Back in the USA...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:43 PM

...after sojourns in the UK and the Ukraine. (Vice Squad undergoes multi-stop travel only if the destinations lend themselves to wordplay. Watch out, Paraguay and Uruguay.) Mucho vice policy news out of Britain in the last few days. New Prime Minister Gordon Brown has scrapped the mega-casino planned for Manchester. All of the substitutions that would ensue in the wake of the public smoking ban were perhaps not thought through fully in advance; in particular, the smell of cigarette smoke covers up other odors, which can now have their day in the sun, as it were. And a failure to pass some implementing legislation in a timely manner has left Stoke-on-Trent as the one town in Britain where smoking in pubs lingers on, more-or-less without hindrance -- but only for a few days more.

Labels: Britain, casino, gambling, smoking ban, solipsism

 
Smoking Ban Update
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:34 AM

Greetings from London, where Vice Squad arrived just in time to enjoy the least favorable (for US tourists) exchange rate in, oh, 26 years. So this posting will have to be short, as what US of A'er can afford British internet cafes?

The smoking ban implementation appears to be smooth. There were the ironic last legal smoking parties, paralleling similar gatherings when national alcohol Prohibition went into effect in the US. There are the malcontents, who include the musician Joe Jackson, who questions whether there's really any hard evidence that secondary tobacco smoke harms people (as Vice Squad noted in July 2004). And there's the pesky problem of what bars and restaurants will do with old ashtrays, the ones surviving informal removals by customers. And for the facts, we can turn to the Observer's malcontents article:

The Facts

· Shortly after the Second World War 80 per cent of men smoked. Today, about 24 per cent of the population continues to enjoy lighting up. Dramatic falls were seen in the Seventies and Eighties, but the rate of quitting has slowed to 0.4 per cent a year

· The government's wants just 17 per cent of Britons to be smoking by 2010

· The UK-wide smoking ban does not apply to three places: Alderney, Sark and the Isle of Man

· Smoking will also still be allowed in prisons, army barracks and care institutions

· 600,000 of Britain's 10 million smokers will give up as a result of the ban, the
government believes

· Age reduces addiction to nicotine. One third of 20- to 24-year-olds smoke, but just one in seven people over 60 do

· The Treasury takes over £4 of the typical £5.50 cost of a packet of 20 cigarettes in tax, and makes about £8bn a year from smokers

· It costs the NHS an estimated £1.5bn a year to treat smokers made ill by their habit

· Smoking kills about 100,000 Britons a year through cancer, lung conditions and heart problems. About 1,000 people a day are admitted to hospital in England with a smoking-related illness

Incidentally, between taxes and that exchange rate problem, a pack of decent cigs costs about $12 in London.

Labels: Britain, Prohibition, smoking ban, solipsism

 
Field Work
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:06 AM

Apologies for the pathetic pace of blogging recently. To make amends, I intend -- no, not to blog -- to go to England immediately so that I can view firsthand the effects of today's smoking ban implementation. Here's the Guardian article on the prospect of the ban in heavy smoking Hull. The article provides some choice quotes. Here's a smoker:

"I smoke 100 to 120 cigs a day. The ban will kill us. I like to sit with my mates after work with a pint and a cig. It will be gone. It's a dictatorship. It's worse than Russia."

Here's someone from the National Health Service, not exactly putting to rest those fears of Big Brother and the nanny state:

"People say you've got to die of something, or that it's their right to smoke. I get really irritated by that," says Wendy Richardson, director of public health in Hull. "That's the culture we're trying to change. The NHS has to look at all the deaths and say these are smoking-related deaths. We can avoid this."

Labels: Britain, smoking ban, solipsism

 
Russian Alcohol, Blog Neglect
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:08 PM

I have been out of town for a few days, and this will continue for awhile, it seems. As a result, my one-post-per-day recent blogging standard has and will be compromised, alas. Vice goes on, however, even if Vice Squad sleeps:

Drinking alcohol not meant for consumption such as cologne and antiseptics may be responsible for nearly half of all deaths among working-age men in Russia, according to a study published Friday in The Lancet.

Revelation! This "news item" comes from a paper that Vice Squad mentioned on International Workers Day.

Labels: alcohol, Russia, solipsism

 
Troilus and Cressida
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:14 AM

By way of excuse for not posting, let me mention that I saw Troilus and Cressida at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Thursday night. (Here's a review.) Fortunately, my blog-indolence was rewarded, not only because the play was good but because an important plot element turned on the topic of the most recent Vice Squad post: a rigged lottery. (Yes, I should have remembered, but by golly, my command of Troilus and Cressida is not what it should be.) Hector (you no doubt will recall) issues a general challenge to the Greeks, though it is clear that the intent of the challenge is to draw Achilles into battle. Crafty Ulysses decides that it would best serve the Greeks' turn if they instead announced that a lottery would be undertaken to choose their combatant, and then fixed things up to make sure that Ajax, not Ulysses, won the lottery:

No, make a lottery;
And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector

So the Greeks rig the lottery, and Troy falls: I summarize. Lotteries, it seems, have a long history of being less than trustworthy.

Labels: gambling, lottery, Shakespeare, solipsism

 
Carceral Volume 2
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:55 PM

Back in May, 2005, Carceral Notebooks made its debut (see May 25, 2005 post) in the vice policy world. (Extensive research indicates that 'carceral' means 'prison-related,' so vice policy overlaps with -- but neither subsumes nor is subsumed by -- the carceral universe.) The second Carceral volume has just been released, with some Vice Squad representation. Volume 2 includes, among other things, multiple offerings concerning the regulation of sex, and the articles are available online.

The impresario of Carceral Notebooks is University of Chicago Law School Professor Bernard Harcourt. Bernard is guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy this week, drawing primarily upon his work documenting and analyzing the profound shift in incarceration from mental asylums to prisons during the second half of the 20th Century in the US. Welcome to the only somewhat institutionalized blogging world, Bernard.

Labels: sex, solipsism