TVHE

Via the Herald (ht Education Directions):

The Illicit Drug Monitoring System report found the price – commonly regarded as the best measure of police success against the drug – had increased each year.

Interesting.  So they use ever rising prices as a measure of ever rising success.  This is weird on two grounds:

1. We are using regulation, not the market – yet using prices as an indicator seems to point out that we could use a market mechanism here.
2. If we accept the market mechanism, then even in the face of externalities there is an appropriate “price” – if we go past that I wouldn’t call that a “success”

Also, they seem to have trouble attributing appropriate causation:

Dr Wilkins said dealers around the world had reacted (to restrictions) by filling the (Ectasy) pills with other substances, including methamphetamine, which could create a highly dangerous cocktail of drugs.

…

A revival in LSD use, possibly as Ecstasy users look for a stronger drug.

So they attribute the rise in LSD use to “addicts” wanting a stronger fix – even though they have already admitted that the consumers value of Ecstasy has been lowered by tightening restrictions overseas, which have reduced quality and increase the potential health impact.  If anything I would say that the “obvious” reason for the substitution from Ecstasy to LSD would be the result of these tighter restrictions …

One of the main reasons the government wants to crack down on alcohol is because of the “scenes no civilized society can relish“, which is when people of the age of 18-24 go into town and run amok – causing definite damage to other people, in some way, or something.

So they are introducing a policy that will give people the incentive to go into town, instead of drinking at home?  What policy – well they are splitting the drinking age, so you can drink at a pub at 18 but you have to be 20 to buy liquor to drink at home.

I mean seriously – they are increasing the “price” of drinking at home, so more people will just drink in town (where it is likely more student bars with low margins and high quantities will open), and with them already in town there can be even more people to “run amok”.

This is one place where I agree with Labour rather than the government (removed statement as it made it sound like I normally agree with the government – when I usually disagree with everyone, including myself often) – if there is an issue it comes from our view of alcohol, an inappropriate externality tax on alcohol, or education around alcohol.  So instead of chucking in dumb regulations with mammoth unintended consequences, lets just try to be mature (and adult) about our treatment of alcohol – and in fact all other drugs.

If there was a way that the government could:

1. Reduce government debt levels,
2. Cut income taxes,
3. Destroy the Green party and eat up sections of Labour support.

Would it want to do it?  I suspect so.

As a result, why aren’t they legalising and taxing drugs?

Note:  None of these provide particularly good reasons for legalisation in my book – I am more pro-legalisation on choice grounds.  However, better to do the right thing for the wrong reason then keep doing the wrong thing right!

Via Dim Post there is an article from the Herald discussing competition in the illicit drug market.  The main point is:

Ecstasy dealers are competing “like Pepsi and Coke” to sell their drug

Now, after reading this statement my first reaction was “good!”

Why?  Well, if their is competition in the industry it will improve quality – ensuring that the current information problem in the market, that leads to a lower quality and possibly more damaging product, are being circumvented by the competitive process!

Of course, the article doesn’t take this tack.  It says something about blah blah blah, people are taking drugs, blah blah blah, drugs are bad, blah blah blah, talking about drugs is immoral, blah – I don’t know, I sort of got bored of the article once I realised it was talking a load of sh*t.

So, in conclusion, competition for the provision of drugs is good – long live sites where people can compare experiences and provide information for future potential drug takers, so that they are fully informed and can make a sensible decision.  Furthermore, long live competition in the industry – ensuring that we get a more efficient allocation of drugs in society.

Because it makes you smarter:

(Source Marginal Revolution)

Note: I am joking, this is not causality.  For one we don’t have a quantity measure of drinking, and the impact of drinking on intelligence is no doubt non-linear.  In fact, you could make the argument that “smarter” people know how control their own alcohol consumption, and so do not face the severe negative impacts of drinking – in a way smart people are more likely to find ways to control, or are not subject to, time inconsistency problems in liqour.

However, I think we should also use this as a reminder that it the link between the consumption of a drug and the drugs impact can be very poorly estimated if we aren’t very careful to control for these sorts of issues – hence why I do not trust a lot of studies out there, especially the ones made by interest groups where all they do is draw lines (95% of studies according to my casual observation).

Update:  CPW sent me the link to the full set of graphs with alcohol involved – it is beautiful.

On Saturday I had an article in the Dom ranting about how harm minimisation was a dumb goal – as there are benefits from the consumption of drugs.  This argument has been on the internet a million times (see these two searches for example), so there is no need to rehash it here.

Originally, the article was a little different.  It was a direct attack on the paternalism implicit in the policy making associated with the anti-drug crusade and the policy target of minimising harm.  Fundamentally, this is a critique of what the Law Commission has done – they are an independent body that should critique how the law differs from the target of policy (which they do well IMO) AND critique where policy differs from its practical aim (something they haven’t done).  Often the implementation of laws differs from policy because the policy is bad!

The last three paragraphs from this far more libertarian style article were:

However, why as a society are we determined to stop people hurting themselves?  Part of life is learning to take responsibility when your own choices and actions hurt you – having a government act in a paternalistic way to stop this, and make it harder for people to learn about individual responsibility, seems dangerous to me.

Even if we do have sufficiently little faith in our fellow man, and believe that the government should act like our parents, is this type of policy intervention equivalent to good parenting?  A good parent will set some boundaries, but also give a child the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and will be there to help if things go wrong – only a bad parent would focus only on potential harm and ignore any benefit to the child when setting boundaries.  In this sense, even the most paternalistic people must agree that solely focusing on harms from any action is a poor way to ensure that we have the happiest society possible.

Ultimately, I’m of the opinion that a truly civilised society must be based on compassion, not control – it should be based on people’s happiness and freedom, not the desire of some policy wonks to create their ideal world.

Comments and criticism of this view welcome.

Update: Relevant points from Eric Crampton (Uni of Canterbury/Offsetting Behaviour) and Luke Malpass (Centre for Independent Studies).

When this article appeared in Stuff it seemed to want to give the impression that drugs = bad.  That is good for it.  However, when I read it it simply made me think that we should legalise said drugs.  Here is why.

Ecstasy users are unwittingly taking other potentially more dangerous substances including P, as drug dealers become more reckless, officials warn.

And this is happening because of the large number of drug raids, restricting the supply of Ecstasy right.  So legalisation would improve quality and safety.  Also.

When it burst on to the scene in the 1970s it was pure MDMA and its reputation as an uncomplicated party drug exploded. However, once MDMA was made illegal in the late 1970s, ecstasy’s make-up changed.  The legend of the “round shiny tablet with a logo on it” had grown out of proportion.

So making it illegal lead to a degradation of the quality of the product, which made it more dangerous.

So lets legalise these things and regulate the industries, no?

As speculated by some over the weekend, and confirmed today by the Economist, Copenhagen currently appears to be nothing more than a venue for which policy makers will agree to consider a future agreement on Carbon Emissions.

Undoubtedly there exist links between the U.S.’ relaxed approach to the summit and the Obama administrations efforts to pass universal healthcare; for the latter to pass the support of those contributing to the former is required. This is nothing new. What is interesting to note, however, is that such an attitude to favor health over emissions has been indirectly present within the U.S. for some time.

Earlier this year Boston became the second city (following San Francisco) to pass legislation banning the sale of cigarettes in ‘drug’ stores.  Within this legislation there exists a further directive restricting the sale of cigarettes on college campuses. This is where things become interesting. Consider a representative smoker. The impact upon this agent from said legislation results in further effort (i.e.; distance traveled) to obtain cigarettes. As such, the ‘carbon footprint’ of each cigarette has increased within the city of Boston; not too mention the shadow price of the cigarettes themselves.

The question is now posed; are carbon emissions an indirect consequence of health legislation?

Stumbling and Mumbling discusses the seemingly strange fact that public opinion is so heavily against the legalisation of drugs that pose a lower social cost than some already legal drugs.

Now the legalisation of drugs is an issue we have discussed at length here (* * * * * *).  Now if society is fully informed of the costs and benefits of drug use, then I am happy for policy to be instituted along these lines.

This does raise an interesting question for me though.  Why do countries with a closer tie to Britain (Britain, the US, NZ, Australia) seem to push an agenda of strong drug regulations when a number of other nations (the Netherlands, Portugal) tend to be more interested in allowing individual action to guide the use of these products?

What makes Anglo-Saxon countries so much more sure of their ability to centrally determine what is the best set of actions for their citizens?  What makes Anglo-Saxon governments so sure of their superiority relative to the people they are “serving”?

That appears to be the suggestion of David Grimmond from Infometrics according to this article (also found here).

How do I feel about this suggestion, well I agree.  Legalise it, that way we can apply standard quality controls, pump out education and information, and place externality taxes on it.

Worst case scenario:  The externality tax makes the drug so expensive that the current gang based supply of drugs (with an associated motive to avoid tax) remains the cheapest option for people – in this case the legalisation makes no real difference.  However, I would still only support bans above taxation here if it turned out that bans were arbitrarily cheaper – as other social outcomes would be the same.

There is nothing wrong with someone making a choice to take drugs when they understand the issues surrounding them.  Legalisation helps us create a situation where people can make well informed decisions regarding drug use.

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with an individual taking the drug persee – although we may be concerned about how their actions following any use impact on other people.  In this case legalisation, education, and a bunch of taxation will do the trick – the current situation does not target these external activities very well at all.