Regulation, Not Prohibition

I have been ruminating a bit, or so I claim, and am beginning to narrow down the "topic" of my paper. The proximate issue that is driving the rumination is the Proposition 19 initiative to legalize and tax marijuana in California -- an initiative that a majority of California voters rejected in November. Oh, but some 46% of the electorate voted to legalize marijuana -- what other "crime" would have its criminal status rejected by more than 40 percent of the population? Nevertheless, the fact that the California initiative did not provide any guidelines (beyond taxation) for what a regulated marijuana market would look like suggests that it was possible for someone to favor marijuana legalization while still voting against Proposition 19. Would mj advertising be allowed? Would marijuana legally be sold near schools? Would California encourage lots of drug tourists? Voters didn't know what answers a Proposition 19-style legalization would give to these questions.

Some years ago I wrote about why drugs are still illegal, and I concluded that much of the problem was uncertainty about what even the broad contours of a legalized regime would look like. So I want to explore these contours some more, including the margins -- such as sales to children -- under which the criminal law would still dominate. With respect to the potential topics listed in the previous Five Drafts post, it is mostly numbers (3) and (4), concerning desirable policies for legal vices, that I am now leaning towards. Those "numbers," precisely, were:

(3) Licensing and self-exclusion as elements of desirable vice control policies.

(4) Inter-jurisdictional issues in vice control, including vice tourism and federal v. state policies.

So, what do I want to do move ahead?

(1) Read Fosdick and Scott's Toward Liquor Control, which laid out in 1933 two types of regulatory regimes for states to choose between following the end of national alcohol Prohibition -- and most states chose a regulatory structure closely modeled on the book's suggestions. I also want to learn more about the history around the end of Prohibition: some information on this, including the role played by Fosdick and Scott, can be found in this paper by Levine and Reinarman.

(2) I want to learn more about licensing of other legal activities (hunting?; fishing?), and get back to following self-exclusion more closely. Part of this effort will be to learn more about the economic theory surrounding naive and sophisticated consumers with self-control problems.

(3) I want to examine recent efforts to draw up regulatory structures for the currently illegal drugs, and perhaps also for prostitution -- while I see drugs as the focus of my paper, I think that I will also be writing about vice more generally.

Well, these ramblings clearly do not constitute much of a focused plan at this point. But maybe the plan will emerge simultaneously with the paper?