Much of the appeal of policy nudges is that when successful, they offer effectiveness at low cost, and without requiring coercion. But nudges are often used within regulatory regimes that also feature elements of coercion, as when forced savings plans such as social security are teamed with nudges designed to encourage pension contributions.
Drug prohibition is highly coercive and also quite venerable: arguments in support of, and in opposition to, the prohibition of recreational drugs are well-known. The growth of nudge theory and practice suggests a new sort of comparison, that between the prohibitory status quo supplemented with nudges, and a legalization regime also incorporating nudges. Does the potential for beneficial nudging improve the relative case for drug legalization, or does it offer a better style of prohibition that would capture some of the benefits of a more liberalized regime, while skirting the risks of legalization?
In addressing this question, this paper first identifies nudge-supplemented drug regulatory regimes within both the prohibitory status quo and a reasonable legal alternative. Within a regime of prohibition, appropriate nudges might be able to improve the uptake of treatment, or to enhance compliance with a harm reduction regimen, for instance. In a legal drug control system, nudges can be used to capture some of the benefits that prohibition might bring in terms of dissuading imprudent drug consumption, while securing those benefits without threatening drug users with criminal penalties. Comparisons between the likely consequences of the nudge-enhanced alternatives will then be made. Evidence for likely consequences can to some extent be drawn from existing drug policy regimes: state-level legalizations of cannabis in the past decade provide evidence for the value of some nudges within a legal regime, for instance, while the states that have not legalized also offer various models for nudging under prohibition. Decriminalization regimes, as in Portugal or Oregon, present a further intermediate case, one where the demand side for drugs (including cannabis but also “harder” drugs) is more-or-less legal while the supply side remains under a strict prohibition.
OK, this is more a general plan of attack than it is an abstract, but it is what we have now. Onto Draft 1!
