Regulating Vice : Misguided Prohibitions and Realistic Controls

List of tables and boxes xi Preface xiii Introduction 1 The vice contrarian 1 Vice it even sounds cool 3 Economics and vice and more on ketchup 7 The 31/3 standard vice concerns 10 Harm reduction versus zero tolerance 12 Futility? 15 Toward a thesis 17 1 The Harm Principle 19 Kids 21 Vice lunacy 26 The ubiquity of harm 27 On Liberty on drugs 30 2 Addiction: Rational and Otherwise 35 Rational addiction 38 Time inconsistency 44 Dynamic inconsistency and rationality 47 Visceral factors 50 Addiction as a disease 53 The anti-disease view 56 Comparative addictiveness 60 Responsibility 62 Addiction summary 64 Addiction, self-control, and vice policy 66 VICE VERDICTS (I): ADDICTION AND INTOXICATION 67 3 The Robustness Principle 72 Mill and addiction 72 The robustness principle 74 Harm versus robustness: the case of drugs 77 Comparing robustness to other vice policy regimes 81 (1) Ignoring the interests of rational vice participants 82 (2) Near laissez-faire 85 (3) Harm minimization 86 (4) Medicalization 87 (5) Expedience or caprice 88 Robustness and the public sphere 91 4 Prohibition 93 Benefits of drug prohibition 97 A polemical case for drug prohibition (or against the legalization of cocaine and heroin) 98 A temperate rejoinder to some of the arguments of the prohibitionists 102 U.S. alcohol prohibition, 1920-1933 106 Drug prohibition and policing 115 Prohibition and individual rights 119 Civil forfeiture 121 The budgetary costs of drug prohibition 124 Zero tolerance 126 The birth and unlamented demise of one vice prohibition: the Mann Act 128 Prohibition and robustness 134 An intemperate conclusion 135 VICE VERDICTS (II): ASSET FORFEITURE AND CRUEL BUT USUAL PUNISHMENTS 137 5 Taxation, Licensing, and Advertising Controls 140 The policy huckster 140 The appropriate level for a "sin tax": the case of alcohol 140 Externalities 143 Harms to self 147 Distributional considerations 148 Revenue 150 Sin taxes and John Stuart Mill 151 Sin taxes as an uneasy halfway house 155 Prohibition plus taxation 157 Replacing a prohibition with a tax 159 Licensing 161 Licensing vice consumers 163 Advertising 165 Commercial speech regulation in the United States 172 The Posadas case: A way ahead? 173 VICE VERDICTS (III) ADVERTISING 174 6 Commercial Sex 178 Kids 178 Sex addiction 18 Regulating sadomasochism 183 Pornography 185 Pornography regulation in the United States 186 Broadcast and indecency 189 Robustness and pornography 190 Public manifestations and broadcasting 191 Porn in private and in production 193 Prostitution 195 The robustness principle and prostitution 198 Shame, vice, and the law 201 The interaction between legal and illegal prostitution 202 Coercion and trafficking 204 A table in lieu of conclusions 207 VICE VERDICTS (IV): NUDE DANCING AND SODOMY 208 7 The Internet and Vice 216 Vice on the Web? 216 Vice and the Web 217 Filtering web content 218 Gambling 221 Internet gambling 225 Internet gambling regulation in the United States 226 Robustness and internet gambling 229 Britain and gambling: toward robustness 233 Prostitution and the web 234 Robustness and Internet prostitution 237 Conclusions 238 VICE VERDICTS (V): PORNOGRAPHY AND THE INTERNET 239 8 Free Trade and Federalism 247 Pre-prohibition: U.S. interstate alcohol trafficking 250 Post-prohibition: U.S. internet wine sales 252 Alcohol in the European Union 253 Other vices in the EU: cannabis, snus, and gambling 256 The World Trade Organization and Internet gambling 258 Global governance: the United Nations drug conventions 262 Why vice should win...and why the victory must be limited 264 VICE VERDICTS (VI): MEDICAL MARIJUANA 266 Conclusions 268 A robust approach to a new vice 268 A robust conclusion 269 Appendix: Vice Statistics 273 References 279 Index 295