Update on Draft 3.4

Well, I have been neglectful, and have let other matters intrude into the Five Drafts project. Draft Four is due this week, on Thursday, and I am in slight panic mode.

Here is what I would like to accomplish for Draft Four. Beyond the "continuous improvement" plan, I want to add a section that discusses four types of complicating factors: (1) drug sharing and existing social norms around drug use; (2) the highly skewed distribution of drug use, with the quantitative majority of just about any substance consumed by a relatively small percentage of users; (3) privacy of licensing and exclusion lists; and (4) how successful probation programs that keep people off of drugs (such as Hawaii's HOPE and South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety) strengthen the case for drug legalization. The privacy issue already is discussed in Draft Three, but I think I will move it into the new section. I also hope to delete the table which currently forms the Appendix, and replace it with a chart offering the overview of a legal regime for cannabis and a legal regime for opiates.

Despite the long layoff from posting on Five Drafts, I still have not finished any of the books I have been reading for background over the last two months. They are, again, alas:

(1) Last Call, by Daniel Okrent, 2010;

(2) Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, by Gene M. Heyman, 2009; and,

(3) Carrots and Sticks, by Ian Ayres, 2010.

I have not touched the Okrent book since the previous update, so I remain on page 130 out of 496, though still can congratulate myself for also having read the end of the book, everything after page 310. (Yes, I know how it ends: Prohibition is repealed!) In the Heyman book, I am also (coincidentally) at page 130 (of 200), up from the page 70 point of, oh, three weeks ago. Heyman seems to be arguing that some more-or-less rational folks are myopic, and they are at risk of overconsuming drugs, while others are farsighted, and use drugs responsibly. It's not a full-on Becker-Murphy rational addiction approach, but it wants to explain how voluntary decisions (by those myopic types) can nevertheless lead to bad outcomes, even from the decision-maker's own point of view. As for the Ayres book, I'm at page 40 out of 218, up (barely) from page 26. And there is at least one new book that I want to add to the pile, so I am feeling some pressure to finish at least one of the current reads this week. But in the meantime, there is Draft Four to attend to.