Category: reason

States that permit recreational marijuana sales tend to have lower rates of vaping-related hospitalizations, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has linked vitamin E acetate, an adulterant typically reserved to the black market,  to 48 of the 51 hospitalized patients it has examined. Governments have often responded to these contaminations by enacting bans on e-cigarettes and other vaping products, but the CDC data suggest they should take the opposite approach.

As with prohibitions throughout history, these bans are misguided. They would push consumers to black markets, where vaping products are more dangerous. In fact, despite the disproportionate popularity of nicotine vaporizers, of the 1,782 hospitalized patients who were asked what type of product they were using, 80 percent reported use of vaporizers containing THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. And due to marijuana’s illegality, this figure is likely an underestimate, as patients are likely underreporting THC use to avoid potential prosecution. 

The CDC has also found THC in the majority of lung fluid samples it has tested in conjunction with contaminates like vitamin E acetate, coconut oil, and limonene, while acknowledging that THC wouldn’t necessarily remain in the lungs. But this strong relationship is not because THC is more dangerous to vaporize than nicotine, but because THC vapor fluids are typically purchased on the black market.

Vaping first emerged in U.S. markets in 2007 as a safer alternative to cigarettes—it provides nicotine without the harmful tar in burned tobacco. Critics cite the possible adverse effects of nicotine, especially for teens, while harm reduction groups point to potential health benefits of vaping over smoking traditional cigarettes and their carcinogenic tar.

Until recently, the consensus supported smokers switching to e-cigarettes. Last March, however, reports of lung illnesses and deaths from vaping began to emerge, with 2,506 hospitalizations and 54 deaths reported to the CDC so far this year. In September, the CDC initially advised consumers of all vaping products to stop use immediately. But at the end of October, CDC Director Robert Redfield warned that THC products, particularly those purchased from “informal sources,” seemed to be playing a major role in the lung injury outbreak. Redfield added that users of nicotine e-cigarettes should not return to smoking conventional cigarettes.

The federal government still outlaws recreational marijuana use in every state, as does state law in 39 of the 50 states. This means that THC vaping products are usually purchased in black markets and subject to their dangers.

Strikingly, states that permit recreational marijuana sales are experiencing far fewer lung injuries. Alaska, which voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2014, did not report a single vaping-related hospitalization until one case surfaced in December. Overall, states with legalized marijuana have reported approximately 6.7 fewer lung injuries per million people than states that have not yet permitted recreational cannabis sales, according to our analysis of CDC data.

There are some outliers among the states permitting recreational marijuana. Despite voting to fully legalize marijuana in 2016, Massachusetts currently has the highest vaping hospitalization rate among legalizing states at about 10 cases per million people. But Massachusetts also only has 33 operating marijuana dispensaries, which implies insufficient access to the legal market. In contrast, the City of Denver has 171 recreational dispensaries alone. Regulations restricting access to legal suppliers correlate with higher rates of vaping hospitalizations, but every state that permits recreational marijuana is still below the average of all states.

There are fewer injuries from vaping in legalized marijuana states because consumers have less need to access the black market for THC vaping products. Potentially dangerous additives like vitamin E acetate have been found almost exclusively in underground vaping products, a danger that fades in states with legal marijuana.

Vapers—like those who use alcohol, recreational drugs, and most products in general—are better off buying products in legal markets, where numerous mechanisms moderate the dangers of risky products. Competition between suppliers leads to safer products, with above-ground firms developing reputations for higher quality products. Legal producers and independent groups like Consumer Reports test products for safety and report this information. And if these mechanisms fail, tort liability can hold legal suppliers accountable.

In underground markets, these mechanisms are absent or less effective. Consumers face greater difficulty finding a competing product if they doubt the quality from any given supplier. They also cannot easily sue for damages without also criminalizing themselves. Sending illegal products to a lab for testing is prohibitively expensive and legally risky for both buyers and sellers. And because they don’t compete in an open market with legal protections, sellers of illegal drugs often push products that are adulterated to mask their low purity and increase profit margins. That’s why expensive, poppy-derived heroin is so often cut with cheap, synthetic fentanyl, and why THC vape pens on the black market are cut with cheap vitamin E acetate.

Numerous episodes illustrate that driving markets underground via prohibition or overregulation means riskier products. Prohibition in the 1920s caused thousands of alcohol poisonings from tainted or mislabeled alcohol. Heroin prohibition, combined with its restrictions on clean syringes, exacerbated the HIV/AIDS outbreak because of needle sharing. And regulation of prescription painkillers has spurred heroin and fentanyl overdoses as consumers switched to underground opioids.

The recent vaping-related hospitalizations and deaths fit this pattern.

Rather than restricting vaping products, a better policy would legalize marijuana broadly and avoid strong restrictions on nicotine or THC vaping products. Prohibition and overregulation drive these products underground and make them more dangerous. It may be counterintuitive to many lawmakers, but legalization, not prohibition, is the answer to making vaping safer.

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Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

On January 22, the Supreme Court will consider whether states may exclude religious schools from generally available scholarship programs, or whether such exclusions violate the U.S. Constitution. Espinoza v. Montana Dept of Revenue is an IJ case. Click here for more from The New York Times.

• Pomona, N.Y. (pop. 3,200) residents and leaders with preference for “zero population growth” enact four zoning changes that will impede development of new college where students will train to be rabbinical judges and live with their families, bringing perhaps 4,500 Orthodox/Hasidic Jews into the village. Second Circuit (after 47 pages of facts): Two of the zoning changes were susceptible to an inference of religious animus and violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, notwithstanding that residents would have vigorously opposed any project bringing that many new residents.
• Inmate at Lubbock, Tex. prison alleges he was forced to stay naked for several days in a cell in which every surface was covered with human excrement. He could neither eat nor drink for fear of contamination, and rather than fixing the problem, prison officials merely laughed at him. Fifth Circuit: Qualified immunity. The law clearly established that prisoners couldn’t be kept in cells teeming with human waste for months on end, but it hadn’t yet covered a stay of only six days. It’s clearly established going forward, though.
• Prisoner en route to dental appointment overpowers Cameron County, Tex. officer, seizes handgun, and forces his way into a home. He shoots and kills an occupant, steals a car, and is killed after a high-speed chase. Can two other occupants of the home and the victim’s estate sue the gov’t? Fifth Circuit: Though at least six other circuits recognize the state-created danger theory of liability, we still don’t. But even if we did, these plaintiffs would still be out of luck because they didn’t allege the gov’t knew that plaintiffs themselves were in danger (as opposed to people generally in the vicinity).
• En route to a mental health facility and high on methamphetamines, man jumps out of his fiancée’s car at a traffic light while holding a three-inch knife, wanders to a residential neighborhood. Elizabethtown, Ky. police order him to drop the knife. Instead, he takes a step toward them with his knife raised “in a stabbing position” and tells the officers they’ll need to kill him. They do. Excessive force? Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): No.
• The system Michigan officials have set up for prisoners to report rape “is a classic case of Orwellian doublethink,” says the Sixth Circuit, and three inmates who allege they were sexually assaulted as juveniles while housed in adult facilities (a policy since abandoned) can proceed with their suit.
• Feds charge defendant with illegal reentry and, during the sentencing phase, make several comments about undocumented immigrants’ taking American jobs. Sixth Circuit: The gov’t’s arguments were “blatantly inappropriate” and “unbecoming of the quality of lawyering expected from the United States Attorney’s Office.” But because the district court did not rely on those arguments, the defendant’s sentence stands.
• During drug conspiracy trial, prosecutor asks witnesses to relay out-of-court statements of unnamed informants. Which violates the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, so the judge orders the prosecutor to stop. And yet the prosecutor does not—ultimately committing over a dozen violations on the first day of trial alone—so the judge grants a mistrial. Defendant: The prosecutor deliberately did it to cause a mistrial; the entire indictment must be dismissed. Sixth Circuit: There’s no evidence of that; a new trial does not violate the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause.
• Farmington Hills, Mich. condo association bans, among other things, dogs, cats, and “immoral” activities. But smoking is allowed, which aggravates an asthmatic resident. Does the policy violate federal housing discrimination law? The Sixth Circuit says no.
• Those arrested for misdemeanor crimes in Giles County, Tenn. are detained after arrest until they pay bail—an amount set without reference to their ability to pay, without a determination of whether they pose a danger to the community or risk of flight, and without their presence. Several arrestees obtain a preliminary injunction against the county and sheriff for this system. Going forward, the injunction will allow bail if accompanied by evidence of the arrestee’s ability to pay, necessity of detention, and alternatives to bail. Sixth Circuit: Indeed. And, contrary to the county and sheriff’s arguments, the plaintiffs need not have sued the judges for their actions of setting bail. The county and sheriff play an active role in the challenged detention.
• After extensive remediation efforts, the site of a former Army munitions plant near Baraboo, Wisc., once the world’s largest propellant manufacturing facility, is now suitable for recreational use. Seventh Circuit: No reason state officials can’t allow two recreational uses opposed by plaintiffs: training dogs to hunt (on roughly 2% of the park) and off-road motorcycling (six days a year, among other restrictions).
• Allegation: As five Las Vegas police pin down unresisting concertgoer, a sixth officer chokes him unconscious. Ninth Circuit: Could be excessive force or analogous state law claims: assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. To trial this must go. Judge Fletcher (concurring): And it’s high time the Supreme Court clarified when exactly appellate courts have jurisdiction over disputed facts; current practice has resulted in “analytic chaos.”
• Huuuge Casino, purveyors of a smartphone casino app, must face a user’s suit (claiming that charging users for chips violates Washington state gambling and consumer protections law) in federal court, says the Ninth Circuit (with pictures). Arbitration is not mandatory when companies bury their terms of use “twenty thousand leagues under the sea.”
• In 1911, the feds grant a right-of-way to the owner of a reservoir outside Laramie, Wyo. Over the years, people buy the adjacent land and build homes and cabins. Yikes! Flooding damages many of the properties. Double yikes! The reservoir owner then decides to increase the amount of water in the reservoir. Landowners: It flooded because you exceeded the right-of-way. Owner: The right-of-way covers whatever the reservoir occupies, so we can add water as we please. Tenth Circuit: The landowners are right.
• And in en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will reconsider its decision reversing the conviction of a woman who slapped a fellow passenger on a flight to Los Angeles. The original panel had held the trial was improperly held in Los Angeles because the slap occurred somewhere over the Great Plains—and not in the Central District of California’s airspace.

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• Dare Me.  USA.  Sunday, December 29, 10 p.m.
• Deputy. Fox. Thursday, January 2, 9 p.m.

It may sound like a marketing slogan for The CW, but the aphorism that “There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls” actually comes from a different network. It’s spoken by the narrator of Dare Me, USA’s new cheerleader noir. (How’s that for a phrase you never thought you’d hear?)  And whatever else you may think about Dare Me, it certainly lives up to the narration.

At their best, the mean girlz of Dare Me are snotty, jealous, bullying, and predatory. At their worst—well, they’re much worse. The first episode opens with a creepy, underlit scene in which one of the characters gropes for an object that, when she comes up with it, turns out to be a blood-smeared cell phone. Who it belongs to, what happened to her (or, maybe, him) and why are the mystery that slowly (much too slowly, many are likely to feel) unfurls over the next 10 hours.

Dare Me is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Megan Abbott, about a dying rust belt town where the boys dream about joining the army as a ticket out and the girls pass time shoplifting tampons and getting fingerbanged by football players. About the only thing that still works is the cheerleading squad, upon which the town elders are depending to put them back on the map. They’ve hired a new, highly regarded coach and even plan to build a new stadium to showcase not the football team (“got the shit beat out of it again,” one of the boosters notes dismissively at a strategy meeting) but the cheerleaders.

But the arrival of the new coach Colette French (Willa Fitzgerald, Goldfinch) creates a series of interlocking triangular relationships, all of them seething in ambition and sexuality, including smoky hints of repressed homosexuality. The primary one is between the coach and her top two cheerleaders: French clashes immediately with the squad’s spiteful captain Beth (Australian TV actress Marlo Kelly) and Beth’s loyal lieutenant Addy (Herizen Guardiola, The Get Down). And when Beth gets demoted, she starts spying on French, looking for means to wreak revenge.

That search seems likely to be fruitful. For one thing, French is not exactly a plucky, uplifting Ms. Keating out there. She seethes with contempt for her cheerleaders: “These girls are nothing but box wine and attitude.” (To be fair, their parents do not exactly disagree. “Lazy, raised on Ritalin and free porn,” says one scornful mom.)  Her casually harsh comments about the girls’ bodies drive at least one of them to bulimia. And then there’s French’s curiously passive relationship with her husband, seemingly devoid of any real passion, even though they’re only in their 20s.

All these undercurrents swirl Dare Me into increasingly dark waters. Abbott, the novelist, is also on the writing staff of the show, and her acknowledged fascination with 1930s noir storytellers like James M. Cain shows throughout Dare Me. (Sometimes literally—in one scene, some of the characters are watching the film version of Cain’s book Double Indemnity on TV.)

But that’s not always to the show’s benefit. Dare Me is long on atmosphere, short on plot, and distressingly overburdened with anachronistic dialogue. Do Generation Q cheerleaders really crack hard-bitten jokes about Jayne Mansfield? (Though Ames is not bad when she sticks to the right century. Beth to the vomiting bulimic girl: “You’re got no gag reflex.” Addy, demurring: “That’s not what her boyfriend says.”)  For that matter, the whole premise of teenagers wallowing in malaise over being trapped in small towns seems like a relic of Depression-era America. Even in the dread, nameless little town of Dare Me, Kardashians and cat videos are only a click away.

There are also thick whiffs of anachronism drifting through Fox’s new cop drama Deputy. Stephen Dorff (True Detective) plays a sixth-generation Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy named Bill Hollister who believes the job should still be done as it was in the days when his great-great-great grandfather was gunned down by bandits on Sunset Boulevard when it was still a cattle trail. Literally: In one scene, he lassos a getaway SVU and throws it off a freeway overpass; in another, he and his men charge a narcotrafficker hideout on horseback, guns blazing as if he were the Lone Ranger in pursuit of Butch Cavendish.

Fortunately, most of the literal manifestations of the Marshal-Dillon-had-it-right leitmotif fade away, but Deputy is still a kind of a non-redneck Walking Tall. Hollister, a sergeant barely clinging to his job for what his supervisors call “his history of recalcitrance, insubordination and disregard for the chain of command”—most recently, he tipped off the Mexican-American community about an upcoming ICE roundup of undocumented workers—gets flukily and temporarily elevated to sheriff by an archaic succession law. He promptly announces that the reign of bureaucratic terror over the cops is at an end: “This department has lost its way … Too many save-asses and not enough ass-kickers.”

What follows is an orgy of politically correct populist rage. Hollister blows away much of L.A. County’s narcotrafficker population and continues sabotaging ICE operations. But he also scuttles a plan to get cops with a tendency to overuse physical force off the streets. Whether the contradictory themes are part of a conscious attempt by the producers (Will Beall and David Ayer, both veterans of the Training Day family of movies and TV shows) to illustrate the dangers of mixing Nietzsche with cops, or just a cynical attempt to persuade liberals that mindless violence can still be fun, remains unclear.

Putting aside Deputy‘s peculiar politics and red-meat aesthetic, though, it has undeniable appeal. The intricately staged shootouts and car chases are gleefully frequent, the dialogue crackling, (how are you not going to love a drag-queen informant who declares that Xanadu is “the Citizen Kane of roller-skate rock operas”?)  and the characters, including Dorff’s, are surprisingly nuanced. Among the most interesting is a lippy, 105-pound female deputy (Bex Taylor-Klaus, Arrow) who’s been assigned—very much against his will—to Hollister as his driver and bodyguard. A former Pentagon aide, she turns out to have a much better grasp of the sheriff’s department’s politics than does Hollister himself. “Scowlers you can trust,” she advises him. “Smilers, you gotta worry about.” Said with a scowl.

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Legal recreational sales of marijuana began this month in Michigan, and they are scheduled to begin next week in Illinois. Michigan, where marijuana was legalized by a 2018 ballot initiative, and Illinois, where it was legalized this year by the state legislature, are the first two Midwestern states to allow recreational use, and their cannabis taxes reflect a divergence of views about how to balance the desire for new revenue against the goal of displacing the black market.

Michigan’s Proposal 1 established a 10 percent excise tax, in addition to the standard state sales tax of 6 percent. There are no local sales taxes. That makes Michigan one of the lowest-tax states for marijuana. The combined levy is similar to what cannabis buyers pay in Oregon, which has a 17 percent excise tax and no general sales tax. Maine has a cultivation tax of $335 per pound (about $21 per ounce) and a general sales tax of 10 percent. Alaska has a $50-per-ounce cultivation tax but no excise or sales taxes.

Illinois, by contrast, will be collecting a 7 percent tax from growers and various excise taxes (10 percent on buds, 20 percent on infused products, and 25 percent on products containing more than 35 percent THC) in addition to the general state sales tax of 6.25 percent and local sales taxes as high as 4.75 percent. The combined sales tax in Chicago is 10.25 percent, making the total retail levy more than 30 percent for edibles, in addition to the impact of the cultivation tax. That means edible buyers in Chicago will pay more than twice the taxes as edible buyers in Ann Arbor.

That’s without taking into account local “occupation taxes” on cannabis retailers, which can be up to 3 percent of gross receipts under state law. Cook County, which includes Chicago, plans to impose the maximum allowable rate.

The Illinois levies are not quite as high as the burden in Washington, which charges a 37 percent marijuana excise tax on top of general sales taxes that total 10.1 percent in Seattle, or in California, where the combined taxes can be as high as 45 percent. But Illinois legislators do not seem very concerned about making it harder for state-licensed marijuana businesses to compete with illegal dealers, even though the upshot could be less revenue than might be collected at a lower rate with a bigger base.

In California, where state officials originally expected $1 billion in annual revenue from marijuana taxes, the actual take for the fiscal year that ended in June was $288 million. High tax rates are not the only reason for the disappointing revenue: Licensing lags, onerous regulations, and local bans also have helped preserve the black market, which still accounts for nearly three-quarters of sales two years after legal recreational sales began. But the taxes certainly don’t help.

It will be instructive to see if Michigan, which also has the advantage of a more extensive medical marijuana industry, fares better than Illinois in shifting consumers to the legal market. The promise of new revenue for the government, which may strike libertarians as an argument against legalization, nevertheless has played a conspicuous role in persuading the public that it’s time to end the war on weed. But even politicians who are in it for the money should recognize that it’s against their interest to milk cannabis consumers so much that they stick with the pot dealers who collect no taxes at all.

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The American aesthetic is tied to cowboy boots. That means not just boots made of tanned cowhide, but also those made from the skin of the American alligator. For more than a century, Americans have obsessed over alligator for everything from fashion accessories to the animal’s meat. We love alligators so much we nearly hunted them to extinction, landing the animal on the endangered species list from 1967 to 1987. 

But starting in the 1980s, Americans figured out how to balance our love of all things gator with the species’ own welfare. Louisiana led the way by getting private landowners, alligator hunters and farmers, and conservationists all on the same page. The result is a market for alligator byproducts that doesn’t threaten alligators’ existence. 

In California, however, the alligator trade ends on January 1. A new state ban on the sale and import of alligator and crocodile products will make it a misdemeanor to sell gator products. The law is part of a slew of new animal-related bans in California set to be enacted in coming years. New regulations will also prohibit pet stores from selling dogs or cats that aren’t rescued from shelters or adoption centers, as well as ban fur sales and foie gras, a traditional French delicacy that’s developed by over-feeding ducks and geese to enlarge their livers. 

For the domestic alligator industry, which spans across the nation’s southeastern sector, from North Carolina to Texas’ Rio Grande River, California’s ban could jeopardize an industry that actually protects alligators, advocates say. The Golden State makes up roughly 30 percent of the world’s alligator skin market, with Beverly Hills its epicenter. Louisiana, meanwhile, is the nation’s leading producer of alligator products. California’s ban will hurt the fashionistas on Rodeo Drive and conservationist farmers in the bayou, as well as other state’s alligator industries. 

Louisiana officials say California’s ban is unconstitutional. In fact, California banned the sale of alligator skins and meats in 1970, but has opted to repeatedly renew an exemption, says Cole Garrett, an attorney for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The exemption was most recently renewed in 2014. This year, despite comments from industry officials, it wasn’t. 

Proponents of the ban, including the Defenders of Wildlife, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity, applauded California lawmakers’ decision. They argue the ban will help discourage illegal poaching and trade. 

But Louisiana and other gator-centric businesses are fighting back. Earlier this month, the businesses that “represent every step in the chain of commerce for alligator” filed a lawsuit opposing the ban in the Eastern District of California. “Indeed, irreparable harms are already taking effect in anticipation of the impending trade ban, including canceled orders, lost business transactions and sales, and halted or dramatically curtailed production,” the complaint says. “Other imminent irreparable harms include liquidated inventories, ‘fire sales’ of products, job eliminations, cancellations of entire business lines, dissolutions of businesses, and potential relocation of several California plaintiffs outside the state.”

Within days of the industry lawsuit, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a separate lawsuit challenging California’s ban in the same federal court. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), the agency that oversees the state’s $80 million per-year alligator industry. The lawsuit notes that the alligator trade has received support from conservationists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species experts. “California has nevertheless attempted to destroy the market for American alligator products notwithstanding the fact that no such alligators live in California,” the lawsuit says. 

“When one states decides to take their ball and go home, that has implications throughout the nation,” Garrett says. “While the other state’s rights argument is one, that is why we do have a federal government and there are some regulations that kind of keep things within reason and on an even playing field.” 

The LWDF has been integral in recovery of the American alligator species, Louisiana officials argue. Despite the fact that 1 million wild alligators and 6 million farmed gators have been slaughtered since the 1970s—for meat, skins, teeth—Louisiana’s alligator population is actually booming as it currently stands, and has been for decades. According to the state, the past two nest counts have produced the highest alligator tallies in decades. In the wild, there are roughly 2 million animals today, says Amity Bass, a biologist at the LDWF. On farms, there are about 900,000 animals. “We went from, in the late ’60s, early ’70s, having animals in the thousands, and now having them in the millions—they’re doing quite well,” Bass says. 

Animal rights advocates admit the species’ population has rebounded in recent years. “However, other crocodilian species, which include alligators, caimans, crocodiles and gharials, have not been as lucky,” writes Elly Pepper, a wildlife advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a blog post for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Continuing to allow for a legal trade in crocodilian parts, even if limited, will put another nail in the coffin for these species by exacerbating the parallel illegal trade in these products.” The species’ likeness in the appearance of their hide and other products makes it almost impossible to tell them apart, she notes. 

That may be true, Bass says, but it’s not accurate as it relates to Louisiana’s rigorous regulation of the industry, such as the tagging system that complies with Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. When a gator is harvested, Louisiana requires the harvester to affix a state-licensed tag, as well as a CITES tag that denotes its origin. “So we know each animal that was harvested, where it came from, the metrics on it,” Bass says. “When that hide is tanned, before it is shipped, our staff expect each and every single hide and account for it. So the possibility for fraud, I would say, is barely miniscule.” 

Neither is it an issue that’s solely related to jobs, as the business groups’ lawsuit might suggest. If the ban goes into effect, Louisiana’s lawsuit notes that the state’s private “landowners will be forced to greatly reduce or cease their erosion control efforts”—which they do to protect alligator environs—”because they will be unable to economically sustain those efforts, resulting in irreparable harm to their property as well as harm to Louisiana’s sovereign environmental interests in wetland preservation.” 

Roughly 90 percent of the Louisiana land on which alligators are raised is privately owned, Bass estimates, meaning private landowners are a major focus of the state’s wildlife management efforts. “The industry has absolutely helped that,” she continues. “The funds from the income of alligators helps to provide incentives for wetland conservation and management here in coastal Louisiana. The incomes derived from [those efforts] help us to manage the species effectively, because our agency is involved in every aspect of alligators, from the egg out on the landscape up until it’s shipped out of state.” 

Louisiana state officials not only set the number of alligators that can be harvested on each citizen’s private property, they also have rules for how many eggs can be harvested off of a property—a large source of their income, Bass says—based on the habitat and acreage. An agreement is made with the farmer for a set amount of money for the farmer to collect the eggs. The farmer then takes the eggs, hatches them on his farm, and returns at least 10 percent of what hatched back onto that property. It’s a beneficial system for both species and landowner, Bass says. “What they’re putting back are animals they’ve had in captivity for a year,” she continues. “They grow larger, have a better chance of survival. So it’s really helping to boost the population. I think that’s an important part, too.” 

If you take the system away, advocates argue, you’re taking away the economic incentive of having a dangerous animal on your property. Without the incentive, the population will almost undoubtedly decline. “Economic incentives are a very powerful reason to protect species and habitats,” says Richard Thomas, a spokesperson for the group TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, in an email. He gives the analogous example of the harvesting of Toco Toucan chicks by indigenous Paraguayan communities. After CITES banned the export of the species, the economic option was no longer available for the families on the community land on which the toucan nests. Instead, the communities replaced their income source with charcoal made from trees. “Of course, charcoal can only be harvested and sold once,” Thomas says. “This was surely an unintended, but in retrospect, rather surprising consequence of the ban.” 

While this might seem, from a distance, like red state versus blue, liberal versus conservative, Bass doesn’t see it that way. “I think a lot of it is based, perhaps, off an emotional reaction,” she says. “Alligators, not only is it an economic thing here in our state, it’s also a cultural icon as well, and a lot of people making a living off alligators.” Animal rights activists, meanwhile, prefer prohibition over balancing the rights and welfare of people and critters.  

For Bass and other members of Louisiana gator’s communities, California’s new law stands to undermine a major ecological accomplishment. “I don’t know of other examples that are comparable, where not only have we recovered a species that was in danger, we’ve helped to create an industry around it. That industry helps to support conservation of the species.”

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