Gas Prices Down, Traffic Deaths Up in 2015

While cheaper gas is generally good for the economy and the average person's wallet, unfortunately it also seems to come at a fairly high cost:  more traffic fatalities.  The latest data suggest that was the case in 2015.  After stubbornly hovering between $3.50 and $4.00/gallon from 2011-2014, gas prices on average plummeted to around $2.00 from the second half of 2014 into 2015, and even dropped below $2.00 in early 2016--a seven-year low.  And traffic deaths apparently rose to a seven-year high in 2015, nearly 8% higher than the previous record-low reached in 2014.  Additionally, preliminary data for the first half of 2016 in several states also show that traffic deaths are likely to be the same or higher than they were in 2015.

None of this should really come as a surprise.   As we have noted in a previous post in 2010, it has been known for quite some time now that there is a significant inverse correlation between gas prices and traffic crashes, including fatal ones.  And the link is especially true for younger drivers.  Carefully controlled studies have found this to be true, suggesting a true causal relationship.  Contrary to popular opinion, the price elasticity of gasoline is not zero, or even close to zero, and it seems to rise dramatically when prices go above $3.00/gallon.  Longer-term elasticities are about twice as strong, suggesting the effect builds over time.

The effects on fatalities are not limited to reduced vehicle miles traveled; while that drops too, even controlling for this we can see a decrease in deaths with higher prices.   "Discretionary" driving declines the most when gas prices rise, and most fatalities occur from this type of driving.  Speeding and aggressive driving also decline in an effort to save fuel and money.  Thus, the price elasticity for gasoline demand actually understates the effect on fatalities.  And while non-alcohol related crashes may be more affected by changes in gas prices, alcohol-related ones would be affected as well.

By that logic, it seems that one of the best ways we can reduce traffic fatalities (both alcohol and non-alcohol) would be to raise the gas tax.  Of course, that would make a lot of people mad.  But if it saves even one life, it's worth it, right?  Isn't that what groups like MADD have said about things like the 21 drinking age?  Judging by the lack of enthusiasm about raising the gas tax, it appears that the pro-21 crowd doesn't practice what they preach.  Or maybe it's all about liberty for "just us," not all.

If we know higher gas prices save lives, not to mention the planet, what are we waiting for?

The Evidence Is Clear: Taxation Works Better Than Prohibition

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I believe that alcohol taxes should be raised significantly, and the drinking age lowered to 18.   The overwhelming weight of available evidence strongly suggests that alcohol taxes are far more effective, cost-effective, and socially efficient in reducing alcohol-related problems than the 21 drinking age can ever be.  And in the past few years we have even more evidence to show for it.

I have noted in the past that the landmark Miron and Tetelbaum study of 2009 has not only thoroughly debunked the idea that the 21 drinking age saves lives, but it also had a more subtle finding as well.  Namely, it also quietly confirmed the long-accepted finding that raising the beer tax actually does save lives, even if modestly.  And ironically, that was found when they tweaked the pro-21 Dee (1999) study that at first seemed to cast doubt on the beer tax--adding Alaska, Hawaii, and DC as well as more years to the model completely reversed Dee's original findings in that regard, as the original model apparently didn't have enough useful variation or statistical power to detect such results when state-specific trends were added to the regression.

Also, Ponicki et al. (2007) found that while there is supposedly a modest lifesaving effect of the 21 drinking age, high enough beer taxes can actually make that effect irrelevant as the two policies apparently act at cross-purposes.  When one is increased, the other becomes less relevant as a result, for obvious reasons.

Fast forward to newer studies on the effects of alcohol taxation and pricing.  Even pro-21 researcher Alexander Wagenaar appears to be a huge fan of raising alcohol taxes these days.  In 2009 and 2010, Wagenaar did two large meta-analyses on the effects of alcohol taxation on drinking as well as alcohol-related mortality and morbidity, respectively.  In both, the effects were clear:  it is quite effective indeed as a public health measure.  When alcohol taxes/prices go up, problems and deaths go down.  More recent studies also confirm such results as well.  No wonder Mark Kleiman famously said that, "Any sentence about drug policy that doesn't end with "raise alcohol taxes" is an incoherent sentence".

Thus, raising the alcohol taxes, even doubling or tripling them, should be a no-brainer.  So why aren't we doing it?   Clearly, the alcohol industry opposes any attempt to raise such taxes, and they always threaten a loss of jobs if they pass.  But there is really not much if any evidence that such a thing happens, and the industry consistently fails to produce any robust evidence in that regard.  As for the idea that alcohol taxes are regressive and hurt poorer folks and "responsible" drinkers, that is also not really true either:  the economic burden would fall mostly on heavier drinkers and wealthier folks, while moderate drinkers really wouldn't pay very much.  While I do not advocate extremely high taxes like they have in the Scandinavian countries, there is really no good reason not to raise and equalize all alcohol taxes back to at least the 1991 level for distilled spirits, adjust it for alcohol content, and index it for inflation from then on. Microbrewers, on the other hand, should be exempt from any tax hikes.

It is true that Thomas Jefferson said, "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap".  But that was then.  Nowadays, beer, wine, and even hard liquor have apparently become too cheap for our own good.  And far cheaper than back then or even a few decades ago, at least relative to most people's incomes.  Yet the social costs of excessive drinking have not gone down much, so there is a problem of increasing "externalities".  And unlike most policy measures, raising alcohol taxes would also raise revenue rather than cost it, and there would be no loss of individual rights either.  Clearly, it's a win-win-win situation for everyone except the heaviest drinkers and the merchants of death that profit from them (along with funeral directors, of course). 

For once, MADD is correct about something:  if it saves even one life, it's worth it.  I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Violence Has No Place In Our Movement

At a time in history where various social justice movements are gaining rapid momentum, the question of the use of violence inevitably arises.  That is, under what circumstances, if any, is violence of any kind acceptable as a protest tactic?  While I am not a full-blown pacifist (for example, I believe in the use of physical force in cases of absolute and immediate self-defense, and no "duty to retreat" when one is truly cornered), and I will leave it an open question as to how "self-defense" is defined and whether or not violence has a place other social justice movements, I will say that I do NOT believe that violence as a protest tactic has any place in the movement to lower the drinking age or the broader youth-rights movement in general.  Period.

I'm sure some of us, young and old alike, may fantasize at times about using violence against police and judges who enforce the vile and ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age and its ancillary laws that prop it up.  And you know what?  You are perfectly justified in your fantasies, and your grievances are absolutely NOT trivial.  I am the last person who would try to gaslight you in that regard.  But when one decides to act out those fantasies in the misguided hopes of redressing those very real grievances, that becomes a serious problem for our movement.  Most of us in the movement are non-violent, and any violence committed in the name our movement only gives ammunition to the other side, confirming ageist stereotypes and hardly makes us look like we are mature enough to drink at 18 or any other age for that matter.  Thus, adding violent tactics to our movement is far more likely to backfire than it would in other movements.

I am not against the use of non-violent civil disobedience, by the way.  But when it comes to aggressive, offensive physical force against law enforcement, judges, politicians, or even MADD for that matter, I will say this to any potential "lone wolves" considering such "propaganda by deed":  NOT IN OUR NAME!

As Gandhi would say, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind".  And as I like to say, when you fight fire with fire, we all get burned in the end.  Keep that in mind when protesting or debating.

Vote Green, Not Brown!

We at Twenty-One Debunked just seriously lost some respect for California, a state that we, until fairly recently, regarded as one of the least-worst states in the country (though the bar is set rather low to begin with) in terms of social policy in general.  Looks like the Golden State just joined Hawaii, NYC, San Francisco, and a growing number of localities in this country in raising the purchase age for tobacco to 21, with Governor Jerry Brown (remember him?) signing it into law on May 4, 2016.   The law change takes effect on June 9, 2016, just a few weeks later, when the age limit will rise from 18 to 21 overnight without even so much as a grandfather clause.  Brown also signed other bills on the same day restricting e-cigarette use (i.e. "vaping") in public and expanding the coverage of various no-smoking zones, among other things, but the one that really stood out the most (and rankles the most with us) is the 21 smoking age.  The one exception:  active-duty military members age 18-20 can still buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.  But this exception is a rather hollow way of addressing the fundamental injustice of being old enough to die for one's country but being too young to smoke (or drink for that matter), and doesn't make things much better.  So even with this exception, Twenty-One Debunked still opposes this new law regardless.

Hopefully, there will be a ballot measure in November that will undo the hike in the smoking age.  Until then, though, we might just want to boycott all things from California whenever possible.  That includes major Hollywood movies (which still feature omnipresent product placement from Big Tobacco) and fruits/vegetables grown with fracking wastewater thanks to the very same Governor Jerry Brown.  VOTE GREEN, NOT BROWN!!!

Tobacco, The Ulitmate Dark Horse of Drugs

Almost immediately after posting a recent article about the roundly debunked "gateway drug theory", we at Twenty-One Debunked felt we should post another separate article about the particular case of tobacco, especially in the form of commercial cigarettes. While our organization does not generally view tobacco as a particularly high-priority issue, perhaps it is something we should be revisiting given both recent evidence as well as recent efforts to raise the smoking age to 21.

While the primary dangers of smoking tobacco (i.e. cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, birth defects, etc.) have been well-known for decades, what has been much less appreciated is the neurotoxic properties of cigarettes.  The thing is, nicotine is a known neurotoxin, and it is likely that at least some of the thousands of other chemicals in cigarette smoke are also toxic to the brain as well.  One reported effect of nicotine is that it can "prime" the brain's reward system for addiction in general, including to other substances.  This seems to be particularly true for the early adolescent brain.  While these findings are based primarily on rodent studies, human studies seem to dovetail with this idea far more for tobacco than for cannabis or even alcohol.  Thus, the psychopharmacological aspect of the gateway hypothesis seems to hold true indeed for tobacco, and if there were such a thing as an actual gateway drug (which is a very big "if", if you ask us), tobacco would have to be it, hands down.

Additionally, tobacco is also emerging as a potential "dark horse" in the etiology of psychosis and schizophrenia as well.  This has been informally hypothesized for many years now while being overlooked by most researchers, and is only very recently beginning to be taken seriously by mainstream science.  Perhaps cannabis (which is often mixed with tobacco in many countries, and whose use is often predicted by prior and concurrent tobacco use in general) has been taking a major bum rap in that regard as well?  All while Big Tobacco has subtly and sedulously promoted tobacco smoking as "self-medication" for decades, of course.

That said, Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes any attempts to raise the smoking age any higher than 18.  Instead, we (along with the TSAP) believe that we should deal with cigarettes the way we would deal with any other defective product such as the historical examples of the Ford Pinto, lawn darts (Jarts), leaded gasoline and paint, DDT, incandescent light bulbs, and old-style refrigerators.  Either 1) require the defects to be sufficiently fixed, or 2) failing that, remove such products from the market.  And yes, commercial cigarettes as they exist today are indeed defective by design in that they addict, enslave, and kill far more people than they have to.  Worldwide, they kill about 6 million people per year, hence the name of Robert N. Proctor's bombshell of a book, Golden Holocaust.

Since 2013, the endgame strategy that the TSAP (and Twenty-One Debunked) currently supports has been to let tobacco phase itself out by gradually reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to a (relatively) non-addictive level.  Since 2009, the FDA now has the authority to set a legal limit on the nicotine content of tobacco products, as long as the limit is not zero.  Much research indicates that there is a threshold level of nicotine required to create and sustain addiction, and if all cigarettes were to fall below this threshold, smoking rates would plummet precipitously.  In fact, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying, "‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week."  This idea was originally proposed by Henningfield and Benowitz in 1994, and has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and several other experts including Proctor himself.  Malcolm Gladwell also discussed it in his aptly-titled 2000 book The Tipping Point.   Thus, the TSAP recommends reducing the maximum nicotine content (not delivery) of cigarettes from the current level of 1-2% to less than 0.1% within 5 years, and doing the same for quasi-cigarettes (i.e. little cigars) and perhaps roll-your-own tobacco (but no other products).  That alone would reduce smoking prevalence by as much as 80% within a fairly short timeframe, with further reductions possible in the more distant future.  Alternatively (or in addition), the FDA could require the pH of such products to be raised to 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation, as is naturally the case for most typical cigars and pipe tobacco currently.

The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked also recommend that the following measures be taken as well:

• Ban the use of additives in cigarettes, especially those that are harmful or increase the addictiveness of tobacco.
• Ban the use of any radioactive fertilizers or harmful pesticides for growing tobacco.
• Phase-out the practice of flue-curing tobacco, which is a major resource hog and bad for the environment.
• Improve the quality control standards for tobacco products (and electronic cigarettes) to be at least as high as for food.
• End all government subsidies for tobacco farming and production.
• Divest completely from Big Tobacco at all levels of government.
• Vigorously enforce the current age limit of 18 for tobacco and e-cigarette sales to achieve 100% retailer compliance. 
• Continue to allow widespread availability of reduced-harm tobacco and nicotine products (i.e. snus, e-cigarettes, etc.) so that smokers can easily switch to less dangerous alternatives.
• Improve education and smoking cessation programs, funded by tobacco tax revenues.
• Give out free nicotine patches, gum, etc. to any smokers who want to quit.  NYC already does this. 

At the same time, the TSAP most certainly does NOT support outdoor smoking bans or any other policy that treats smokers like criminals or second-class citizens.  Smokers are NOT the villains here, as that dubious honor belongs to the merchants of death known as tobacco companies.  In fact, we have repeatedly pointed out that, far from being a drain on society, smokers actually save society money in the long run since they more than pay their way as far as taxes go.  Cigarette taxes, especially in NYC where they are extremely high, have basically become a "reverse Robin Hood" way to rob from the poor and give to the rich, since smoking has increasingly become a poor man's vice.  And the wide disparity in cigarette taxes across states has led to a serious black market for untaxed/low-tax/counterfeit/stolen cigarettes, with the main beneficiaries being organized crime syndicates and even terrorists.  Thus, we recommend that the handful of states with cigarette taxes higher than $2.00/pack reduce their tax to $2.00/pack or lower, and the states with taxes of less than $1.00/pack raise it to $1.00-$2.00/pack.  NYC should cut its tax in half.  At the federal level, we recommend no further tax hikes, but a national price floor of $5.00/pack including tax to discourage smuggling.

The tobacco industry has basically dug its own grave.  Time to push them in there, yesterday.

DARE Quietly Removes Cannabis From List of Gateway Drugs

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  The well-known drug and alcohol prevention program for kids, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), has quietly removed cannabis from its list of "gateway" drugs.  And they apparently have also stopped lying to kids about the purported dangers of cannabis in general as well.  That is probably because the recent evidence that debunked their previous propaganda has been overwhelming.  And that is a sign that "reefer sanity" is slowly starting to return to America.

DARE's current list of "gateway" drugs can be found on this page of their website.  Note that only two substances remain on that list:  1) tobacco, and 2) alcohol, in that order.  And even the part about alcohol, with warnings against the dangers of "underage" drinking, interestingly enough makes no specific mention of what the legal drinking age is or should be, as the actual words "twenty-one" and "21" are literally nowhere to be found in the text.  It does, however, note that 90% of young people will experiment with alcohol by age 18, and that only a small number abstain completely while an even smaller number become addicted and need help.  And the page encourages parents to, among other things, be good role models as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned (which is important as that addresses the real pink elephant in the room).  Overall, DARE has really come a long way it seems, and we hope their recent progress continues.

We at Twenty-One Debunked should note, however, that we believe that the whole "gateway theory" (which should really be called the "gateway hypothesis") has been grossly overstated at best, even as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned.  A few years ago, we wrote an in-depth article about this phenomenon, which the best evidence strongly suggests is really nothing more than a socially-constructed narrative.  Constructed by prohibition laws, disingenuous propaganda, and ageism/adultism, that is.