Towards "Draft" One(a)

The deadline for "draft" one looms, so let me get my excuses together, I mean, let me say more about the project. As opposed to the original Five Drafts project, this time my topic is fairly narrowly prescribed: a handbook chapter of some 8,000 words covering Vice Regulation. Where to begin? Well, there is one rule that I set for myself: do not study my 2008 book (Regulating Vice) until a complete version of the new paper (Draft Two, presumably) is available, even though Regulating Vice explains why I received an invitation to contribute the chapter. I want to make sure that I am not unduly influenced by the prior vice tome. Second, the original Draft One from Five Drafts was less than 1800 words, so I set that as a sort of goal, and by golly, it is one that I have reached. (This might not be sufficiently ambitious, given the intention for only four drafts as well as the expedited timetable for this paper.) Despite reaching my immodestly modest goal, there are still fundamental organizational issues to be decided, as well as the further research and writing.

The chapter that I am working on is supposed to go easy on the footnotes -- zero is the preferred number -- which is not my usual style. So I have to keep that in mind.

To differentiate the current project from the 2011 effort, I will refer to Draft One(a), and so on with the higher numbered drafts.

Here are the envisioned sections -- a list that no doubt will change markedly in future drafts:

1. Vice
2. Why Regulate Vice?
3. Surveying the Range of Controls
   3a. Prohibition
   3b. Licensing and Other Controls on Manufacturers and Sellers
    3c. Taxation
    3d. Prescription
    3e. Individual-Level Controls
    3f. Voluntary Controls
4. One Potential Guiding Principle to Vice Regulation
5. Changing Times
6. Vice 3.0

I only have anything (and even then, something quite curtailed) for the material up to 3c at this point. In the Changing Times section I intend to talk about recent mj liberalization, along with gambling, the faltering war on drugs, prostitution, and the intensified war on tobacco. In section 6, I will talk about the internet and vice control, perhaps focusing on BDSM (as in my earlier discussion (pdf)); the title of that section was inspired by a recent, very interesting paper on prostitution.

So much by way of introduction. I think that my current scribblings are brief enough to fit into one post -- we soon will see.