Tag: posts

• Democrat Terry McAuliffe was
  elected governor in a tight race in Virginia, challenging the
  notion the place is a blue state yet, while in traditionally
  Democrat New Jersey Republican Chris Christie
  easily won re-election, and Bill de Blasio
  becomes the first Democrat to be elected mayor of deep blue New
  York City since David Dinkins in 1989. Will he last as long? In
  other cities, Marty Walsh
  won the mayor’s race in Boston, and former prosecutor Mike
  Duggan
  won the mayor’s race in Detroit.
• Kathleen Sebelius will be
  back on Capitol Hill to testify more about how she’s
  accountable for Obamacare’s problems and how they’ll be fixed
  anyway.
• Ladar Levison, who ran the e-mail service used by NSA leaker
  Edward Snowden before being forced by government actions to shut
  down, plans to
  launch a surveillance-proof and easy –to-use se-mail service
  next year.
• At least one person was
  killed by a series of bomb blasts outside the Chinese Communist
  Party’s headquarters in the provincial capital of Taiyuan.
• France is
  not planning on delaying its withdrawal from Mali any further
  in the face of a resurgence of violence that included the killing
  of two French journalist.
• Diplomats from Iran, Israel, other Middle Eastern countries and
  even the US
  reportedly met in secret last month to talk about the
  possibility of organizing a conference on the banning of nuclear
  weapons in the region.

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After Carol Anne Bond discovered that her husband
had impregnated her best friend, the Pennsylvania microbiologist
took revenge by spreading toxic chemicals on her ex-friend’s car
door, mailbox, and door knob. The poisonous prank was mostly
ineffectual, inflicting nothing worse than a minor thumb burn.
Senior Editor Jacob Sullum says Bond’s prosecution, the focus of
a case the Supreme Court heard yesterday, could do a lot
more damage. Defending its decision to make a federal case out of
what sounds like fodder for a tabloid talk show, the Justice
Department argues that treaties can give Congress new powers.
Sullum says that theory threatens to destroy the constitutional
division of authority between the states and the national
government.

View this article.

Greg Sims, a science teacher at
Florida’s Lake Brantley High School, has been suspended for five
days for taping a student’s hands together and trying
to tape
her mouth shut. Sims was reportedly trying to keep her from
disrupting his class.

Greg Sims, a science teacher at
Florida’s Lake Brantley High School, has been suspended for five
days for taping a student’s hands together and trying
to tape
her mouth shut. Sims was reportedly trying to keep her from
disrupting his class.

In a race where he was polling with a
double-digit lead
just last week, Democrat Terry McAuliffe
won the Virginia governor’s race in a squeaker tonight, with a
margin of victory of
just over 2 percent, receiving 47.6 percent to Republican Ken
Cuccinelli’s 45.42 percent. For libertarians the bigger news might
be that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis pulled 6.6 percent, or
more than 142,000 votes, five times the vote total Libertarian
presidential candidate Gary Johnson won last November, despite a
significantly lower turnout. Democrats
tried to make the election against Cuccinelli a referendum on
“Tea Party extremists,” and by that measure they lost; Cuccinelli’s
margin of defeat being about two-thirds the size of Mitt Romney’s
last year.

Cuccinelli supporters called Sarvis a spoiler before the polling
places even opened, with Ron Paul going so far as to say it would
be “insane”
for anyone to vote for Sarvis because he expressed support for the
idea of a mileage tax, something the Reason Foundation’s Adrian
Moore believes is worth a try. At campaign rallies, Sarvis pointed
out the tax doesn’t require GPS tracking—a standard odometer
already tracks mileage. Scott Shackford pointed out last week that
Sarvis
drew support both from Democrats and Republicans, something
that suggests libertarianism’s potency as a catalyst for
coalition-building around issues of freedom. Nevertheless, some
Republicans disappointed by such a close loss are sure to blame
Sarvis anyway, believing his votes “belonged” to the GOP, an
argument Nick Gillespie rightly took down
last week too.

In the other governor’s race tonight, Libertarian Kenneth Kaplan
won .6 percent of the vote, the same as Gary Johnson last year, in
an election that saw Republican Chris Christie win re-election in a
landslide in the traditionally blue state of New Jersey.

Read Brian Doherty’s interview with Sarvis from last month

here, and an overview of the Sarvis and Kaplan campaigns from
just yesterday
here.

Beverly Hills City Council has an urgent matter at hand! At
tonight’s meeting, the council will consider an “interim urgency
ordinance” that will declare a “moratorium of the establishment and
further operation of any electronic cigarette retailer.”
Remarkably, they are giving retailers two weeks notice:

“In order to allow retailers to amortize any investment in
e-cigarettes made before the adoption of the ordinance, retailers
who purchased e-cigarettes for resale prior to the date of adoption
of the ordinance will be able to continue to sell such cigarettes
for a period of two weeks after the adoption of the ordinance.
Selling e-cigarettes beyond the two weeks is a misdemeanor and is
punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or imprisonment for up to
six months, or both.”

Along with the suggested moratorium on vape shops, there is a
separate
agenda item that will extend all present smoking regulations to
electronic cigarettes. Read the rest of the proposed ordinance

here.

Proponents of e-cigarettes fear that rash, local legislation
like this will set a precedent that will severly impact the
industry as a whole. For all the reasons that e-cigarettes
shouldn’t be regulated, watch
E-Cigarettes: Second-hand Smoke, Vaping, and the Price of FDA
Regulations.

Which is more troubling: that
Toronto’s mayor has smoked crack on at least one occasion (as he

admitted today) or that he attempts to mitigate that
transgression by saying he has a habit of getting so drunk that he
does stuff like that without remembering it? I’d say the latter
should be more worrisome to any Torontonian whose mind is not
clouded by arbitrary pharmacological prejudices. Here is what Mayor
Rob Ford told reporters today, after months of questions prompted
by a video that seemed to show him sucking on a crack pipe:

You asked me a question back in May, and you can repeat that
question. Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no, do I—am I
an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably, in one of my drunken
stupors, probably approximately about a year ago….

I wasn’t lying—you didn’t ask the correct questions. No, I’m not
an addict, and no, I do not do drugs. I made mistakes in the past,
and all I can do is apologize, but it is what it is….

I don’t even remember. Some of the stuff that you guys have seen
me—the state I’ve been in? It’s a problem.

No kidding. The New York Times notes
“several public occasions during which Mr. Ford acted boorishly and
appeared to be impaired.” Now he is saying—in his own defense, mind
you—that he frequently stumbles around town in a stupor, so what do
you expect? For all we know, smoking crack is the least of what
demon rum has driven him to.

As exercises in blame shifting go, I prefer Marion Barry’s

complaint, upon being caught on tape in a similarly
embarrassing situation, that the “bitch set me up,” which had the
virtue of being true. By contrast, Ford says he “probably” did what
he is shown doing on video and furthermore that it was “about a
year ago,” but he can’t really be sure, what with all the
out-of-control drinking. He combines that wishy-washy confession
with a Clintonian claim that he spoke the literal truth when he
misled the public. At least Ford did not say that he lit the pipe
but did not inhale.

Still, despite crack’s fearsome reputation as a drug that
inevitably enslaves its users, there is littlle reason to doubt
Ford’s assertion that his not an crack addict. As I noted yesterday
in my Forbes column,
the vast majority of crack users do not become heavy consumers, and
those who do typically cut back or stop on their own. According to
the National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, just 3 percent of Americans who
have tried this supposedly irresistible and inescapable drug have
smoked it in the last month. Furthermore, research by Columbia
neuropsychopharmacologist Carl Hart shows that even heavy users can
moderate their behavior in response to incentives—something Ford
evidently has trouble doing with respect to alcohol. If a drug is
interfering with Ford’s ability to do his job, that drug does not
seem to be crack.

Which is more troubling: that
Toronto’s mayor has smoked crack on at least one occasion (as he

admitted today) or that he attempts to mitigate that
transgression by saying he has a habit of getting so drunk that he
does stuff like that without remembering it? I’d say the latter
should be more worrisome to any Torontonian whose mind is not
clouded by arbitrary pharmacological prejudices. Here is what Mayor
Rob Ford told reporters today, after months of questions prompted
by a video that seemed to show him sucking on a crack pipe:

You asked me a question back in May, and you can repeat that
question. Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no, do I—am I
an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably, in one of my drunken
stupors, probably approximately about a year ago….

I wasn’t lying—you didn’t ask the correct questions. No, I’m not
an addict, and no, I do not do drugs. I made mistakes in the past,
and all I can do is apologize, but it is what it is….

I don’t even remember. Some of the stuff that you guys have seen
me—the state I’ve been in? It’s a problem.

No kidding. The New York Times notes
“several public occasions during which Mr. Ford acted boorishly and
appeared to be impaired.” Now he is saying—in his own defense, mind
you—that he frequently stumbles around town in a stupor, so what do
you expect? For all we know, smoking crack is the least of what
demon rum has driven him to.

As exercises in blame shifting go, I prefer Marion Barry’s

complaint, upon being caught on tape in a similarly
embarrassing situation, that the “bitch set me up,” which had the
virtue of being true. By contrast, Ford says he “probably” did what
he is shown doing on video and furthermore that it was “about a
year ago,” but he can’t really be sure, what with all the
out-of-control drinking. He combines that wishy-washy confession
with a Clintonian claim that he spoke the literal truth when he
misled the public. At least Ford did not say that he lit the pipe
but did not inhale.

Still, despite crack’s fearsome reputation as a drug that
inevitably enslaves its users, there is littlle reason to doubt
Ford’s assertion that his not an crack addict. As I noted yesterday
in my Forbes column,
the vast majority of crack users do not become heavy consumers, and
those who do typically cut back or stop on their own. According to
the National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, just 3 percent of Americans who
have tried this supposedly irresistible and inescapable drug have
smoked it in the last month. Furthermore, research by Columbia
neuropsychopharmacologist Carl Hart shows that even heavy users can
moderate their behavior in response to incentives—something Ford
evidently has trouble doing with respect to alcohol. If a drug is
interfering with Ford’s ability to do his job, that drug does not
seem to be crack.

The Illinois
House has voted 61-54 to allow same-sex marriage. The measure will
be sent back to the Senate to have the effective date changed.

Governor Pat Quinn has said he will sign the bill into law.

From the
AP:

A historic vote Thursday in the Illinois House positioned that
state to become the largest in the heartland to legalize gay
marriage, following months of arduous lobbying efforts by both
sides in President Barack Obama’s home state.

Lawmakers voted 61-54 to send the measure back to the Senate to
change the bill’s effective date, just a technical change since the
chamber already approved the measure in February. The measure will
then head to Gov. Pat Quinn, who has pledged to sign it into the
law.

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can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
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Among the eight
“enforcement priorities” that the Justice Department
expects states to address in exchange for prosecutorial
restraint vis-á-vis newly legal pot businesses is “preventing
drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health
consequences associated with marijuana use.” Last week I
noted an article in which two economists, D. Mark Anderson of
Montana State University and Daniel Rees of the University of
Colorado, predicted that, on balance, the “public health
consequences” of marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington
will be positive, mainly because more pot smoking will be
accompanied by less drinking. The same issue of the Journal of
Policy Analysis and Management includes a less
sanguine take on the question by Rosalie Liccardo Pacula,
co-director of the RAND Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center,
and University of South Carolina criminologist Eric Sevigny. Pacula
and Sevigny warn that research in this area is complicated by the
fact that legal restrictions on cannabis in states with medical
marijuana laws vary across states and over time within the same
state:

We find that states restricting broad access to medical
marijuana by requiring annual registration of patients have lower
marijuana prevalence rates among youth and adult[s] and lower
admissions to treatment than states without such requirements.
However, states allowing home cultivation and legal dispensaries
are both positively associated with recreational use and, in
particular, heavy use.

Pacula and Sevigny also note that states with legally protected
dispensaries tend to see statistically significant drops in price
and increases in potency—which strike me as benefits of
legalization but look like costs to analysts who worry that
cheaper, stronger pot will magnify the hazards associated with
marijuana consumption. 

On the question of whether marijuana and alcohol are substitutes
or complements, Anderson and Rees think the former is more likely,
while Pacula and Sevigny say the evidence “remains mixed.”
Although they acknowledge that the hazards associated with
marijuana itself pale beside the cost of treating its production,
sale, and use as crimes, Pacula and Sevigny worry that the cost of
increased alcohol consumption could swamp the benefits of
legalization if more pot smoking is accompanied by more
drinking:

Although there are small recognized health costs associated with
using marijuana and treating dependence, these costs are dwarfed in
comparison to the criminal justice savings associated with
legalizing and regulating the substance. Even if consumption were
assumed to rise by 100 percent, the savings of liberalizing
policies would dwarf the known health costs associated with using
marijuana. However, all potential savings associated with marijuana
legalization could be entirely erased, and tremendous losses
incurred, if alcohol and marijuana turn out to be economic
complements, particularly for young adults.

Notably, both Colorado and Washington plan to tax marijuana at

a much higher rate than alcohol, which is just the opposite of
what Anderson, Rees, Pacula, and Sevigny presumably would
recommend. Anderson and Rees note the disparity (citations
omitted):

The current excise tax on liquor sold in Colorado is 60.26
cents/l, which represents roughly 3 percent of the retail price of
Jim Beam Whiskey purchased by the bottle. In comparison, Colorado
is set to impose a 15 percent excise tax and a 10 percent special
sales tax on marijuana sales. Washington is considering taxing
producers, sellers, and buyers at a total rate of 75 percent.

Today Colorado voters are deciding whether to approve the
proposed excise and sales taxes, both of which can be raised as
high as 15 percent. Based on how those taxes will affect retail
prices, they are 10
times as high as the state tax on distilled spirits, by
far the most heavily taxed alcoholic beverage. And that’s before
considering local marijuana taxes, which in Denver (assuming voters
approve) will add another sales tax of up to 15 percent.

I am no fan of social engineering through taxation. But it’s
pretty clear that Colorado and Washington are not even trying to
set tax rates based on the relative hazards posed by these
products.