Vice Squad

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Toward Drug Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:48 PM

A new working paper, related to my TEDx talk, is now available on ssrn. It's "Toward Drug Control: Exclusion and Buyer Licensing." The abstract is below, and the paper can be downloaded here: Here's the abstract:

The uncertainties associated with the precise nature of legalization regimes and with their expected outcomes sometimes are used to justify the maintenance of drug prohibition. This paper details the role that buyer licensing and exclusion might play in implementing a low-risk, post-prohibition drug regulatory regime. Buyer licensing and exclusion provide assistance to those who exhibit or are worried about self-control problems with drugs, while not being significantly constraining upon those who are informed and satisfied drug consumers. Relative to prohibition, licensing and self-exclusion can be part of a drug regulatory structure that is much more finely tuned to the risks of harms stemming from drug use.

Update, August 2012: The revised, published version is available (for those with access to SpringerLink) here. The revisions are meaningful, in that a "double default" system of legal access to currently illegal drugs is developed; I will post more about this system on Vice Squad soon, I hope.

Labels: drugs, licensing, self-exclusion, solipsism