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 panoply 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] People enrolled 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]
3.2 Committing to Exclusion[iv]
Enforcement via testing is a key component of court-supervised exclusions – people who drink or take drugs in violation of the order face negative consequences imposed from without. People who voluntarily choose to be abstinent from alcohol or drugs do not face the same degree of testing and enforcement – though the illegality of some drugs typically does raise a barrier to use, relative to what would exist in a legal, lightly regulated market.
Voluntary abstainers might try to enforce their commitment. They might make a public pronouncement of their abstinence intention, so that any deviations from their plan might be noted by others and cause embarrassment. They might enlist their friends and family into serving as watchdogs and supporters of their pledge. They have the option of setting up enforceable contracts that would result in “fines” or other negative consequences if they stray from their declared path: see stickk.com. Even with these measures, the voluntarily abstemious generally lack the participation of sellers in preventing their alcohol or drug consumption. Indeed, sellers presumably have a pecuniary incentive to overcome the reluctance of wavering abstainers.
[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, and section 5.4, below.
[iii] For the website of one leading alcohol monitoring company, see http://www.alcoholmonitoring.com/index.
[iv] The remainder of section 3 draws upon Leitzel (2011). The notion of commitment is central to the current paper, which involves, in part, a sort of self-referential experiment; see fivedrafts.blogspot.com. A presentation related to this paper is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Px4nYbJoQ.
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