Saturday, May 7, 2011

Draft Three, Section 3.1

3. The Alcohol Model, Plus Exclusion

Alcohol control offers one known model upon which to build for the regulation of legal, psychoactive drugs. Standard approaches to alcohol control start with a ban on purchases by minors. Sellers are licensed by the state, or the state maintains its own retail stores – these are the two options closely examined by Fosdick and Scott. The sellers operate under a whole host of rules, governing location, opening hours, advertising, and so on, and these controls differ depending on whether the sales are for on-premises consumption or for carry-out. Special excise taxes are applied to alcohol; these taxes typically are calibrated in such a way as to disfavor relatively potent (distilled) alcoholic beverages.


3.1 Mandatory Exclusion

The alcohol regulatory model probably is too permissive to serve as a comprehensive template for a system of control aimed at the currently illegal drugs, at least for the harder drugs within the prohibited class. The model can be augmented, however, by continuing prohibitions on users whose consumption is particularly problematic: mandatory exclusions. Adults can lose, for cause, their privilege to purchase or consume the otherwise legal drug. In the case of alcohol, some of the infractions that would lead to a revocation of purchasing privileges would be transfer of liquor to an underaged or otherwise excluded consumer, violent behavior under the influence, drunk driving, and use of alcohol in forbidden areas (such as drinking in public, for instance). Loss of a purchase privilege (for a limited time, or, in severe circumstances, permanently) might not exhaust the penalties imposed for these infractions, of course.

How can such an individual-specific exclusion be enforced? One possibility is that all potential alcohol buyers would have to be screened at the time of purchase, to ensure they had not lost their purchasing privilege. A version of this approach currently is applied to enforce the minimum age requirement: all sufficiently young-looking individuals are supposed to be asked for proof of age when attempting to purchase alcohol. An alternative (or complementary) exclusion enforcement method involves frequent testing for alcohol consumption. One advantage to this type of enforcement is that only the proscribed individuals need be involved, by submitting to the requisite tests. Everyone else, including sellers and entitled adults, can take no notice of the banned users.

Exclusion from the privilege to purchase or consume traditionally has not played a significant role in the regulation of alcohol within the US: convicted drunk drivers might lose their driver’s license, but not their drinker’s “license.”[i] Variations on the theme of alcohol exclusion currently are spreading, however. People who are in legal trouble connected with alcohol can be monitored to ensure that they are not drinking. Sometimes people adopt these measures voluntarily, though perhaps also with an eye to benefiting in ongoing legal proceedings. In other instances, courts impose alcohol monitoring as part of pretrial release or probation. South Dakota’s 24/7 Sobriety Program, for instance, aimed at repeat drunk driving offenders, seeks to keep participants away from drinking.[ii] Participants in the program either check in twice a day for an alcohol breath test, or wear an electronic alcohol monitor. These monitors, which can come in the form of small ankle bracelets, allow frequent testing without the necessity to travel to a testing location; they have been adopted by many court systems in the US.[iii]



[i] Mandated ignition interlock devices are a sort of targeted driving exclusion, temporarily suspending the driving (though not the drinking) privileges of someone who fails the requisite in-car sobriety test.

[ii] See http://apps.sd.gov/atg/dui247/index.htm.

[iii] For the website of one leading alcohol monitoring company, see http://www.alcoholmonitoring.com/index.

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