The Final Version, and Double Defaults

The published version of the paper is available, for those with SpringerLink access, here. The main substantive change from Draft Five is that I now view the appropriate regulatory regime for the relatively "hard" drugs to involve a "double default". The first default setting is that adults are not allowed to purchase these drugs. This default can be overridden, however, by the acquisition of a buyer's license. (Past drug-related misbehavior would imply that this override would not be available for all adults.) Buyer (and seller) licensing has been part of my preferred scheme throughout the drafts. What is new to the published version is the terms under which a licensed individual can receive her drug of choice. This is where the second default comes in. The terms (waiting periods, prices, quantity limits) of access would themselves have default settings, not just legal limits. Those defaults would be set rather conservatively, in an effort to lower the likelihood that an occasional user would end up as a compulsive user. Licensed buyers could override the default terms (within the legal limits), though at some cost when the overrides are in the direction of more liberal access. The idea is that the first default (licensing) is aimed at controlling overall prevalence, while the second default (terms of access) is aimed at intemperate consumption.

Draft Five

Well, it is done. Not seriously late, and I managed to get it under the 10,000 word limit, too. Enjoyed the Five Drafts process so much that I intend to co-opt it for future projects. But for now, it just feels good to have Draft Five in the books. The title: Toward Drug Control: Exclusion and Buyer Licensing.

One More Slight Delay?

Well, all is ready for Draft Five, beleaguered Five Drafts reader, but there's a bit of a problem with the pdf conversion. Tomorrow a different computer will be brought into the fray, and all should be well. Apologies.

Update on Draft 4.4

Today is the deadline to post Draft Five and submit it to ssrn. I suppose I will not meet those commitments, but, well, I could. Really!

No updates in quite a while. My main excuse is that I moved house in the last two weeks, a process which is ongoing. But I have done some work on the Five Drafts project. Specifically, I have added the promised sub-sections on (1) why drugs qualify for special regulations and (2) providing the basics of exclusion and buyer licensing. I also have crafted an appendix, though it only concerns heroin licensing, and so far, it does not offer a comparison with Transform's recommendations.

I finally finished reading Last Call, by Daniel Okrent! The moving means that I do not have the book in front of me right now, but I hope to eventually record a few of my reactions. I first mentioned Last Call on March 6, and hoped to finish reading it by April 20. The saga of reading Last Call is sort of a mini version of the overall Five Drafts project -- but I guess there is some solace there, as I eventually did complete Last Call.

OK, on the immediate horizon: read over the current "final" draft, make a few revisions, and post it here and to ssrn. I'll try to have this done by the end of the weekend. But what to commit to reading next?

Update, August 17, 2011:

OK, I now have Last Call at hand, and want to note three points that jumped out at me. My interest lies chiefly in the parallels with our current prohibition:

(1) page 252 -- for many drys, arrest rates became success indicators: more arrests, the better Prohibition was working. "As long as bartenders and bootleggers were harassed and punished, it almost didn't matter if they stopped their bartending and their bootlegging [p. 252]."

(2) Wayne Wheeler, the Anti-Saloon League's general counsel and effective leader, also employs some "cost as benefit" logic: "'The very fact that the law is difficult to enforce,' said Wayne B. Wheeler, 'is the clearest proof of the need of its existence [page 270].'"

(3) The drys revised their rhetoric as Prohibition proceeded, eventually sublimating their anti-alcohol stance to a pro-law enforcement platform. "From the dry perspective, the power of the enforcement trope lay in its incontrovertibility: who could be against law enforcement [page 271]?"

Update on Draft 4.3

Draft Four has been altered this week with one round of edits, and a second is mapped out. Some helpful comments arrived via e-mail, and much of the upcoming round draws upon those suggestions. I intend to add two new sections to the Introduction, one with background on why drugs should receive special controls, and a second sub-section (using material that is already in Draft Four, for the most part) that introduces exclusion and licensing, tying them into the rationale for control. I also hope to produce a preliminary chart of my proposals for marijuana and heroin regulation, and compare them with those of Transform.

Kleiman, Caulkins, and Hawken talk about (p. 18) a "no coercion" drug policy, and I sort of mention the importance of economizing on coercion in my draft. But I think I want to say more about it. I even envision a sequel of sorts, where I might have a separate paper devoted to expanding on this topic.

There were only two books on my Five Drafts reading list, and I suggested that I wanted to finish one of them, Ian Ayres's Carrots and Sticks, by this update -- and I did, amazingly. It is a quick read, and tells lots of interesting stories concerning commitment possibilities and stickK. The other book, now a venerable part of the Five Drafts project, is Last Call, by Daniel Okrent. The last time I checked in on this one, I still had pages 133 to 310 to read, having already consumed the beginning and the end. There has been very little progress, but now the unread portion is pages 151 to 310. My goal this week is to finish Last Call. I won't add another book into my wish list, in part to ensure that I am not diverted away from the fine Last Call, but also because my non-Five Drafts reading load is heavy right now.

The Draft Five deadline, Friday, August 5, is beginning to cast a shadow. Part of my commitment, incidentally, is to post that version on ssrn. Just typing that makes me nervous!

Update on Draft 4.2

In the previous update on Draft Four I noted that things would probably go slowly, as I was slated to be away for more than two weeks. Well, I am back now, and not fully happy to report that my prediction has been borne out. I have finally read Draft Four straight through, and was disappointed to find it so in need of improvement and even cogency. I have started to make the first round of changes in those directions, and hope to go through another round this week.

The Five Drafts reader might recall that when we last checked in, there were three books under siege. They are:

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

(2) Carrots and Sticks, by Ian Ayres, 2010, and

(3) Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken, 2011.

Only book (3) made the trip with me, and my suspicion that it would be an easy read proved to be justified -- I completed it. It's written for an interested but not necessarily professional audience, and it comes in easy-to-digest bite-sized portions, due to the adoption of a catechismal style. Professionals (or people who work to some extent in drug policy, like me) will find value in Drugs and Drug Policy, too, in part because the scope of the book will cover some new ground for most of these readers, and because it will be the book to reference when referring to a particular point or argument with respect to drug policy. Indeed, I had already started to use it in that fashion for Draft Four, and more such uses will emerge in Draft Five.

So the coming week involves more of that continuous improvement plan, an intention to finish reading Carrots and Sticks, while making some progress on Last Call. I have in mind a new book to add to the Five Drafts reading pile but do not want to take on the full "public" commitment at this point. I am a commitment-phobe?

Related Talk

I mentioned that I was giving some talks in April that were related to the Five Drafts project. Here is one of them, "Re-Legalizing Drugs," from the TEDxUChicago conference on April 17, 2011.