On drugs, put very simply, the prohibition of cocaine has produced crack and meth. I'm not FOR any of them, but the alternative is certainly more damaging.

They were talking about drug and alcohol testing for kids in school on the news this morning. What a great way to introduce them very early to the ways of Big Brother! It doesn't take a test to notice of kids that are pie-eyed, stink of alcohol, have withdrawn fomr extra-curriculars, and are failing classes.

I wonder if we could find some legally sound way to raise the price on the domestic swill that the kids are guzzling, as opposed to the stuff that JJ presumably keeps on hand?

Sure. You can tax on a volume (per gallon) basis. It could also be possible to create a regressive tax with higher tax rates on lower cost items. Any attempt to do this will, no doubt, meet with screams about disadvantaging the poor.

Given how ineffective Prohibition was in the case of booze–and how universally that is acknowledged–it’s interesting that it remains the tool of choice decades later for illicit narcotics.

The arguments for alcohol and drugs like, say, heroin are somewhat different. There are millions, possibly billions, of people who consume alcohol without abusing it. Whether to abuse or not is completely beyond the control of the consumer of heroin. There are plenty of anecdotes about being hooked with the first use.

I don't know that I'd oppose any of Mark's proposals. Some have, shall we say, technical problems. For example, while the laws on driving while intoxicated are generally accepted as applying to drugs other than alcohol as well as alcohol, I don't know that tools for measuring level of intoxication in other drugs are quite as developed or non-invasive as breath-o-lyzers. I suspect that there would be civil liberties objections.

In general I am not in favor of legalizing drugs-at least not the harder/scarier ones. I am in favor of decriminalizing possession and use, but I am not all that keen on meth labs in the neighborhood or meth being sold legally at the corner drug store. I think there is good reason to restrict the use of these, and I wonder if decriminalizing some of the other drugs may not lower demand for some of the scarier stuff.

I also think whether drugs are decriminalized or legalized that employers should have some ability to fire and refuse to hire based on drug use.

I'm not sure that's true. Kleiman's point, though, seems to be that focusing on self-harm is counterproductive so we should worry about the negative externalities.

Further, I'm not sure the evidence shows that making crack, etc. illegal has diminished its use or abuse.

1. Alcohol accounts for more than 3/4 the total substance abuse.

2. Alcohol is the drug most readily available legally (acknowledging the drinking age).

3. Therefore we should make other currently illegal drugs legal.

I can understand the "Prohibition leads to criminal exploitation of the market" as an argument for legalizing a drug. But if an already legalized drug (Alcohol) is causing most of the substance abuse, wouldn't that argue that legalization might cause much more severe substance abuse. You can certainly do yourself harm with alcohol, but is it even in the same category as crack, speed, pcp, etc on being addictive and abusing your system?

Yes, but the combination with machines that propel us at 50 mph is much more recent.

Kleiman acknowledges the difficulty:

Obviously, such a ban could not be perfectly enforced. But reducing the frequency and flagrancy of drinking behavior by problem drunks somewhat is far better than not reducing it at all. A ban on drinking by bad drinkers (unlike the current ban on drinking by those under 21) would have an obvious moral basis. Evading it, for example by buying liquor for someone on the “Do Not Drink” list, would be clearly wrong and worth punishing. Moreover, offenders would not easily be able to drink in bars, restaurants or other public places, which means they would be less likely to drink and then drive or cause public disturbances.

What he's aiming at is minimizing the consequences of intoxication rather than trying to control substances that can be used responsibly.

Well, one does not have to go to a bar to buy alcohol. Rather, you are going to see the same things happen with this system that under-age drinkers currently do - get others to buy their booze for them, false ID's (or false drinking licenses), etc. If someone wants a drink bad enough he is going to find a way to get one, regardless of the legality of it.

At least with the system we have now, a drunk gets his license pulled and it gets placed on their record. That punishment has real-life consequences, while getting a mythical drinking license taken away really does not do much.

This attack on alcohol seems misguided. It is and has been a part of our culture for thousands of years. Not just a substance to get high on it has blended into some of most cherished rituals. Having the government (big brother) step in to shield us from ourselves will not sit well with citizens let alone the industry.

Raising the tax to the level proposed would become a form of prohibition. Taxing it into unaffordability would again anger citizens, especially the poor who would be hit disproportionately. Other unintended consequences of this quasi-prohibition could be a turning to other drugs, black markets, increased theft of the now more valuable commodity.

I especially dislike Kleiman's statement "The average damage done by that can of beer...". Since when do cans of beer do damage? And when taxed will less damage occur or will different damage occur? A general tax on stupid people would do more good.

People like Kleiman need to understand we will never rid the world of bad things happening. Just putting a new tax in place to change moral attitudes is really not the place of a government established under the consent of those governed. He has lost sight of personal liberty in a quest for societal perfection.

As to the drinking age, Mark admits he's nearly alone on this among the experts. Here's his rationale:

There is good evidence that age restrictions reduce underage alcohol abuse and drunk driving. That is true even taking into account the inducement for kids to drink created by making drinking a badge of adulthood and the difficulty of teaching responsible drinking practices to teenagers who are forbidden to drink at all.

But against the benefits we must weigh the costs of making the vast majority of adolescents into lawbreakers. Nearly nine high-school seniors in ten report drinking. Criminalizing statistically normal behavior trivializes lawbreaking by enacting a law that almost everyone breaks, and breaks without apparent harm: Most teenage drinkers, like most adult drinkers, don’t have a drinking problem. The current drinking age has also normalized the acquisition and use of false identification documents, which seems like a bad idea in the age of terror.

One thing I'd say about the drinking age is that the Europeans seem to have no qualms about young kids drinking alcohol in very small amounts. In my own experience, having a (small) glass of wine with the parents on occasion even at a very young age meant that I never viewed it as a taboo and felt the need to guzzle large quantities of it in secrecy later. Then again, I may just lack the alcoholism gene.

I totally didn't get why MARK wanted to ditch the minimum drinking age, but OTOH, the "drinking license" seems like sheer genius, at least until someone explains otherwise to me.