More Evidence That Targeting Actual Problem Drinkers Works

As South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program has been studied and exported to more and more places, both in the USA and abroad, its success is becoming increasingly evident.  A recent study further confirms the program's effectiveness very well indeed.

This program, where people convicted of (and/or out on bond for) alcohol-related offenses such as DUI, drunk violence/assault, and stuff like that are required to be tested twice daily or continuously for alcohol for a period of time, usually 120 days, is essentially a way to coerce abstinence among known problem drinkers by revoking their "license to drink".  Those who fail a test or fail to show up for the test are swiftly, certainly, and yet modestly penalized, typically with a day or two in jail and perhaps a small fine.  The results have been impressive, with significantly reduced death rates among participants.  Previous studies have also found reductions in recidivism as well as reductions in all-cause death rates among the general population and reductions in domestic violence and related deaths.  In other words, it's cheap, well-targeted to actual problem drinkers, and highly effective and beneficial in many ways.

Twenty-One Debunked supports this idea, and has for a while now.  Another promising idea, would be similar to what parts of the Northern Territory of Australia, as well as parts of Western Australia, currently have:  something called the Banned Drinker Register (BDR).  It is exactly what it sounds like, and targets actual problem drinkers individually only, with no collateral damage to non-problem drinkers.  This can also be paired with the 24/7 Sobriety Program for those convicted of drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, or repeated disorderly conduct violations.  In addition, problem drinkers can also have themselves voluntarily added to the blacklist for a fixed period of time, much like problem gamblers are currently allowed to do. (Call it "86 Me" or something like that.)  The late Mark Kleiman would certainly have approved of that as well.  And aside from the downside of ID checking of all buyers that would be required to enforce the BDR (not radically different from the status quo), it is actually the most libertarian policy that there is.  Libertarian purists, of course, would probably only support the South Dakota style 24/7 program and the voluntary blacklist, and that would be fine with Twenty-One Debunked either way.  It's certainly more libertarian than Choose Responsibility's highly quixotic proposal.

In other words, there is no need to punish the many for the excesses of the few.  And swift and certain justice need not be excessively severe, thus resulting in less crime AND less punishment at the same time.

Additionally, we know now that, while all policy measures have their hard limits, the most time-tested, efficient, effective, and cost-effective one of all is to simply raise the price of alcohol, generally via taxation.  Wayland Ellis has pointed that out several times, and it is the one thing that he and the polar-opposite Philip N. Cook can agree upon.  The late Mark Kleiman also made a similar argument years ago.  Alcohol taxes and prices have been lagging behind inflation for decades in the USA, so therefore the lowest-hanging fruit to make headway against America's growing drinking problem is to raise such taxes.  In fact, if set high enough, practically no other alcohol regulations or restrictions are needed at all. And dovetailing with the aforementioned ideas, even this one's burden falls primarily on the heaviest drinkers, as simple math would have it.  So as long as it is not ridiculously high, it is also well-targeted.

And of course, let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

A Cautionary Tale

The modern day Prohibitionists, and even tobacco control advocates more generally, used to frequently laud the example of Bhutan back in 2004 and for many years after.  And yet now?  Almost nobody talks about them anymore.  So why is that?

Bhutan, the only country in the 21st century that had completely banned tobacco across the board, has failed so miserably in doing so (thanks to the black market and international smuggling, and despite very stiff penalties too) that they ended up reversing their ban in 2021, largely out of fear that rampant cross-border smuggling would.... increase the spread of Covid.  Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up!  This should really be a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating any new (old) forms of Prohibition, whether for tobacco or otherwise. 

And it's not like Bhutan is a historical anomaly either, as outright bans on tobacco products have been tried (and failed) before repeatedly for centuries in various countries, including right here in the USA at the state and local level from the late 19th century to 1927.

So much for the illusion of control. 

Twenty-One Debunked has repeatedly discussed in depth the quasi-special case of tobacco/nicotine and how highly nuanced it is.  And yes, it is far more nuanced than either side of the debate likes to admit.  Tobacco/nicotine straddles the fine line between soft and hard drugs, is both subtle and dangerous at the same time, and thus ultimately defies and transcends any simplistic solutions like "just ban it already!"

If alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis were all legal, and you had to pick ONE of those to ban, tobacco would logically have to be it, hands down.  It is, by far, the least useful and most harmful (and deadly) overall of the three.  It is the ONLY currently legal product that, when used as directed, will kill half of those who buy it.  It's thus not even a contest.  Additionally, it is NOT a truly recreational drug, and its inherent addictiveness actually tends to subtract from one's overall freedom and autonomy rather than enhance it.  And the majority of those who use it ultimately regret doing so.  That said, it still doesn't follow that a complete ban is a wise idea, in theory OR in practice. 

It is worth noting that even those who were serious about phasing out tobacco in the West have been, until very recently, gradual and gingerly about it.

Not only is this a cautionary tale regarding tobacco, but also by extension other substances and vices as well.  It is a historical truism that punishing the many for the excesses of the few has NEVER ended well at all, and ultimately does far more harm than good.  Those folks advocating new (old) forms of Prohibition need to be VERY careful what they wish for! 

It bears repeating:  vices are NOT crimes.  Any confusion of the two invites trouble. The late, great Lysander Spooner was a wise man indeed, and we ignore his timeless advice at our peril.

As President Ronald Reagan famously said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction".  And in light of the past few years alone, that quote doesn't really seem to be an exaggeration. 

UPDATE:  Apparently according to Wikipedia, Turkmenistan (since 2016) and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (since 2022) have also banned tobacco.  Though the former has not fully gone into effect yet, and the latter is not exactly a good role model.

Failing The Martian Test

The famous "Martian Test" is really quite simple:  that is, can you hypothetically explain your position to a Martian without sounding like a complete idiot?  The 21 drinking age (and smoking age, toking age, etc.) clearly fails that test, big time.

If a given substance (regardless of what it is) is allegedly so apocalyptically dangerous that legal adults age 18-20 must be categorically banned from using it, thus arbitrarily carving out a three year exception to the age of majority, because reasons, backed by the full force of the law, why the hell is it even on the market at all in the first place?  

Any answer justifying this bizarre state of affairs would thus fail the Martian Test:

If you have to literally invent new laws of nature in an attempt to explain why, that fails the Martian Test (and also fails Occam's Razor as well).

If you have to appeal to either tradition OR novelty, or indulge any other logical fallacies whatsoever to support your thesis, that fails the Martian Test.

If you speciously claim that 18-20 year olds are too fragile and/or immature to be trusted with full adult rights and bodily autonomy, but have no problem with sending them to war, executing them, trying them as adults, etc., that fails the Martian Test. 

If you have to selectively (ab)use the precautionary principle, ad hoc, that fails the Martian Test. 

If you have to cherry-pick the puny molehill of mainstream OR fringe "evidence" in favor of such restrictions while ignoring the massive mountain of evidence against such, that fails the Martian Test.

If you have to be disingenuous or intellectually dishonest in any way, including citing long-debunked fatally flawed "evidence", you fail the Martian Test. 

If you have to resort to trolling or temper tantrums when you clearly lost the argument, you fail the Martian Test.  And you are a sore loser as well.

If you have to resort to some flavor of "do as I say, not as I do", you utterly fail the Martian Test.  And you prove yourself a flaming hypocrite on top of that.

(Ditto if you point out the mote in your opponent's eye while missing the log in your own.)

If you resort to the "weaker brother principle", which easily devolves into the "tyranny of the weaker brother", especially if you do so selectively, guess what?  You still fail the Martian Test, big time.

And finally, if you appeal to "pragmatism" to justify it, you may very technically pass the Martian Test by the very skin of your teeth, but at the cost of utterly compromising one's moral principles.  Either way, it's not very flattering at all, buddy.  Checkmate.

Now get down off of your high horse, admit you were simply a bigot all along, apologize, and make amends.

QED

UPDATE:   One should note that arguments which favor some version of "punishing the many for the excesses of the few" technically do not always fail the Martian Test, but are still highly unethical regardless. 

A Better Way To Phase Out Tobacco

California is now seeking to emulate New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and the Philippines in phasing out tobacco products with a permanent generational ban on the sale of such to anyone born on after January 1, 2007.  Twenty-One Debunked has generally opposed such an idea on principle, as we had discussed previously.   Not only is it inherently ageist, and further promotes black markets, but it will drag it out and take decades to have the desired endgame effect.

Here's a better idea, that the FDA is already currently considering:  Reduce the maximum allowable nicotine levels in commercial cigarettes, and perhaps other combustible tobacco products, to a non-addictive or sub-addictive level.  This idea, or at least some flavor of it, has long been endorsed by many stakeholders and pundits the world over, from the American Medical Association to Robert N. Proctor to Malcolm Gladwell.  And Twenty-One Debunked has endorsed it since 2013, ideally keeping the legal age limit at 18 (which Congress and Trump unfortunately raised to 21 in late 2019, much to our chagrin).

By that, it means reducing nicotine levels by 95% or so from current levels, down to no more than 0.5 mg/g (0.05%) of tobacco.  Crucially, this would apply to nicotine content, not "delivery," as the latter can be gamed and manipulated too easily.

If done smoothly and gradually enough, and leaving noncombustible tobacco and nicotine products untouched, this will dramatically reduce smoking rates for all ages, and thus save thousands if not millions of lives without creating any more of a black market than already exists from high cigarette taxes alone.  Pairing it with a tax hike (within reason) would also increase its effectiveness as well.

Even if the new nicotine limits applied only to the sale of pre-rolled cigarettes and quasi-cigarettes like little cigars, and nothing else, it would likely still have the desired effect.  That is because those are the products that really drive the deadly tobacco epidemic.

It could be done in either one step with some lead time, or a few steps over a period of months to a year or two, for all cigarette manufacturing and importation going forward, plus an additional year to clear out excess inventory.  Doing it in a few steps would probably be better overall we think.  Either way would probably be fine though. 

Banning the use of additives, which are largely all about increasing the addictiveness of the products, would also make sense as well.  Michigan already has an excellent law on the books, that bans any "deleterious" ingredient or anything "foreign to tobacco" being added to cigarettes.  It needs enforcing.

Redesigning the cigarette to have a more alkaline smoke pH of 8 or higher, as it typically was prior to the 20th century, would make it less appealing and harder to inhale at least for new smokers.  Most cigars and pipe tobacco are already like that currently. 

And for the love of all that is good, ban the use of radioactive phosphate fertilizers yesterday!

Another good idea would be to only allow tobacco products to be sold in designated or dedicated tobacco-related stores (i.e. smoke and vape shops) and/or places that one needs to be 18+ to enter.

As for nicotine vapes, capping the maximum nicotine content at current European or Israeli levels (lower than USA levels but still generous) would reduce overall nicotine addiction rates without driving vapers back to smoking cigarettes.

Do these things and the desired endgame can be achieved in a matter of months to years, not decades.  But that would make too much sense, right?

FUN FACT:  Hemp-based, tobacco-free "blunt wraps" are now commercially available, so even the classic use of hollowed-out cheap tobacco cigars for rolling cannabis blunts is now thoroughly obsolete as well. 

UPDATE:  Apparently New Zealand will, starting in 2025, mandate that only very low nicotine cigarettes (VLNC) be sold, similar to what we advocate above.  Also, in 2024 they will sharply reduce the number of tobacco retail outlets by 90-95%, and ban the sale of cigarettes at kiosks, gas stations, or supermarkets.  This will be in addition to their generational ban for anyone born after January 1, 2009.  Thus, the generational ban is completely redundant and unnecessary, given the other two components.  And also the price of a pack of smokes there, $36 NZD, is the equivalent of over $20 USD (that is, more than a dollar per cigarette!) thanks to their already high taxes, making it a very expensive habit as it is.

And vape products would remain unaffected. 

Twenty-One Debunked's preferred plan, in a nutshell, is basically the New Zealand plan MINUS the generational ban and keeping the age limit at 18, plus a few other things above listed above.

UPDATE 2:  Bhutan, the only country in the 21st century that had completely banned tobacco across the board, has failed so miserably in doing so (thanks to the black market and international smuggling, and despite very stiff penalties too) that they ended up reversing their ban in 2021, largely out of fear that rampant cross-border smuggling would.... increase the spread of Covid.  Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up!  This should really be a cautionary tale.

The Biggest Logical Fallacy That We Are Up Against, Debunked

Logical fallacies of various kinds perennially show up in arguments in every debate.  But there is one that seems to be the biggest one on the pro-21 or otherwise prohibitionist side.  That one is the one we call the Reverse Middle Ground Fallacy, or Appeal to Extremes.  It is basically a warmed-over form of the old slippery slope fallacy, in which the Middle Ground Fallacy or appeal to moderation is "debunked", and pretending that the opponent's entire argument is therefore "debunked" as well.  It also functions as a straw man as well as appeal to logic.

For example:

• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between communism and fascism, or alternatively between anarchy and totalitarianism, so we must pick one or the other 
• Claiming there is no philosophically stable position that says that cannabis is OK but hard drugs are not, thus "confirming" the gateway theory
• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between complete Luddism and complete technocracy or Transhumanism 
• Claiming that reproductive rights or birth control of any kind inevitably leads to eugenics 
• Claiming that tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality (or sexual freedom in general) inevitably leads to tolerance and acceptance of pedophilia and other horrible stuff, thus all LGBT+ folks are inherently "groomers"
• Claiming that gender equality is inherently impossible because one gender must utterly dominate and control the other, lest the latter run amuck and become too dangerous (note that this works both ways)
• Claiming that "you are either with us, or you are against us"
• Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between unfettered access to alcohol for all ages and complete and absolute alcohol prohibition for all ages (or for all people between some arbitrary age limit).

And yes, every single one of the above are examples of actual arguments that have been put forth by extremists of various stripes.

But simply reversing a fallacy, does NOT a valid argument make.  Claiming that there is no philosophically stable ground between two extremes, just because one says so, is a sure path to Horseshoe Theory, where the extremes become far more alike than different (far left and far right, for example).

The 21 drinking age is not only a classic example of this fallacy, it actually undermines it's own position in its logical inconsistency and arbitrary selectivity compared to complete prohibition for all ages.  Thus, the 21 drinking age, or any age limit higher than the legal age of majority, is the LEAST logically and philosophically stable position in regards to alcohol (or tobacco or cannabis or really anything else, for that matter) that could ever be conceived.

QED

UPDATE:  Other notable fallacies (and questionable propaganda techniques) on the pro-21 side include:

• Ad baculum (appeal to the stick) 
• Ad hoc (arbitrarily making it up as they go along)
• Ad hominem (of all types)
• Ad populum (appeal to the gallery)
• Alternative facts
• Ambiguity or equivocation
• Anecdotal "evidence"
• Appeal to authority (their favorite)
• Appeal to logic (the "fallacy fallacy")
• Appeal to novelty (or "progress")
• Appeal to tradition (yes, really!)
• Apples and oranges 
• Assuming bad faith
• Citation mills
• Cherry-picking (selected instances)
• Contradictory arguments / kettle logic
• Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
• False dichotomy or false choice
• False "experts"
• Genetic fallacy
• Guilt by association (however tenuous, notably with Big Alcohol or fellow travelers)
• Hasty generalization
• Immune to evidence
• Junk science
• Moving the goalposts 
• Mission creep
• Non sequitur
• Occam's Butterknife
• Oversimplification
• Poisoning the well
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc
• Projection
• Quote mining
• Red herring 
• Slothful induction
• Straw man
• Suppressed evidence
• Using one bad policy to justify another
• Wishful thinking

Alberta Gets It Right

The Canadian province of Alberta is basically the only place in all of North America that gets it right across the board.  Legal age limits there are as follows:

• Alcohol:  18
• Tobacco and Vaping:  18
• Cannabis:  18
• Gambling:  18
• Guns:  18
• Voting:  18
• Run for office:  18
• General age of majority:  18
• School leaving age:  16
• Driving:  14 for learner permit, 16 for GDL, and 18 for full unrestricted license
• All other age limits:  similar to the rest of Canada and the USA overall (at or below 18)
• Curfew:  None at provincial level, only locally in a few towns here and there (usually 15)

In other words, 18 is the age of majority, and once you are an adult, you are an adult.  Period, full stop.  Some age limits can be lower than that, of course, as there is much room for nuance, but no age limit can ever be higher than that, at least not without extraordinary levels of justification.  And guess what?  The sky didn't fall in Alberta.  No seriously, it really didn't.  Alberta still has yet to get the memo about the supposedly catastrophic effects of full adult rights combined with "underdeveloped" 18-24 year old brains.

In fact, the Alberta Human Rights Act explicitly prohibits age discrimination for anyone over 18, except for senior citizen privileges for people over 55.

That is really how it should be everywhere, regardless of what exact age limit is chosen for age of majority (which is 18 in most of the world and most of the USA).  It's really not a difficult concept to grasp, as a child can easily understand it, but too many chronological "adults" seem to be unable to do so.  Anything else is a slippery slope, and such slopes are much, much slipperier than they appear.

And for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, while underage possession and consumption is illegal, for all three it is basically a mere ticket-level offense with no criminal record.  Unlike many US states have.  And parents are allowed to give their own underage children (but no one else) alcohol at home (within reason), as many but not all states currently do.

The driving thing is of course probably the most jarring one of all to the rest of the world, so allow us to explain.  The global outlier young age limit of 14, rivaled only by South Dakota and a few other rural states, applies ONLY to the learner permit, which is similar to an American style learner permit, with only supervised driving allowed among other restrictions.  To get a GDL (probationary) license, i.e. what Americans often call a "junior" license, you need to be at least 16 and also have had a permit for one year or more, and pass the basic road test which is harder than an American road test.  There are some restrictions to the GDL, such as no more passengers than there are seat belts, and a zero tolerance limit for both alcohol and cannabis, but no night restrictions.  And to graduate to the next level, the full unrestricted license, one must have had the GDL for at least two years regardless of age, be suspension-free for the final year of two years, and pass an advanced road test, the latter of which is being phased out in favor of simply making the basic road test more difficult and more like the advanced road test.  Honestly, making the American road test more difficult would probably be far more effective than any age-based restrictions ever could be.

Alberta in recent years has had one of the lowest overall traffic death rates per vehicle kilometers traveled in Canada, and lower than the USA, so they must be doing something right!

And DUI laws are quite strict there regardless of age as well.  There are swift and certain penalties of immediate but temporary administrative license suspension and vehicle impoundment for BAC as low as 0.05% (or 0.00% if GDL), in addition to any criminal penalties if above 0.08% and/or obviously impaired.  Note that the zero tolerance for GDL is regardless of age.  For DUI cannabis they are also quite strict as well, and we at Twenty-One Debunked think TOO strict since hard per se limits (let alone zero tolerance) don't really make sense for a substance with such complex pharmacokinetics and long detection times, and generally less impairing than alcohol.  At the very least, in the interest of simple justice, they really need to set the testing cutoff for positivity high enough to prevent false positives or innocent positives. 

Thus overall, Alberta is a good model for America to follow.  So what are we waiting for?

Oh, and they also have the best and largest shopping mall in the entire western hemisphere, the West Edmonton Mall.  It makes the even the vaunted Mall of America look a bit "meh" by comparison. 

Case Closed: Curfews Don't Reduce Crime

Curfews, especially youth curfews for people under an arbitrary age limit, have long been a solution in search of a problem.  They have been touted as a panacea for all sorts of social ills, most notably street crime.  And the evidence for that has been very weak at best, with plenty of evidence against it in fact.

In fact, a 2016 literature review of 7000 studies finds that "juvenile curfews do not reduce crime or victimization".  Proponents of such illiberal policies can cherry-pick all they want, but the hard data are pretty damning against the idea of curfews.  As Ronald Reagan said, "facts are stubborn things".

But now we have the strongest "natural experiment" with the extreme, unprecedented, all-ages COVID lockdowns, curfews, and other restrictions in 2020 that did not exist in 2019 and prior years.  If curfews and similar policies actually reduced crime, we would have seen a sharp decrease in crime in 2020 relative to the average of previous years.  So what were the results of this yearlong natural experiment?

Well, you might wanna sit down before reading this.  Turns out, crime actually went way up in 2020 compared to the past few years, particularly homicides.  Data from the 2020 put the per capita homicide rate in the USA at a 23 year high (highest since 1997).  And of course, plenty of rioting as well.  Even mass shootings and hate crimes are up as well, and have persisted through both 2021 and 2022, well after such restrictions were finally lifted.

Even the supposedly good news about reported rapes being down in 2020 needs to be qualified.  Given how the vast majority of rapes occur behind closed doors and go unreported even in a normal year, the apparent decrease in 2020 may simply be an artifact of an increase in underreporting due to lockdown, especially since domestic violence and child abuse both appear to have increased significantly during lockdown.  The NCVS also shows a decrease in 2020 and 2021 as well, but given the secular downward trend since 1993, and the fact that survey data gathering may have been disrupted during the lockdowns, that needs to be qualified as well.

Reversion to the mean after the #MeToo movement crested and faded probably also played a role in the 2018 spike in self-reporting followed by an even larger crash.  The downward trend continued well after the lockdowns were over as well, so it is unlikely that the lockdowns actually reduced rape.

Back in April 2020, anecdotal evidence of course suggested that crime was down in some areas.  But clearly that decrease was short-lived, and then the opposite occurred.  Whether it is due to pent-up rage, restlessness, boredom, unemployment, fewer "eyes on the street", destruction of community, or all of the above, these sorts of authoritarian and illiberal policies clearly do more harm than good on balance.

So let this be the final nail in the coffin for lockdowns, curfews, and similar restrictions.  If curfews are to ever be used to fight crime and/or civil disorder, they need to be very limited, local, nuanced, and short-term--if they are to even be used at all.  And they certainly should NEVER be used to fight an airborne respiratory virus, as that is a major category error.

QED

P.S.  None of the above criticism of course precludes getting tough on REAL crime.  That is, any crimes that objectively harm the person or property of nonconsenting others.  That should really go without saying, but we will say it anyway.  "Catch and release" is every bit as dumb when it comes to real criminals as it is for fish, completely defeating the purpose.  Ditto for the equally boneheaded idea of "defund the police" as well.  Baby, meet bathwater.  Focused deterrence actually does work when done properly. 

A Band-Aid Solution In Search Of A Problem

We at Twenty-One Debunked already noted in a previous article how we oppose the proposed Texas social media ban for people under 18.  Now, there is a Republican bill in Congress that would effectively ban social media companies from allowing anyone under 16 from joining their platforms, opening them up to civil lawsuits from both states AND parents if they do so.  And the FTC would also be allowed to levy fines against them as well, in addition to the "privatized enforcement" resulting from the threat of lawsuits.

So much for the party of "small government".

While that is a marginally better idea than the Texas bill, if largely because the age limit is lower (though even the sponsors note the exact age limit will be negotiable to get bipartisan support, natch), and it effectively puts the heat entirely on the tech companies rather than young people themselves, it is still essentially a band-aid "solution" in search of a problem, like the Staples "Easy" button.  It is both over- and under-inclusive.  It both exaggerates the problems facing a particular age group while also minimizing the problems facing ALL ages.  The real root of the problem is the toxic algorithms that Big Tech designs to be as addictive as possible.  And TikTok is basically the CCP's digital equivalent of their biggest WMD of all, fentanyl, in that regard.

(And speaking of fentanyl, some social media apps such as Snapchat are currently being used by dealers to sell actual fentanyl to both kids and adults, typically disguised as counterfeit drugs such as pills.)

So what should we do instead?  Well, we could adopt the data privacy laws that the European Union currently has.  We could tax the "attention economy" by taxing the advertising that serves as the business model of Big Tech.  We could put regulations on the algorithms that Big Tech uses to manipulate its users of all ages and keep them hooked.  We could investigate Big Tech for antitrust violations. We could, you know, actually educate young people on social media literacy, ideally starting long before they go on such sites.  We could do a smartphone buyback (similar to gun buybacks) for all ages.  And we could also, you know, enforce existing age limits (typically 13) that are clearly NOT being followed in any meaningful sense, honored far more in the breach.

We need not violate the First Amendment in doing so either.  We can treat social media platforms as "common carriers", while regulating the real root of the problem, the toxic and addictive algorithms that can hardly be considered "protected speech," anymore than nuclear weapons could be considered protected by the Second Amendment. 

Or perhaps if Congresscritters and their talking heads are so concerned, they should mean what they say.  Declare a state of emergency, on the grounds that Big Tech and their social media is an existential threat to civilization itself. Impose a "quarantine" on them for "just two weeks" (right!) wherein all social media are frozen and archived during that time, so they cannot be used, and everyone is logged out simultaneously and cannot log back in during that time. During that time, We the People can then re-evaluate our often unexamined and unquestioned relationship to Big Tech, and in conjunction with our elected representatives in government, decide what the next steps (if any) will be.

I guarantee you, that would have saved FAR more lives than the Covid lockdowns ever would have, as the latter saved statistically zilch in the long run in terms of all-cause excess deaths.

Another idea:  Nationalize as public utilities all tech companies larger than a certain size, while banning any ones that are already nationalized (in theory or in practice) by hostile nations (TikTok and the CCP, I'm looking at you!).  Just like we should do with the "too big to fail (or jail)" banks.  Something to think about.

We could do all that and more.  But that would make too much sense, right?  I mean, why let mere facts and logic get in the way of a good moral panic?

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  Republican Senator Josh Hawley's bill, with the aptly-Orwellian title "MATURE Act", would require social media users of all ages to submit 1) their full legal name, 2) date of birth, and 3) a scan/photo/copy of official government-issued IDs (driver license, birth certificate, etc.) for age verification to prove they are over 16 in order to set up a new account.  (Existing accounts would be grandfathered and not subject to this requirement, thank God for small mercies!)  That is, people of all ages would have to submit sensitive information to Big Tech, who we all know would NEVER use it for anything nefarious, right?  Let that sink in for a moment.  What could possibly go wrong?

Another bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), stops short of banning kids under 16 from social media, but rather seeks to make it safer for them.  And while the bill still has significant flaws that need addressing, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still much rather support that bill than the MATURE Act any day.  In fact, it may actually be enough to pre-empt the latter.

Even one of Hawley's previous bills would be better.

Ditto for the new California law, which goes into effect in 2024, which may very well become the national standard at some point.

FINAL THOUGHT:  Lest we forget, as Reason Magazine points out, social media, for all of its warts and flaws, was the only real lifeline that young people had during the pandemic lockdowns when they were not allowed to see their friends in person.  They make some great arguments as to how flawed this bill is.

Cannabis Legalization NOT Crazy-Making After All

Good news, it looks like cannabis legalization did NOT lead to a statistically significant increase in psychosis as the Chicken Little prohibitionists liked to claim.  And this new study was not done by hippy-dippy stoners, but by serious researchers at Stanford University, who published it in the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Not even recreational retail store sales (i.e. cannabis commercialization) seemed to significantly move the needle in that regard, despite the obvious net increase in cannabis availabilty, convenience, and potency relative to not having such legal retail store sales, and the (eventual) net decrease in price per unit of THC.

And furthermore, when results were broken down by age, the results were totally in the "wrong" direction than the age-restrictionists would have predicted.

OOPS!

Looks like Alex Berenson was wrong about that, yet again.  And looks like Reefer Madness 2.0 was ultimately a flop once again.  Womp womp.

UPDATE:  See also here and here as well for further studies that pour cold water on the Reefer Madness 2.0 fearmongering. 

Who Are The Real Radicals?

The word radical generally refers to a person or group that wants to make drastic and fundamental (that is, radical) changes to society.  Derived from the Latin word for "root", in this way it illustrates just how fundamental such change is called for.  Classic examples that you oldsters reading this may recall from back in the day include Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.  But is Twenty-One Debunked really such a radical group like some may think it is?

Is it really radical to want all legal adults above the age of majority (18) to have the same rights that people over 21 currently enjoy, including (but not limited to) the right to use, possess, share, and purchase otherwise-legal psychoactive substances?

Is it really radical to believe that alcohol should be legal for all adults, period, like it is in nearly every single non-Muslim country in the world (and even some moderate Muslim countries too)?

Is it really radical to believe that cannabis, which is objectively safer overall than alcohol and tobacco and less addictive than coffee, should be re-legalized (it was not always illegal, only for a tiny fraction of history) for both recreational and medical use, fairly taxed, and regulated no more stringently than alcohol or tobacco (and legally sold and/or used in many if not most of the same places as well)?

Is it really radical to believe that, when it is legalized, the legal age limit for cannabis should not be any higher than the legal age of majority (18), nor any higher than for the more dangerous and addictive already-legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco?

Is it really radical to believe that, for as long as tobacco remains legal and readily available, those over the age of majority (18) should retain the right to decide for themselves whether or not to choose pleasure over longevity and indulge in this (albeit dangerous and deadly) substance?

Is it really radical to not want to punish the many (such as an entire demographic group) for the actions of the few?  And to prefer to hold individuals fully and solely accountable for their own misbehavior?

Is it really radical to believe that drinking establishments, and especially "social hosts" at private residences, should NOT be held vicariously liable for what their adult guests or customers do after leaving the premises following participation in voluntary intoxication on the premises?  And that personal responsibility for individuals should still be a thing?

Is it really radical to believe that, as John Stuart Mill believed, that individuals are fully sovereign over their own bodies and minds, at least as far as consenting adults are concerned?

Is it really radical to believe that our own bodies are NOT property of the state or any other entity besides ourselves, regardless of what the state or entity may claim or choose to provide us with?

Is it really radical to believe that adults should NOT have to be baby-sat?

Is it really radical to believe that if you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar?

Is it really radical to believe in logical consistency and common sense rather than arbitrary legality?

Is it really radical to favor personal autonomy rather than paternalism?

Is it really radical to believe that under a system of federalism, the federal government does NOT get to force or coerce states to raise their own legal age limits for alcohol (or any other legal substance) higher than their own legal ages of majority?

Is it really radical to believe that under a system of federalism, the federal government should have far LESS (if any) latitude in terms of micro-managing authority over We the People than the state and local governments do, and when in doubt should really stay in their own lane?

Is it really radical to still believe in the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land?

Is it really radical to believe in liberty and justice for all?

Because if you think that these ideas are somehow radical, well, we've got news for you:  they are actually quite conservative and in line with both international and historical norms, even in our very own country before 1984 if you can believe that.  This shows just how far the Overton window has shifted both rightward and in the authoritarian direction, and just how far down the rabbit hole we have gone.

As Five Finger Death Punch would say, it's stranger than fiction, how we've decayed...

Still More Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do

In the past, we would chronicle and discuss countless examples of drinkers OVER 21 behaving badly, as "Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do".  Time to do it again:

In the past few weeks or so in America:

An underage drinker did NOT so desperately want an encore of New Year's Eve the following day that she got drunk, drove, and flipped her car, wrapping it around a telephone pole, splitting it in half, on New Year's Day.  And then had the chutzpah to yell at hospital staff who treated her injuries afterwards!

An underage drinker did NOT get so wasted that she rear-ended another driver, killing him, and then kept obliviously driving and sideswiping other vehicles.  She was three times over the legal BAC limit.

An underage drinker did NOT cause Florida's very first fatal drunk driving crash of 2023.

An underage drinker did NOT drive obviously drunk, lead police on a high-speed chase, and then have the chutzpah to proceed to fight with the officer after being pulled over.  Being a football star does NOT make one immune from consequences!

An underage drinker did NOT get himself an aggravated DUI plus a bunch of other charges as well for his egregiously reckless drunk driving escapades and even trying to flee, all while on a suspended, revoked, expired, or non-existent license.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash into another vehicle after blatantly driving the wrong direction on the highway.  But at least he was wearing a mask in his mugshot, albeit incorrectly, right? 

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash into and injure three people while double the legal BAC limit and on a suspended license.

And underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash and injure himself and his three passengers, two of which were not yet legally old enough to drink.

An underage drinker did NOT get so extremely drunk that he passed out in Penn Station, and then had the chutzpah to assault the officers who roused him.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly pull out his gun and start shooting during an argument when a bystander made him pull over because he appeared to be driving drunk.  Guns and alcohol do NOT mix either!

An underage drinker did NOT drive drunk with his 2 year old daughter in his car, then assaulted a woman when she asked him to pull over so she could take the wheel.

An underage drinker did NOT drive nearly twice the legal BAC limit, with her young child in the car.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly hit his wife with a Christmas tree (!) after she asked him to help make dinner.   Yes, you read that correctly. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the tip of the iceberg....

Have A Safe And Happy Holiday Season

(This is a public service announcement)

It is that time of year again when the holidays are upon us, and many of us Americans (and around the world) will be celebrating with alcohol and/or other substances, pretty much back to normal now.  We at Twenty-One Debunked would like to remind everyone to be safe and celebrate responsibly.  There is absolutely no excuse for drunk driving at any age, period.  We cannot stress this enough.  It's very simple--if you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive.  It's really not rocket science, folks.  And there are numerous ways to avoid mixing the two.  Designate a sober driver, take a cab, use public transportation, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to.  Or stay home and celebrate there.  Or simply don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.  Seriously, don't be stupid about it!  And the same goes for other psychoactive substances as well, and a fortiori when combined with alcohol.

ARRIVE ALIVE, DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE!!!   If you plan to drink, don't forget to think!  The life you save may very well be your own.

More Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do

In the past, we would chronicle countless examples of drinkers OVER 21 behaving badly, as "Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do".  But we have clearly been slacking lately.  Time to do it again:

In the past few weeks or so in America:

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly wrap her car around a telephone pole--and set a terrible example as Assistant District Attorney.

An underage drinker did NOT literally get her SEVENTH DUI since 2007.  

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly assault an officer while being arrested for a wrong-way DUI.

An underage drinker did NOT get arrested for DUI while on the job--as a state trooper.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash into and kill a 17 year old in another car, while another killed a 16 year old.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly ram his car into a police cruiser, with a BAC of a whopping 0.30%, nearly four times the legal limit.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash into and kill a motorcyclist.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash into and kill a sheriff's deputy. 

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly hold a razorblade to a woman's throat on an airplane.

An underage drinker did NOT have a drunken and violent meltdown on an airplane and try to fight off cops.

An underage drinker did NOT deliberately put alcohol in her baby's bottle, causing the baby to get sick.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the tip of the iceberg....

We Oppose The Proposed Texas Teen Social Media Ban

In Texas, a lawmaker has recently introduced a bill that would completely ban anyone under 18 from using any social media whatsoever, and require age verification via photo ID for anyone over 18 to open a social media account.  And Twenty-One Debunked opposes this bill for the following reasons:

• First and foremost, it is extremely ageist and a slippery slope.  And what's to stop them from arbitrarily raising the age limit even higher?
• It is far too broad an overreach, and throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  Social media does have a dark side that we all should be aware of, but a blanket ban on everyone under 18 is NOT the way to deal with it. 
• Young people ages 13-17 are not adults, but they are not entirely children either.  There needs to be far more nuance than this sort of blanket ban.
• It is yet another intrusive instance of Big Brother, that also affects people over 18 as well.
• There is no obvious grandfather clause for anyone already over 13 but under 18 who currently already has social media accounts. 
• It will disadvantage people under 18 relative to people over 18 when it comes to networking for jobs (keep in mind that LinkedIn would count as social media under this bill).
• It will simply drive people under 18 onto the Dark Web instead, where there are NO rules or limits of any kind, period.  If they are tech savvy enough to set up and regularly use their own Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok account, they are also savvy enough to download Tor and then go down a far, far worse rabbit hole of horrors.

Thus, this ageist bill is a massive government overreach that will do far more harm than good on balance.  If we must have any hard age limits for social media by enforceable law, and that is a VERY big "if", they should not be any higher than 16 at most.  Age verification is OK in principle, but it needs to be done very carefully to avoid unintended consequences in terms of privacy and such.

So what should we do instead?  Well, we could adopt the data privacy laws that the European Union currently has.  We could tax the "attention economy" by taxing the advertising that serves as the business model of Big Tech.  We could put regulations on the algorithms that Big Tech uses to manipulate its users of all ages and keep them hooked.  We could investigate Big Tech for antitrust violations. We could, you know, actually educate young people on social media literacy, ideally starting long before they go on such sites.  We could do a smartphone buyback (similar to gun buybacks) for all ages.  And we could also, you know, enforce existing age limits (typically 13) that are clearly NOT being followed in any meaningful sense, honored far more in the breach.

We could do all that and more.  But that would make too much sense, right?

To all lawmakers:  please vote a HARD NO on this bill and any similar bills.  And to all parents and other adults reading this:  be a mentor, not a tormentor.

The Invisible Knapsack (Updated)

Three decades ago, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh coined the term "invisible knapsack" to refer to the subtle and not-so-subtle advantages that come with white privilege and male privilege resulting from inequality.  She describes such privilege as being "like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks".  The idea is that while we are generally taught that racism and sexism put some people (i.e. women and people of color) at a disadvantage, we are often taught to remain blissfully unaware of its corollary advantages that accrue to white males.  Hence, the "invisible knapsack" of privilege.

We at Twenty-One Debunked couldn't help but notice just how much this metaphor also relates to America's 21 drinking age and the "over-21 privilege" that results.  Being well over 21 myself, as the webmaster and founder of Twenty-One Debunked I have put together a list of advantages in the invisible knapsack of over-21 privilege that people like myself carry every day.   We have updated this list to include tobacco and cannabis as well now.  As a person over 21, as long as I have a valid ID to prove it:

1. I can buy alcoholic beverages at any store that sells them, in any quantity I wish.
2. I can do the same with tobacco and cannabis as well if I desire to do so.  I can even openly smoke both in some public places if I want to.
3. I can enter pretty much any bar or nightclub of my choosing without fearing that people of my age group cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
4. If I do not want to associate with people under 21, I may frequent numerous establishments that ban younger people from entering.
5. I can get a hotel room with relatively little difficulty as long as I can afford it, since hotels are less likely to cast aspersions on me due to my age.
6. I am never asked to speak for all of the people in my age group, nor do I have to worry about my individual behavior reflecting on my entire age group.
7. I can legally host a drinking party with my friends, as long as all the guests are over 21.
8. I can join my co-workers for happy hour after work, and even talk about it at work, without any sort of shame.
9. When I go out with people under 21, it is generally understood that one (or more) of them will be the designated driver instead of me.
10. Generally speaking, I can drink alcoholic beverages fairly openly without having to worry about getting arrested, fined, jailed, expelled, fired, having my driver's license revoked, or being publicly humiliated.  Ditto for smoking tobacco and/or cannabis as well.
11. As long as I am not driving or operating machinery, I can legally get as drunk (or stoned, or both) as I please in many states. 
12. Even in states where public drunkenness is technically illegal, the cops are unlikely to arrest me unless my behavior is really out of control.  There is no equivalent to "internal possession" laws for my age group.
13. If I do manage to get in alcohol-related trouble on campus, which is far less likely for me, I will likely face lesser penalties, and I will not have to worry about my parents being notified without my consent.
14. If I think one of my over-21 peers may have alcohol poisoning, there would be no reason for me to hesitate to call 911 for fear of the law (and vice-versa).
15. I can have a drink or two (or maybe even three!) before driving without having to worry about being over the legal limit for DUI. 
16. Even if I drive while over the limit, I can be assured that drunk drivers in my age group will NOT be the highest law enforcement priority.  I can just take the back roads and hope for the best, and know that the law enforcement statistics are largely on my side as long as it's not a major holiday or the end of the month.
17. If I choose to drive drunk, I can know that I am statistically far more likely to kill someone under 21 than the other way around.
18. Even if I had several convictions for DUI or drunken violence, I can rest assured that I will still be allowed to buy and consume alcohol as I please.
19. I enjoy less scrutiny over my own behavior, because I live in a society in which young people are scapegoated for adult problems.
20. I do not have to worry about being a good role model when it comes to drinking, since people under 21 can be punished (often severely) for emulating me.
21. To really top it off, I have an easier time getting my hands on semiautomatic assault rifles and dangerous weapons in general, especially handguns.  In fact, in some states, I can even carry concealed weapons in a bar!
22. Finally, I have a much better chance of being taken seriously on the issue of lowering the drinking age, or any other age limit for that matter, without being knee-jerkedly accused of selfishness or immaturity.

And the list goes on.  As we see, the 21 drinking age is not just about disadvantaging people under 21, but giving unearned advantages to people over 21 as well.  And while some of these advantages are positive rights that should be extended to everyone (or at least all adults over 18), others are not "rights" at all, but wrongs that are an unfortunate byproduct of setting arbitrary age limits and of adultism in general.  Still others could be considered either rights or wrongs depending on the context.  And let's not forget the luxury of being able to blissfully ignore the issue entirely.

So, are the advantages found in this invisible knapsack really worth it?  Many people over 21 would say yes, but upon closer examination these advantages actually come at a hefty price, even for people over 21.  Just think about social host liability laws, other annoying ancillary laws, ubiquitous ID checks, millions of tax dollars wasted on enforcement, loss of social cohesion, karma, and highly dubious legal precedent that can be used to make our supposedly free country even more of a police state via turnkey tyranny.  In fact, the only people over 21 who, on balance, really benefit from the status quo are the ones who least deserve to benefit--those who drive drunk or otherwise behave irresponsibly when it comes to alcohol, as well as those parents who would rather stick their heads in the sand than teach their kids how to drink responsibly.

Do you hear that?  That's (hopefully) the sound of the pro-21 crowd throwing up all of the proverbial Kool-Aid that they drank long ago.

Americans Are Still Drowning In The Bottom Of The Bottle

And the pandemic, or more accurately, the lockdowns and isolation (antisocial distancing) imposed on Americans, was only gasoline on the already-raging fire.  The USA was in fact the only major country to see a net increase in overall alcohol consumption during the pandemic, and one of only a few countries to see an increase in alcohol-related deaths as well, especially among prime working-age adults.  After decades of the failed social experiment of the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age, we are now seeing a clear divergence from the rest of the world (and not in a good way!) among the generations who came of age since then.

Of course, the neo-temperance crowd as well as the ageists (is there really any other kind these days?) would counter that this only proves that Americans can't handle their alcohol, so therefore lowering the drinking age to 18 would be even worse.  But what they are tacitly admitting by saying this specious argument is that Americans are inferior to Europeans--do they really want to concede that?  Didn't think so.  And by that same logic, they might as well call for bringing back Prohibition for all ages, as that would be the ultimate logical conclusion of that utterly patronizing and paternalistic argument.  

Besides, we know now that, while all policy measures have their hard limits, the most time-tested, efficient, effective, and cost-effective one of all is to simply raise the price of alcohol, generally via taxation.  Wayland Ellis has pointed that out several times, and it is the one thing that he and the polar-opposite Philip N. Cook can agree upon.  The late Mark Kleiman also made a similar argument years ago.  Alcohol taxes and prices have been lagging behind inflation for decades in the USA, so therefore the lowest-hanging fruit to make headway against America's growing drinking problem is to raise such taxes.  In fact, if set high enough, practically no other alcohol regulations or restrictions are needed at all.  

Another promising idea, would be similar to what parts of the Northern Territory of Australia, as well as parts of Western Australia, currently have:  something called the Banned Drinker Register (BDR).  It is exactly what it sounds like, and targets actual problem drinkers individually only, with no collateral damage to non-problem drinkers.  This can also be paired with something like South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program for those convicted of drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, or repeated disorderly conduct violations.  In addition, problem drinkers can also have themselves voluntarily added to the blacklist for a fixed period of time, much like problem gamblers are currently allowed to do. (Call it "86 Me" or something like that.)  Mark Kleiman would certainly have approved of that as well.  And aside from the downside of ID checking of all buyers that would be required to enforce the BDR (not radically different from the status quo), it is actually the most libertarian policy that there is.  Libertarian purists, of course, would probably only support the South Dakota style 24/7 program and the voluntary blacklist, and that would be fine with Twenty-One Debunked either way.

And of course, let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

Is There A "Laffer Curve" Effect for Alcohol Taxes/Prices Versus Alcohol-Related Harms?

The famous (and controversial) Laffer Curve, sometimes called the Laffer-Khaldun Curve, posits that raising taxes beyond a certain point will decrease revenue rather than increase it.  Would such a relationship also hold for alcohol, not only for revenue, but for alcohol-related harms as well?  

Twenty-One Debunked has repeatedly noted that previous studies have generally found a reasonably strong inverse relationship between alcohol prices/taxes and alcohol-related harms.  That is probably the only thing that both Philip N. Cook and Wayland Ellis would agree upon, which really says something as they are on polar opposite ends to the alcohol regulation spectrum in general, and in particular the issue of the 21 drinking age.  

But does there ever reach a point beyond which this relationship breaks down and ceases to be true, or even reverses?  The recent experience of Scotland seems to suggest as much.  As British libertarian author and blogger Christopher Snowdon (no relation to the Wikileaks guy) notes in his blog, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, a recent study found that Scotland's minimum unit pricing (MUP) scheme did NOT work as intended.  This mandated price floor of 50 pence per British standard unit of alcohol (about $1 per standard Amercian drink at the time, before the sterling crumbled recently) failed to meaningfully reduce alcohol consumption, particularly among the heaviest drinkers.  In fact, some population subgroups even saw increases in consumption.  And there was no effect on alcohol-related ER visits or crime either.  And it didn't even help the beleaguered pub industry either as promised.  Oops!

That's some pretty weak sauce if you ask us!

(And apparently not just Scotland, but also in Ireland has now implemented MUP as well.)

One study concluded at the end of 2018, long before the pandemic and lockdowns of course, and the other concluded in January 2020.  But what happened in the UK as a result of the lockdown-induced reduction in alcohol availability and marketing?  After all, as Joseph Califano of CASA famously said, "availability is the mother of abuse", so alcohol abuse and problems should have plummeted, right?  WRONG.  Snowdon notes that while overall alcohol consumption declined in the UK, the number of alcohol-specfic deaths actually increased.  Apparently, the average level of drinking in a population does not determine the extent of heavy drinking, it's the other way around.  And this natural experiment proves it more elegantly than any other study in history, and that also explains partly why MUP in Scotland failed to have the desired and predicted effects on the heaviest drinkers, who are apparently less sensitive to price and availability than the general population.

After all, the determinants of heavy drinking, and especially alcohol dependence, are likely quite different than those of drinking in general, and price is clearly one of the much lesser factors in their behavior.  And given the outsized impact on population health being driven by such a small minority of heavy drinkers, targeting the entire population so bluntly is unlikely to improve overall population health by very much if at all.

That's not to say that alcohol that is extremely cheap in a relative sense by historical and international standards, such as in the USA today, doesn't still generate some problems that respond to modest tax/price hikes at all.  That is probably still true, noting that America was the only major country in the world to see a net increase in overall alcohol consumption during lockdowns (to say nothing of the heaviest end of the drinking scale, let that sink in).  In the UK, even prior to the Scottish MUP scheme as well as during, it should be noted that nationwide alcohol taxes were already quite high and outpacing inflation for a while, and as of 2014 it was already prohibited to sell alcohol "below cost" in stores nationwide.  Thus further price hikes on the lower-end beverages may have had a more limited marginal effect and pushed the total prices to the wrong side of a Laffer-esque curve.  But we do know now that the overly simplistic models of the neo-temperance lobby leave a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.  The "whole population approach" clearly has some very hard limits.

After all, drinking per se is not the problem, excessive drinking (and the outrageous behavior that often goes with it) is the real problem.  And the 95th percentile of drinkers (top 5% of drinkers) seems to be quite inelastic (i.e. insensitive) to price.  Cart, meet horse.

The upshot:  while Twenty-One Debunked still supports raising alcohol taxes in the USA, within reason, we note that the effects are far more nuanced than we once thought, and often quite tenuous. 

UPDATE:  Apparently, alcohol-related deaths did drop by 10% in the first full year after MUP was implemented in Scotland, to the lowest level since 2013.  Another study found a 13% drop in alcohol-related deaths.  But in light of the other lackluster findings above, the actual causality of this correlation remains unclear for the time being.  Only time will tell if there are any long-term benefits to this policy, which is set to sunset in 2024, six years after it was first implemented in May 2018.  MUP does seem to be effective in Canada and Northern Territory, Australia. 

Also, another nuance that gets glossed over is that while alcohol taxes are now relatively high on beer, wine, and spirits in the UK, they are still quite low for cider.  Thus, MUP had the largest effect on the prices of cheap, high-strength ciders, many of which are "ciders" in name only due to a legal loophole.

And back to the topic of lockdowns, did you know that in 2020, for 13-18 year olds, the number of drug/alcohol deaths actually DOUBLED compared to the average of the several years leading up to it?   Lockdowns are clearly NOT benign for children or young people at all, and the next person to say "kids are resilient" can go take a long walk off a short pier!

(Corrections were made to some of the dates in the article above.)

How Cannabis Legalization Should Have Gone, And Still Can If We Want To

The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked have both long supported full cannabis legalization for everyone over 18, period.  And we took what we could get thus far towards that goal, even with all the compromises that had to be made along the way (especially that utterly abominable 21 age limit unique to the USA and Quebec). And no, legalization is still NOT a disaster.  

But the status quo leaves much to be desired, and surely we can aim higher.  How has it disappointed?  Let us count the ways:

• First of all, the age limit is still 21, not 18 like it should be by now (and really should have always been).
• Limits on self-cultivation are far too tight, if it is even allowed at all.
• Taxes, licensing fees, and licensing restrictions were far too high and onerous from the get-go to quash the still-existing and thriving black market.
• The transition period from legalization of possession and use to legalization of commercial sales was at utterly glacial pace, and still is in some states.  Not only has that been a drag, but it even gave the black market time to get a head start once the state telegraphed its intentions at least a year or two in advance.
• Only specific types of dedicated stores (dispensaries) can sell it legally.  Unlike alcohol or tobacco in most states.
• Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, and even Big Pharma, all once sworn enemies of cannabis and cannabis legalization, are now getting a piece of the action by heavily investing in a rapidly growing cannabis industry that is making artificially high profits from being propped up by onerous regulations that keep smaller competitors out.
• And last but not least, legalization at the federal level is still pending, fully TEN YEARS after the first states began to legalize recreational cannabis at the state level.

Let's do a thought experiment:  Imagine if all of these rules and regulations were to suddenly apply to tomatoes.  What would happen to the market?  What would develop as a result?  Can you say, "Big Tomato"?  And a massive tomato black market in the shadow of it all as well.  Now, that sounds pretty silly indeed.  Tomatoes are not psychoactive drugs, after all.  But now apply this paradigm to alcohol, tobacco, or even coffee or tea.  Doesn't sound quite so farfetched now, does it?

On the other side, some rules have been roundly criticized for being too lax, most notably the potency limits (or more accurately, the lack thereof) for commercial sales compared to countries like Canada and Uruguay.  And as long as potency limits are reasonable and phased down gradually, it is quite unlikely that they will foment black market sales significantly more than the status quo does.  Ditto for taxing cannabis based on potency (X cents per milligram of THC), which only a few states do now.

The federal legalization efforts keep stalling as well, due in part to well-meaning legislators trying to shoehorn so much social justice stuff into it, and in part due to other legislators that still oppose cannabis.  While the social justice stuff is good, it may be an overreach compared to getting through a bill that simply removes cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, period.  Or better yet, one like Bruce Cain's MERP Model that also explicitly allows unlimited, untaxed, and unregulated self-cultivation of cannabis for anyone over 18, while not precluding legal taxed and regulated commercial sales alongside it.  The black market and the emerging Big Pot oligopolies would thus both be destroyed in one fell swoop, plus all of the other benefits of full legalization.  That's the power of ABUNDANCE, baby!

So what are we waiting for?  Time to finish the job already!

UPDATE:  A new study finds that there is a very strong inverse correlation between the number of legal dispensaries per capita, and the size of the black market.  Local bans on dispensaries, largely due to NIMBY politics, and most notably found in large swathes of California, seem to be perpetuating the black market, basically.  In other news, study finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east.  

And this NIMBY-ism is completely unfounded, as honest research finds that legal dispensaries actually increase property values and decrease crime in their neighborhoods.  Let that sink in for a moment.

The Most Bizarre Ageist Law In All Of History

New York now has the dubious honor of having enacted the most bizarre ageist law in all of recorded history.  Passed in November 2021, it went largely unnoticed until a photo from an Albany convenience store about it went viral in recent weeks.  So what is this new and ridiculous law?

Apparently, in New York you need to be 21 or older to buy cans of....whipped cream.  Yes, you read that right.  That is because whipped cream cans contain nitrous oxide (N2O, whippits, or laughing gas) as a propellant, that can give one a brief high when inhaled.  If you honestly felt your IQ just drop ten points or more while reading this....

It is hard to begin to list all the ways this law is both stupid and wrong on so many levels:

• Of all the abusable inhalants out there (glue, paint, gasoline, aerosols, gases, solvents, "poppers", "rush", etc.) out there, nitrous oxide, especially in the form of whipped cream cans, is probably the least dangerous one of all.
• Many far more hazardous abusable but legal substances have either no age limit at all, or an age limit of 18 at most. Singling out whipped cream makes zero sense whatsoever.
• There is not currently any reported trend of teens and young adults using whippets in large numbers, nor was there before the law went into effect either.  It is really not a very popular way for young people to get high.
• Other sources of nitrous oxide gas can be readily purchased online.
• Whipped cream is clearly NOT only used as a way to get high.  But it is yet another thing people need to show ID for these days, because reasons. 
• And last but not least, setting the age limit at 21, fully three years higher than the age of majority (18), is inherently overreaching, illiberal, arbitrary unjust and ageist discrimination.

In other words, there is absolutely ZERO justification for such an ageist abomination.  But sadly, we are not really all that surprised that they would do this.  First it was alcohol, then tobacco, then cannabis, and then it was only a matter of time before they would find a way to make 21 the new 18 in other ever more illiberal ways as well.  As capitalism devolves to "late capitalism", so too does ageism devolve to "late ageism" as well, with all of its increasing absurdities.

UPDATE:  Apparently, the way the actual law is written, it really only applies to whipped cream chargers, those little steel cartridges containing nitrous oxide for use in fancy whipped cream dispensers, not cans of whipped cream itself.  Those chargers are the ones that are more likely to be used to get high by cracking and discharging the contents into a large balloon and then inhaling from the balloon.  Still a ridiculous law, but they are apparently attempting enforcing it beyond its actual scope by requiring ID to buy whipped cream cans.

For the chargers specifically, we could almost understand setting the age limit at 18 perhaps.  But 21 is way too ridiculous either way.  And any age limit on the whipped cream cans is beyond ridiculous.

(The UK appears to be even more into the moral panic about nitrous oxide lately, exaggerating the dangers, and there has been talk about banning it, but interestingly nothing about a 21 age limit.)

Does Lowering BAC Limit To 0.05% Actually Save Lives?

We at Twenty-One Debunked have long supported lowering the legal BAC limit for DUI/DWI to 0.05%, with nuance and graduated penalties, based on what we thought was rock-solid research supporting such a move from the current 0.08% limit in most of the USA.  However, a pair of more recent British studies casts serious doubt on whether such a move will actually save any lives at all by itself.

The study, in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet of all places, looks at a sort of natural experiment where Scotland lowered their BAC limit from 0.08% to 0.05% in 2014, while England and Wales kept it at 0.08% throughout.  The results?  Scotland saw no significant absolute difference in weekly traffic crashes after the change compared with before, and even saw a statistically significant 7% increase in crashes relative to England and Wales.  Similar results were found when looking only at serious, fatal, or single-vehicle nighttime crashes, hence the results were robust as well.  And all of this was after adjustment for several possible confounders.  The study also found that, contrary to what some might predict, no overall change in per capita alcohol consumption in Scotland either, and only a 0.7% decrease in on-premise alcohol consumption.  Can you say, "Whoops!"?

(And no, the study was NOT funded by the alcohol industry or any of its front groups.  Sorry.)

Thus, it seems that while lowering the BAC limit from 0.15% to 0.10% and then to 0.08% long ago probably did save a significant number of lives (though the exact number is debatable), further lowering it from 0.08% to 0.05% has very diminishing returns at best.  And it can perhaps even backfire at worst. The Australian success story was far more likely due to very tough enforcement of DUI laws in general (including, but not limited to, their legendary random breath testing (RBT) program), while the Continental European success story was likely due to the same, plus world-class public transportation as well.

So why are the above results so lackluster then?  Well, as Darren Grant noted in his famous study debunking the effectiveness of zero tolerance BAC laws for people under 21, it should really come as no surprise to an economist, who is used to thinking on the margin.  While driving impairment indeed begins long before reaching 0.08% or even 0.05%, it rises exponentially with each drink.  Thus, higher BACs are exponentially more dangerous than lower ones.  And the decision to have one's next drink based on trying to stay within the legal limit, even if a lower limit had the same deterrent effect at that limit, would have exponentially less effect that the decision not to cross a higher threshold.  (If anything, it's even MORE exponential for younger drivers, not less.)  And apparently once when the limit goes down to 0.05% or lower, any additional lifesaving effect over and above lowering the limit to 0.08% simply gets lost in the statistical noise.  That is especially true if the penalty is the same for crossing a lower threshold, since there is literally no marginal deterrence effect against each additional drink beyond that threshold.

(Grant also did a sort of sequel to that study in 2016, again drawing similar conclusions.)

We already know that the vast, vast majority of DUI casualties are concentrated among extremely high BAC drivers, usually 0.15%+ (average 0.16%) and often ones who do so repeatedly and frequently.  These drunk drivers are sometimes called "hardcore" drunk drivers, and are the most resistant to changing their behavior.  And most of those are in fact alcoholics to one degree or another.  They would, of course, laugh at the idea of a BAC limit being lowered to 0.05%, or at the very least, wouldn't exactly agonize over it.  This is all common knowledge, and not at all controversial, except of course among MADD and similar zealots.

Thus, if we as a society decide to set the BAC limit at 0.05%, or indeed any number below 0.08%, there should be steeply graduated penalties, with 0.05% (or 0.02% for young or novice drivers) being a mere traffic violation with a modest fine and short-term license suspension, and no criminal record, 0.08-0.10% being a misdemeanor with a steeper fine and longer license suspension or revocation, 0.10-0.15% being misdemeanor with an even steeper fine and even longer license revocation and mandatory jail time, and 0.15%+ being a felony with permanent or semi-permanent license revocation, very steep fines, vehicle forfeiture, and a stiff prison sentence.  Repeat offenses of 0.08% or higher would carry the same penalties as a 0.15%+ BAC, as would driving above 0.08% with a child under 16 in the vehicle.

We also know that swiftness and certainty of punishment, or the perception of such, is a far greater deterrent than severity.  Thus, automatic administrative penalties, separate from any criminal penalties, are found to be more effective that any criminal laws on the books, most notably in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

Of course, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the stunning success of special DUI/DWI courts.  These are diversion programs that allow DUI offenders to plead guilty and complete coerced treatment and enforced abstinence from alcohol instead of jail or other penalties.  And they work quite well, with far lower recidivism rates than for those who do not enter such programs.  There are two types of DUI offenders these days:  1) relative normies who simply make dumb decisions and can be "scared straight", and 2) hardcore drunk drivers.  And DUI courts actually get to the root of the problem for the latter.

But first, we need to get these ticking time bombs off of the roads before they kill or maim innocent people.  Australian-style RBT is one blunt way to do it, but that would not likely pass constitutional muster in the USA. And even then, the long-run effects of Australia's RBT were not very different than those of American-style sobriety checkpoints when studied in the 1980s.  Tougher and sustained enforcement in general really seems to be the key.  And that can of course be done more effectively and cost-effectively with roving and saturation patrols, that look for signs of actually impaired drivers on the roads.  Especially in the many states that do not allow sobriety checkpoints to take place, they HAVE to rely on DUI patrols instead.

(Twenty-One Debunked recently came up with an ingenious idea to turn roving and saturation police patrols against DUI into a COPS-like reality TV show called "Operation Rovin' Eyes", complete with ride-alongs for community members as well.)

Seasoned drunk drivers know how to avoid the checkpoints with ease.  But with roving and saturation patrols, they will soon learn (either the easy way, or the hard way) that you can run, but you can't hide.  "Roving eyes...are watching YOU!" would be a good slogan to publicize the program.  The "fish in a barrel" method, that is, parking a police car outside bars, clubs, or parties and catching would-be drunk drivers before they get on the road, would also be a great complement to such patrols as well.

And while we're at it, let's get all of the garden-variety reckless, negligent, and distracted drivers off the road as well.  The same patrols will of course get them too.

It's time to stop tilting at proverbial windmills, and finish the job for good.  So what are we waiting for?

P.S.  The drinking age in the UK is 18, in case you didn't already know.  Kinda like most of the world.

UPDATE:  What about weed?  Unlike with alcohol, Twenty-One Debunked does not support any per se limits for cannabis, only rational prima facie ones that are rebuttable, similar to what Colorado has.  The complex pharmacokinetics and lack of correlation between blood THC levels and actual impairment renders any per se legal threshold to be inherently unscientific, and there is still zero evidence that such per se laws save any lives or improve public safety at all.  While cannabis can indeed impair driving, and a fortiori when combined with alcohol, it is best to focus on those drivers that are actually impaired, rather than to snare perfectly sober drivers in the dragnet due to mere trace amounts of THC in one's system.

UPDATE 2:  While the evidence on zero tolerance laws is mixed at best, we will concede there may also be some side benefits to these laws as well.  Whether those alleged benefits are actually worth it remains an open question.

Japan Actually Encouraging Young Adults To Drink More Alcohol

Concerned about falling alcohol tax revenue, as well company profits, the government of Japan is now literally encouraging young adults to drink more alcohol.  Yes, you read that right.  They are even going so far as to hold a contest.  Apparently, alcohol consumption among young people has been falling since the 1990s, and even more so recently, with tax and business revenues falling along with it.

But most surprisingly of all, they are still NOT planning on lowering their drinking age to 18 to match their new age of majority.  They lowered their general age of majority earlier this year from 20 to 18, but still kept their smoking and drinking ages at 20, because reasons.  Or something.  Yes, really.

Stranger than fiction indeed!  And not nearly enough (facepalm) in the world to cover this!