Update on Draft 4.1

Well, Draft Four made it online, albeit a few days late. Once again, in certain respects, I feel that Drafts Three and Four have been more "drafty" than Draft Two. The new section Five (discussing six "complicated issues") is barebones, and the deepening of other elements, by and large, did not take place. Still, I have hopes that Draft Five will be a serious improvement. My first step in the process of improving is to print out Draft Four and read it once through, and then enter "continuous improvement" mode. I am scheduled to be away for more than two weeks, though, during which time I do not expect to be able to make a serious commitment to at least the continuous part of continuous improvement.

The beleaguered Five Drafts reader knows that I have been trying to read three relevant books for awhile now. They are:

(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.

The Okrent book remains on the back burner. I have now read the first 132 pages (a gain of, er, two) out of 496, as well as everything after page 310. The Heyman book has moved into the completed pile. I don't know whether it is because of or despite the fact that I am an economist that his characterization of addiction via local and global equilibria did not appeal to me. As I indicated before, it seems to be another, slightly more confusing way of contrasting myopic choices with forward-looking ones. For those who want an anti-disease view of addiction, the book is fine, good even, but I also would recommend Herbert Fingarette's old (1989) Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease. As for the Ayres book, some real progress: now at page 126 of 218, up from page 40 when last I reported in. The new book I will add to the pile is Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken. Seems like an easy read -- as is the Ayres book, incidentally. The Okrent book is written with great style and verve, but is more detailed, more weighty, than the books by the academics, and hence I find it harder to pick up.