Update on Draft 1.5

Time for my weekly confession of having fallen short of my goals. Those goals, as committed to pixels last week, were to: "(1) brush up the licensing section; (2) complete a draft of the self-exclusion section; (3) put down some preliminary discussion of Portugal; and (4) read a lot more of the Committee of Fifty's book." I did indeed brush up the licensing section (section 3 of the draft paper), though this process has led me to divide section 3 into three sub-sections: 3.1 From Opting Out to Opting In; 3.2 Positive and Negative Licensing; and 3.3 Licensing Drug Users. The first two sub-sections more-or-less exist, and focus on alcohol; the third section remains vaporware -- so more brushing up is on the agenda for this week.

The same sub-section mania infected section 4, on self-exclusion. Sub-section 4.1 looks at gambling self-exclusion, and sub-section 4.2 looks at drug self-exclusion -- once again, the drug component is unwritten. So by next Sunday, I hope to have completed a draft of subsections 3.3 and 4.2. Matters are pressing, as the "complete" Draft Two is due in just 9 days, on March 15. Conclusions are always a weak point for me -- I am always tempted to say, "Draw your own conclusions" -- so I will try to have a draft paragraph or two of conclusions in hand for next week, too.

I am happy to report that I did indeed put down a preliminary discussion of Portugal. I hasten to add that all of the "discussion" in the draft in this stage is pretty superficial and incomplete -- it is left to drafts Three through Five to deepen the analysis. The summary book by the Committee of Fifty is a quick, 182-page read, yet I still have managed only to get through the first 58 pages. Here's a fun quote from page 53, a passage that I believe was quoted also by Fosdick and Scott: "...the sight of justices, constables, and informers enforcing a prohibitory law far enough to get from it the fines and fees which profit them, but not far enough to extinguish the traffic and so cut off the source of their profits, is demoralizing to society at large." I intend to finish reading the Committee of Fifty's book this week. I also want to start reading Daniel Okrent's well-received book on Prohibition, along with another 1905 book (the Committee of Fifty's summary book was published in 1905), this one on saloons.

I did begin collecting (recollecting, really, as I had a pretty thorough collection a few years ago) articles on behavioral economics that might have some bearing on the best way to design drug licenses and self-exclusion schemes. Here's a short piece by Ian Ayres that illustrates a mechanism whereby naive individuals might voluntarily make a commitment to, say, cut back on their drug use. Whether these sorts of mechanisms could add much to lowering the social costs of addictions is something I will try to think about in the future -- a rather weak commitment, I know.