Reason Magazine - Topics > The Nanny State

Republicans Can't Resist the Urge to Condemn Online Gambling

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:29:00 EDT

A plank supporting the prohibition of online gambling, briefly removed from the Republican platform at the behest of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), has been restored to placate social conservatives. The plank, which appeared in the 2000 and 2004 GOP platforms, reads:

Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support legislation prohibiting gambling over the Internet or in student athletics by student athletes who are participating in competitive sports.

The second sentence is inartfully phrased, but I'm assuming Republicans don't want to allow online gambling by everyone who is not involved in college sports. Since Congress has never explicitly banned online gambling (although it did prohibit the processing of payments for forms of gambling that were already illegal), this plank goes beyond supporting the status quo. On its face, it calls for a blanket ban that would criminalize the conduct of millions of Americans who use the Internet to play poker, bet on sports, or place other kinds of wagers. Professional poker player Greg Raymer asks:

Is the Republican Party no longer the party of personal freedom and individual responsibility? Why has this party, that used to protect my rights, now become the party that wants to create a Nanny-state?

The Democratic Party platform is silent on the subject of gambling. Poker News notes that the PPA's own chairman, former New York Sen. Al D'Amato, has endorsed the Republican nominee, while former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), co-author of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, is backing Barack Obama.

I chronicled the federal crackdown on online gambling in the June issue of reason. In a 2007 column, I contemplated the paternalistic proclivities of both parties.

Who's Afraid of Calorie Counts?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:21:00 EDT

Hit & Run commenters and several bloggers, including Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum, take issue with my argument, in my recent column about menu regulation, that "if customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily." Their main point is that the first restaurant to voluntarily post calorie counts on its menu boards as a way of attracting weight-conscious diners would instead scare customers away by emphasizing how fattening its dishes are, giving restaurants that kept nutritional information inconspicuous a competitive advantage. There may be some truth to this. Yet the fear of repelling diners with colossal calorie counts has not prevented the big fast food chains from voluntarily providing detailed nutritional information, both online and in their restaurants. Furthermore, some of them make this information more conspicuous than others, putting it on wrappers and counter mats near the cash register, for example, instead of on a poster in the back near the rest rooms. As I noted in the column, Subway makes a point of calling attention to calorie (and fat) counts, displaying them prominently at the point of sale and marketing part of its menu as healthier and less fattening than its competitors' offerings. Clearly, there is some demand for this sort of thing, but even at Subway the vast majority of the customers (nearly nine out of 10, to judge by the New York City health department's survey) do not make use of the nutritional information.

Although Kevin Drum disagrees with my claim that there isn't much demand for in-your-face calorie numbers, he adds, "I suspect that Sullum is on stronger ground when he says that calorie disclosure laws probably won't work." He notes that mandating nutritional information on packaged foods "hasn't had any noticeable impact on aggregate calorie consumption," which in fact increased after the requirement was imposed. But if people do not actually make use of government-mandated nutritional information, in what sense are they demanding it? Mainly in the sense that, when asked by a poll taker whether they support a purportedly health-promoting, information-disseminating policy that virtually everyone but a few libertarian nutcases seems to think is utterly unobjectionable, they will say they favor it too. But that does not necessarily mean they will change their eating habits once calorie counts are up on the menu board.

Even if some of them will, that prospect does not justify the use of force to impose an unfunded, business-disrupting menu mandate on restaurant owners who do not think it is worth the cost and effort. Interventions like New York's menu regulation and the proposed California law are not aimed at preventing fraud, or even requiring the disclosure of pertinent information (since the fast food chains already make this information available to people who are interested in it). Instead the menu mandates are aimed at prodding people to make what politicians and public health officials consider to be better food choices, which to my mind is not a legitimate function of government.

Small Girls Become Zucchini-Selling Outlaws (with Bonus Lemonade Stand Download)

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:25:00 EDT

A burgeoning fruit and veggie empire threatens law and order in Clayton, California:

Eleven-year-old Katie and three-year-old Sabrina Lewis have been selling spare melons, radishes, and of course, zucchini from their family garden at a roadside stand on Saturday mornings. Recently, the cops showed up to bust them.

"They said traffic was being stopped and then they came up with we can't have a roadside stand and then they said it was a commercial enterprise," said Katie Lewis.

Hilariously, the mayor defends the decision to shut down this tiny lesson in capitalism, preferring to make it a tiny lesson in bureaucracy instead. His defense:

"They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they grow it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next," said Clayton Mayor Gregg Manning.

The mayor later called the girls and their father "self-centered."

For those who were in elementary school in the 1980s, you can now relive the pixelated glory that was the Lemonade Stand computer game, which encouraged this kind of abominable, self-centered capitalist behavior in school kids. And in the name of learning math, no less. Go ahead, download Lemonade Stand and play a round as a gesture of solidarity with the Lewis girls. You know you want to.

Thanks John Schwenkler!

The Perils of a Lower Drinking Age

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Life is full of surprises, and some 100 college presidents think they have stumbled on one. They think there is too much problem drinking on campus—no surprise there—and suggest we might solve the problem by changing the drinking age. They don't propose to raise it to 25. They want to lower it to 18.

The group behind the petition they signed, Choose Responsibility, says the current drinking age is a failure. It has "not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students," the statement says, and in fact has spawned "a culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking'—often conducted off-campus."

It's true that in the old days, there was no college culture of clandestine, off-campus binge drinking. It was out in the open, right on the quad. Another difference back then: There was more of it.

At the risk of stating the obvious, that's at least partly because in most states, the drinking age was under 21. Youngsters could buy booze legally, so they did what you would expect. They drank more and got drunk more.

It's bizarre to blame the higher age for today's staggering undergraduates. According to Monitoring the Future, an ongoing research project at the University of Michigan, binge drinking has not risen since 1988, when 21 became the minimum drinking age throughout the country. Among college students and other college-age Americans, the rate is lower today than it was then, and the decline has been even bigger among high-school students.

It's true the progress stalled around 1996. But how can that be blamed on the higher drinking age? By then, it had been the national norm for nearly a decade.

In spite of the law, plenty of 18-to-20-year-olds somehow manage to get wasted on a regular basis. But a law can be helpful without being airtight. This one has curbed not only the use of alcohol among young people, but its dangerous abuse.

Since 1988, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drunk-driving deaths have dropped in all age groups. That's due in part to stricter enforcement and changing public attitudes about drinking and driving. But they dropped most among those younger than 21. In that group, the number of alcohol-related fatalities has been cut nearly in half—even as the number of non-alcohol-related traffic deaths has been stable.

This is not a coincidence. When states lowered their drinking age in the 1970s, they got more drunk-driving deaths among teenagers than similar states that stayed at 21. A 1983 study in the Journal of Legal Studies concluded that any state that "raises its drinking age can expect the nighttime fatal crashes of drivers of the affected age groups to drop by about 28 percent."

There are other arguments for lowering the age. Maybe the most popular is that if you're old enough to join the Army and die for your country, you're old enough to buy a beer. But there is a good reason to avoid such blind consistency. Among the qualities that make 18-year-olds such good soldiers are their fearlessness and sense of immortality—traits that do not mix well with alcohol.

Besides, we don't have a single age threshold for adulthood. We give driver's licenses to 16-year-olds, but a 20-year-old Marine returning from Iraq will find he may not buy a handgun or gamble in a casino. Why permit 18-year-olds to vote but not drink? Because they have not shown a disproportionate tendency to abuse the franchise, to the peril of innocent bystanders.

Another reason is that extending the vote to 18-year-olds doesn't let even younger people gain illicit access to the polls. But if high-school seniors could legally patronize a liquor store, sophomores would find it much easier to get party fuel. Raising the drinking age to 21 reduced alcohol-related traffic fatalities not only among 18-year-olds, who lost the right to drink, but 16-year-olds, who never had it.

It's not hard to make a logical case for allowing 18-year-olds to buy alcohol, but only if you disregard the practical effects of letting them do something that many of them are not mature enough to handle. In this debate, the ultimate wisdom comes from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who reminded us that sometimes, a page of history is worth a volume of logic.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Can Rising Motorcycle Fatalities Be Blamed on a Lack of Helmet Laws?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:21:00 EDT

The number of fatal motorcycle accidents rose in 2007 for the 10th consecutive year, hitting 5,154, 7 percent higher than the 2006 total. Meanwhile, car fatalities fell by 8 percent and light truck fatalities fell by 3 percent, "pushing the overall death rate [for motor vehicle accidents] to a historic low," The New York Times reports. The share of motor vehicle deaths caused by motorcycle crashes has more than doubled since 1997, from 5 percent to 13 percent. Although advocates of helmet laws will be inclined to blame their repeal in several states for the rising motorcycle fatalities, the chief culprit recently seems to be higher gas prices, which have encouraged people to take advantage of motorcycles' vastly superior fuel efficiency:

Motorcycle ridership appears to be rising even as the total miles for all vehicles drops....The highway safety authorities say that about 75 percent more motorcycles are registered today than 10 years ago. They suspect each motorcycle is ridden more miles, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it does not have a reliable measurement of use.

The lack of such data makes it difficult to tell how much of an increase in fatalities following repeal of a helmet law results from less helmet wearing and how much results from more riding. The Times avers that "ridership has probably become more dangerous mile for mile," but without reliable information on miles ridden, it's impossible to know for sure. Assuming the Times is right, less helmet wearing is not the only explanation:

Safety officials say many of the [newer] riders are middle-age or older men who rode when they were young, gave it up as they raised children and have recently gone back to the bike. "They think they still have the same reflexes," said James Port, the safety agency's deputy administrator.

Motorcycle riding is inherently dangerous. While wearing a helmet reduces the risk of certain injuries, research suggests the overall impact on fatalities is modest. The unimpressive numbers are one reason motorcyclists have been so successful at defending their right to decide what, if anything, to wear on their heads. "We are the only industrialized country in the world where there is an organized effort to weaken or repeal motorcycle helmet laws," complains Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Is that a sign of backwardness or a point of pride?

Are You Sure You Want Fries With That?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

In a 2007 survey of California voters, 84 percent said they thought the government should force restaurant chains to display calorie numbers on their menus and menu boards. That may happen soon: The state Assembly is considering a bill, already approved by the state Senate, that would make California the first state to impose such a menu mandate.

Yet the desires that people express in polls are often at odds with the preferences they reveal in the marketplace. The restaurant business is highly competitive. If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily. A legal requirement is necessary not because consumers want impossible-to-ignore nutritional information but because, by and large, they don't.

Since they overestimate the demand for nutritional information, advocates of menu mandates also overestimate the impact of making it more visible. "Menu board labeling has the potential to dramatically alter the trajectory of the obesity epidemic in California," the California Center for Public Health Advocacy claims, projecting a weight loss of nearly three pounds a year per fast food consumer. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which began enforcing a calorie count requirement last month, predicts it will stop 150,000 people from becoming obese and prevent 30,000 cases of diabetes during the next five years.

Both estimates are based on a study conducted by New York's health department before the city's menu rule took effect. The researchers asked about 7,300 customers at fast food restaurants in the city whether they had seen and made use of nutritional information, which is typically displayed on posters, brochures, tray liners, or counter mats (as well as on the chains' websites). They also examined the customers' receipts so they could calculate the calorie content of the food they purchased.

The only chain where a substantial share of customers said they noticed nutritional information was Subway, where 32 percent reported seeing it, compared to 4 percent at the other chains. Since Subway promotes a subset of its menu as lower in calories and fat than its competitors' offerings, using a pitchman who lost hundreds of pounds while eating at the chain every day, this disparity is not surprising.

But even at Subway, calorie information seemed to make a difference for just one in eight customers. Of those who reported seeing the calorie information at Subway, 37 percent—12 percent of all Subway customers—said it affected their purchases. Subway customers who said they used calorie information bought about 100 fewer calories than those who said they didn't see it and those who said they saw it but didn't use it.

Notably, "there was no significant difference in mean calories purchased by patrons reporting seeing but not using calorie information and patrons who reported not seeing calorie information." In other words, simply making people aware of calorie content is not enough to affect their food choices.

The information's influence may be limited to people who are predisposed to count calories. If so, the impact of menu mandates will depend on the extent to which those people are not taking advantage of less obtrusive nutritional information already provided by restaurants.

The importance of pre-existing preferences also suggests that it's risky to extrapolate from Subway customers (who, given the chain's marketing, are probably especially weight-conscious) to fast food consumers in general. Another unresolved question is whether people compensate for fewer calories consumed at McDonald's or KFC by eating more at home or elsewhere.

Even if menu regulations don't make any difference on balance, Yale obesity researcher Kelly Brownell recently told the Los Angeles Times, "there's still the issue of the consumer's right to know." What about the consumer's right not to know? The same research that supporters of menu mandates like to cite indicates that most consumers prefer to avoid calorie counts, enjoying their food in blissful ignorance. There's a difference between informing people and nagging them.

Reason Writers Around Town: Katherine Mangu-Ward on "Scared Straight" Drunk Driving Prevention

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EDT

At The Weekly Standard, Associate Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward reports on how some high schools are using fake blood and phony death announcements to scare students away from drunk driving.

Read all about it here.

Jackboots Crush Bacon Dogs

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:06:00 EDT

Here at reason, we've been on the bacon dog beat for a while now, chronicling the brave men and women who grill bacon dogs on L.A.'s street corners, in defiance of rules and regulations which class bacon as a "hazardous food." The story has everything: class warfare, racism, protection rackets, relish, and mustard.

This latest development is so not kosher—a veritable bacon dog Kristallnacht:

At Hollywood and Highland last Friday night, police cracked down on the little ladies with the cars selling those street favorites. All the food and all their equipment were confiscated and trashed.

An LAist photographer was there, and he caught a series of horrifying images, including the one above, which depicts illegal hot dog carts being fed into the gaping maw of the dumpster truck. This is a cruel variation on the proper order of things, which should include grilled bacon dogs being fed into the gaping maws of drunk idiots.

The Ur-text of bacon doggery, starring Drew Carey:

"A five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:17:00 EDT

For those who missed some of this season's finest journalism about the Olympics, ponder The New York Post's account of what swimming powerhouse Michael Phelps eats to make up his daily diet of 12,000 calories a day.

And now meet another Michael: Michael Jacobson, the director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Jacobson thinks you eat too much. He thinks pretty much all Americans eat too much, and that they're not going to stop unless we tax or ban "bad" foods. Everywhere Jacobson looks, he sees danger: Cancer in french fries, diabetes in Frosted Flakes, tooth decay in soda, and obesity in just about every that's tasty.

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) regularly takes the piss out of Jacobson, pointing out that the obesity epidemic is just as much a matter of fewer calories burned in the form of exercise as it is more calories consumed in the form of Cheetos. (Read reason on the obesity "epidemic" here.)

Below, CCF has outdone itself with a side-by-side comparison of the two Michaels. You be the judge:

UPDATE: Enjoy a typo-less version of the chart!

Bernie Parks Encourages Smoking

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:36:00 EDT

Los Angeles City Council Member Bernard Parks wants to ban smoking "wherever people congregate or there is an expectation of people being present." In short, in addition to the existing state ban on smoking in indoor workplaces, he wants to ban smoking in virtually all outdoor locations. Parks claims "secondhand smoke is the number one cause of preventable health disease in America."

This will come as a surprise to—well, almost everyone, including the CDC, which says smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. It attributes 400,000 deaths a year to smoking, more than 100 times its estimate for the number of deaths caused by exposure to secondhand smoke. But it's understandable that Parks' figures are out of whack, since he thinks "research has shown that inhaling secondhand smoke is more harmful than actually smoking." In other words, unlike every other poison known to man, tobacco smoke becomes more dangerous in smaller doses. By this logic, smoke-free air is more dangerous than secondhand smoke.

Parks seems genuinely confused. But as I've noted, this sort of confusion among policy makers has been fostered by public health officials and anti-smoking activists who have hyped the dangers of secondhand smoke so much that they've undermined warnings about smoking. "If you take this message seriously," Michael Siegel writes on his tobacco policy blog, "a rational nonsmoker might actually start smoking. After all, according to the message, it's better to smoke yourself than to be exposed to secondhand smoke."

Siegel, who has long supported bans on smoking in the workplace, believes bans like the one proposed by Parks go too far:

Anti-smoking advocates...are promoting such extreme proposals that go far beyond the documented scientific evidence that they need to create their own facts in order to justify these proposals.

You can't credibly argue that smoking needs to be banned everywhere outdoors to protect the health of nonsmokers using the actual truth about the severity of health risk from secondhand smoke exposure. There simply is no evidence that a few wisps of secondhand smoke, as one might encounter from someone smoking on a sidewalk or in a street, parking lot, or park puts people's health at risk and represents a significant public health problem.

I agree with Siegel that broad outdoor smoking bans are not justified by any health risk that secondhand smoke poses. But unlike him, I'm also against government-imposed smoking bans on private property, including businesses as well as residences. And Parks, for all his fanaticism, offers an argument that supports this position, saying his aim is to "move smokers and smoking away from people who do not choose to either smoke or inhale secondhand smoke." What if we had indoor locations where people were allowed to smoke and where everyone who entered knew about this rule? Maybe people also could have a drink or a bite to eat in these places, which would be restricted to customers who "choose to either smoke or inhale secondhand smoke." Surely this is an idea Parks could get behind.

Perfectly Sane Scientist Apprehended

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:49:00 EDT

Victor Deeb, a retired chemist in Marlboro, Massachusetts, called the fire department because his second floor AC unit was on fire. The next thing you know, he's barred from the house he's lived in for 20 years for three days because of gear for his hobby found in the basement. And no, his hobby doesn't involve grow lamps. The Worcester Telegram and Gazette reports:

[Deeb], who stored hundreds of chemicals in his house, was allowed to return home yesterday after authorities spent three days dismantling his basement laboratory.
None of the materials found at 81 Fremont St. posed a radiological or biological risk, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. No mercury or poison was found. Some of the compounds are potentially explosive, but no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products.

Deeb has several patents on file and more pending, including something involving "aromatic alcohols" that is "usable in numerous elastomeric applications including interior and exterior vehicle parts, roofing, asphalt, and any other applications," and something else that has to do with grinding things and "elastomer slurry," not to mention a "method and apparatus for introducing colorant to resinous materials."

In other words: This is a legit, productive guy who wanted to keep working after retirement. He had nothing in his basement that posed a risk to himself or his neighbors—just a lot of jars and boxes of chemicals. They don't really know if there's even a rule against this: "I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere," is the best that Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro’s code enforcement officer, can come up with.

The most disheartening quote of all:

“He’s been very cooperative,” Ms. Wilderman said. “I won’t be citing him for anything right at this moment.”

Via Rimfax

The Man Can't Bust Our Muselix

info@reason.com (Greg Beato) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

No doubt dismayed by California's disappointing status as only the nation's eleventh least overweight state, anabolically incorrrect fitness freak Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) recently approved legislation that will make trans fats verboten in restaurant food and baked goods. In Los Angeles, the city council is doing its part to keep residents healthy by declaring a one-year moratorium on new fast food restaurants in a 32-square-mile chunk of the city's South Los Angeles, West Adams, Baldwin Village, and Leimert Park neighborhoods. And in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors outlawed cigarette sales at drug stores like Walgreen's and Rite Aid.

Call it the flipside to Michael Moore's mouth-watering vision of universal healthcare as a tasty buffet of all-you-can-eat medical care. Instead of bottomless salad bowls of angioplasties and farm-fresh upper gastrointestinal endoscopies, it's Big Brother as Biggest Loser jackboot, regulating us all into tighter blue jeans and less costly LDL levels. Today, Moore and other reformers dream of living in England or France, where hip replacement is a fundamental human right, not just a medical procedure. Tomorrow, they may seek asylum in any country that does not consider double cheeseburgers a felony.

Not that anyone's taking the trans fat ban too hard; even the California Restaurant Association didn't put up much of a fight. Apparently, donuts fried in canola oil are just as tasty as their slightly more lethal counterparts fried in partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, customers seem to like the idea of trans fat-free food, and making the transition to non-hydrogenated alternatives provides a great excuse to jack up prices. One Southern California hamburger joint told The New York Times it will have to increase the price of its fries from $1.75 to at least $2.75 because of the change.

Similarly, the fact that there are already 400 or so fast-food outlets in the area of Los Angeles where the one-year moratorium will be enforced means a Happy Meal should still be easy to come by. Finally, banishing cigarettes from San Francisco pharmacies just means that smokers will be more likely to patronize liquor stores to get their nicotine fix—and anything that encourages addictive personalities to impulse-buy a quart of Jim Beam over an Odwalla Mo'Beta Smoothie can't be all bad for society, can it?

Or to put it another way: These laws are getting passed not because they promise to radically change things, but rather because they aren't going to change things enough to truly inconvenience anyone. Which also suggests they won't have much impact on California's eating and smoking habits. Trans fats will still be available in packaged foods. In burger-plagued South Los Angeles, sit-down restaurants already outnumber fast-food outlets by more than 100, but the ready availability of slowly delivered fare has apparently done little to curb local appetites for fries and shakes. Why it's necessary to penalize the fast food industry to attract Applebees and vegan cafes is a mystery the LA City Council has yet to divulge—it makes about as much sense as penalizing auto parts stores to attract yoga studios. But even if the moratorium does somehow result in more sit-down restaurants, waistlines may actually expand. After all, the absence of a clown mascot doesn't automatically knock 500 calories and 20 grams off every dish on the menu.

And when these measures don't really have much impact on public health, what next? It's probably best to think of trans fat bans and fast-food moratoriums as appetizers, small portions of government waistline engineering designed to get us used to even more proscriptive preemptive strikes against obesity and other health issues. And indeed, who can blame government officials for thinking this way? As we continue to normalize the idea that unlimited health care is something the government owes us, why shouldn't the government demand more compliance from us in exchange for the care it renders?

In Japan, the government requires anyone between the ages of 40 and 74 have their waistline measured on an annual basis. If they don't meet certain standards—33.5 inches for men, 35.4 inches for women—their employers or local governments are subject to fines. So much for the Masters sumo circuit, so much for bean paste Fridays, and so much for the old-fashioned idea that what one does in the privacy of one's dining room should have little bearing on one's employment status.

Of course, it's all but impossible to imagine the U.S. adopting a similar policy. Too many of our most passionate healthcare reformers would end up on the wrong side of the divide; even Arnold is looking pretty thick in the middle these days. But really, if increasingly proscriptive waistline engineering is the price we're doomed to pay as we increasingly turn to the government to provide us with healthcare, the Japanese model is a more palatable alternative to the bans and moratoriums we're currently experimenting with.

At least it preserves a certain measure of personal choice: Eat all the trans fat you want, but just know that you might be risking your job. Surely, this is an approach Arnold Schwarzenegger can sympathize with. Without his multi-decade diet of steroids, he might not even be Jean-Claude Van Damme, much less governor of California. But he had the freedom to consume steroids without government intervention. And while doing so exposed him to myriad medical dangers, it ultimately paid off in spectacular fashion. If only he'd acknowledge that the next time he gets the urge to make our health choices for us.

Contributing Editor Greg Beato is a writer living in San Francisco. Read his reason archive here.

The Return of Old-Fashioned Paternalism

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

One of the hot new ideas in the academy is "libertarian paternalism." Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of the book Nudge, say the goal is "enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people" and "gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better." An example: letting companies enroll workers in 401(k) plans unless they object.

But there's an older and more prevalent notion about how to get people to do things that will make their lives better. You might call it coercive paternalism, and it's thriving.

The most prominent examples are in California, which was once synonymous with freedom. City officials in San Francisco and Los Angeles intend to ensure that individuals are free to do what they want, if what they want is good for them.

San Francisco, like New York and Seattle, has decreed that chain restaurants must put nutrition information on menus. This policy, a specimen of libertarian paternalism, rests on the unproven assumption that, in the Information Age, people get fat for lack of knowledge rather than lack of willpower. No one seems to have noticed that our forebears, who didn't have access to nutrition data, generally managed to avoid obesity.

But San Francisco recently came up with another gambit in the name of public health. It's the first city in the nation to outlaw the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies.

What is this supposed to accomplish? Trying to reduce smoking by banning pharmacy sales is like trying to discourage driving by banning Chevys. Tobacco addicts have plenty of other places to get their fix.

At least they do for now. Mitch Katz, director of the Department of Public Health, insists that San Francisco "isn't a nanny state." But he leaves no doubt about his grand ambition: "I am not in favor of anybody smoking or anybody selling tobacco."

Until he brings about complete prohibition, the ban will have perverse consequences. The most obvious is to deprive one type of retail establishment of revenue and divert the dollars to other businesses. Marginal neighborhoods will become less attractive sites for pharmacies but more appealing to liquor stores, which is a novel approach to urban renewal.

In Los Angeles, driving out certain businesses is not a potential side effect—it's a conscious policy. The city council recently prohibited the opening of fast-food outlets in the poor, 32-square-mile area known as South Los Angeles. If you're a global corporation selling inexpensive meals to go, Los Angeles has a message for you: Invest anywhere but here. Apparently a vacant lot is better than a Burger King.

Councilwoman Jan Perry believes the measure will assure the locals "greater food options." The Los Angeles Times reports she "said the initiative would give the city time to craft measures to lure sit-down restaurants serving healthier food to a part of the city that desperately wants more of them."

Of course, it could do that without punishing outlets that don't need luring. But if vegetarian and seafood restaurants didn't see the area as profitable before, this law won't change their calculations. It takes an Orwellian mindset to imagine that shutting out McDonald's and KFC will expand, not diminish, the range of dining options in South Los Angeles.

All it will accomplish, as several fast-food workers told the city council, is to deprive residents of jobs in the forbidden outlets. Does anyone think unemployment will improve their diet? Or that a community with fewer jobs will be a more inviting place for preferred restaurants?

Municipal lawmakers blame the chains for obesity, as though these restaurants abduct locals and force them to eat salty, fatty fare. In reality, people in South Los Angeles patronize these places because they like tasty meals at a low price, and because they put less importance on staying slim and living till age 90 than some people think they should.

Libertarian paternalists may think they know better than you how you should live, but generally they limit themselves to promoting informed choices. Coercive paternalists have a simpler approach: telling us what to do.

The advocates say they are not trying to create a nanny state, and they're right. To call these nanny state measures grossly overstates the intrusiveness of nannies.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

If Everyone Is Overweight, Is Anyone?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EDT

"If current trends continue," says a new study in the journal Obesity, "all American adults" will be "overweight or obese" in four decades, imposing a heavy burden on the public treasury. One of the authors concedes that positing the indefinite continuation of "current trends" is "a big assumption." (In five decades, will more than 100 percent of the population be overweight?) I see some other problematic premises:

1. Since upward weight trends seem to have leveled off in recent years among both adults and children, the "current trends" are actually past trends, and so far they're not continuing.

2. The official definition of overweight seems increasingly arbitrary, especially since people who are overweight (but not obese) have lower mortality rates (during the study period) than people whose weight is deemed "healthy."

3. According to a widely cited estimate of weight-related health care costs, being merely overweight is not associated with a statistically significant increase in taxpayer-funded medical expenses.

4. Among the obese, extra annual health care costs seem to be offset by shorter life spans, so the net result (as with smoking) is to reduce taxpayer-funded expenses.

Yet the researchers insist that "timely, dramatic, and effective development and implementation of corrective programs/policies are needed to avoid the otherwise inevitable health and societal consequences implied by our projections." Translation: Give us more money for our vitally important research, or by 2048 we're all going to look like the levitating lard-asses in WALL-E.

I have no doubt the study's authors are sincere, but people have a remarkable ability to persuade themselves that what's in their interest is also in the public interest. It does not take a hardened cynic to suggest that obesity researchers publishing studies in the journal of the American Obesity Society might have an incentive to hype the threat posed by obesity. Yet one searches the resulting Reuters story in vain for a skeptical voice.

Here is my 2004 reason feature about the War on Fat.

Smoking Ban Increases Heart Attacks

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:17:00 EDT

Anti-smoking activists claim smoking bans in Scotland and Wales led to immediate, sizable reductions in heart attacks. In both cases, Michael Siegel shows on his tobacco policy blog, these assertions are unfounded.

An article in the July 31 New England Journal of Medicine cites a 17 percent decline in hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome during the first 10 months after the Scottish ban took effect at the end of March 2006. Siegel notes that the comparison was based on data from only nine hospitals. Based on data for all Scottish hospitals, he reports, the post-ban drop in heart attacks looks similar to declines seen in previous years. Between 2005 and 2006, heart attack admissions fell by 4.3 percent, slightly smaller than the 4.6 percent drop from 2003 to 2004. The difference between 2006 and 2007 was 8 percent, smaller than the 10.2 percent difference between 1999 and 2000. The two-year drop from 2005 to 2007 (11.9 percent) was not much bigger than the two-year drop from 1999 to 2001 (10.7 percent). Although "the analysis in this paper assumes that the entire observed change in heart attacks is attributable to the smoking ban," Siegel writes, "one cannot rule out the very plausible alternative hypothesis that the observed decline in heart attacks is explained by random variation in the data and the already existing secular trend of declining heart attacks in Scotland."

In the case of Wales, U.K. Action on Smoking and Health and the British Heart Foundation cited a 13 percent drop in heart attacks as evidence of the smoking ban's immediate positive effect. But as Siegel shows, drawing on data presented by Christopher Snowdon, this decline appears only if you compare the arbitrarily selected months of October through December 2007 to those same months in the previous year. But the Welsh smoking ban took effect in early April 2007. Data for the entire nine-month period between then and the end of the year show virtually no change in heart attack admissions compared to the same months in 2006. The overall drop between 2006 and 2007 was about 1 percent, much smaller than the drops seen from 2004 to 2005 (10.3 percent) and from 2005 to 2006 (6.3 percent). Furthermore, heart attacks rose in the first five months after the ban before falling again in the next four months. Based on the post hoc, ergo propter hoc logic of activists who assume that any decline in heart attacks following a smoking ban must be due to the ban, Snowdon writes, "we might even say that the smoking ban 'caused' a rise in heart attacks in Wales."

As I've said before, many of the jurisdictions that adopt smoking bans inevitably will see declines in heart attacks in the year or two after the bans take effect. If you focus only on those jurisdictions while ignoring random variation and pre-existing trends, it's not hard to create the illusion of an effect, especially if everyone forgets how biologically implausible it is for heart attacks to fall so quickly in response to a smoking ban (whether because of less smoking, less secondhand smoke exposure, or some combination of the two). Given the vast potential for cherry-picking data, the remarkable thing is what a bad job the ban boosters are doing.

More reason coverage of smoking bans and heart attacks here.

Smoke 'Em While You Can

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:52:00 EDT

This week Germany's Federal Constitutional Court overturned two state smoking bans, in Berlin and Baden-Württemberg, ruling that they unfairly discriminated against small bars by allowing larger establishments to create separately ventilated smoking rooms. Although patrons of smaller bars will be allowed to smoke for a while, this decision ultimately will aid the anti-smoking cause, since both states are likely to remedy the constitutional defect in their laws by eliminating the exception, as opposed to lifting the smoking bans. Special smoking rooms do not conflict with the avowed motivation of these bans, protecting employees from secondhand smoke, but they do conflict with the goal of protecting smokers from themselves by encouraging them to quit.

In recent years, American anti-smoking activists and public health officials have started to openly embrace the latter goal, instead of pretending their only concern is innocent bystanders. Regarding a recent proposal to tighten restrictions on smoking in San Francisco, for example, the director of the city's Department of Public Health said, "Tobacco remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S.—period. It's government's responsibility to protect people from obvious risks." Another handy rationale: The very sight of smokers is a public health hazard, since they encourage other people (especially the children!) to follow their bad example. The outdoor smoking ban that took effect last week in Loma Linda, California, like a similar ban in Calabasas, is intended to "reduce the potential for children to associate smoking and tobacco with a healthy lifestyle" and "affirm and promote the family-friendly atmosphere of the City's public places."

House Approves Philip Morris Protection Act

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:42:00 EDT

Today, by a vote of 326 to 102, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would authorize the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products. Assuming the Senate follows suit, a veto seems likely. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt has said he will recommend one. In a July 21 letter to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Leavitt said "the Administration would strongly oppose this legislation" and raised various objections:

The regulatory obligations created by the bill would be a significant added responsibility for the Food and Drug Administration and one that is inconsistent with FDA's mission of ensuring food safety and the safety and effectiveness of drugs, biologics, and medical devices.
Unlike the medical products FDA regulates, tobacco products cannot be made safe, and there is no medically established public health benefit associated with tobacco.
Adding tobacco to FDA's regulatory responsibilities could also leave the public with the misperception that tobacco products are safe, or at least safer, with the FDA regulating them....
Implementing H.R. 1108 would require the FDA to establish a new center for tobacco control. This would impose an enormous implementation and resource burden on FDA at a time when it is faced with implementing the numerous provisions of the FDA Amendments Act of 2007 and undertaking efforts to enhance food safety and improve oversight of imported drugs and devices.
FDA does not have expertise focused on tobacco products, and establishing such a center would require a huge staffing effort and infrastructure development....
The bill may spend more than it raises in revenues [from industry fees]. This could result in diverting personnel and resources from the current programs within the FDA, with the potential to seriously undermine the public health. Moreover, this regressive tax [i.e., the cigarette price increase necessary to cover industry fees] will be borne disproportionately by lower-income individuals. The Administration strongly opposes tax increases to expand the size and scope of government....
Our trading partners believe that by banning the sale of clove cigarettes but not prohibiting the sale of menthol cigarettes, the bill raises questions under U.S. international trade obligations. The government of Indonesia has repeatedly objected to the bill on the ground that this disparate treatment is unjustified and incompatible with WTO trade rules.

I lay out my objections to the bill here, here, and here. I explain the objections of critics who consider the bill racist here.

L.A.'s Circular (Drain of a) Political Culture

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:17:00 EDT

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously yesterday to ban new fast-food restaurants from serving the comparatively impoverished area of South Los Angeles (previously known to non-Angelenos as South-Central). In the impoversihed vocabulary of SoCal politics, it isn't a "ban," but rather a one-year "moratorium," which is the preferred method to introduce ever-stricter controls on what residents can do with their "private" property. (Previous moratoria have included banning the demolition or condo-conversion of downtown flophouses, the opening of new medical marijuana dispensaries, and the construction of homes on unused hillsides that had previously been zoned for, um, housing.) Explained one of the measure's chief backers, former LAPD chief-turned Councilman Bernard Parks, "Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods."

I can't begin to tell you what a losing battle it was trying to argue directly with L.A. "stakeholders" such as Parks during my two-year tenure at the L.A. Times that you can't reasonably expect to restrict your way into prosperity, let alone into getting your favorite chain stores installed nearby. In fact, I once took a three-hour tour (by mini-bus, not Minnow) of South L.A. with Parks and his staff, in which he'd point out the window and list off all the unseemly businesses he'd like to see move along. "Auto-related business, auto-related business, fried chicken restaurant, liquor store, small supermarket, fast-food restaurant," and so on. It was Parks' dream − one I share! − that major intersections be populated not by Popeye's, but by sit-down family restaurants, or at least a little taste of fast casual. But unlike Parks, I don't think it's good policy to punish the very businesses that were willing and able to serve maligned neighborhoods, in the hopes that clearing such space would serve as a magic wand to bring in the Trader Joe's of your dreams. (The lack of which, by the way, is held up as evidence of − wait for it! − "food apartheid.")

I exaggerate not a bit when I describe the prevailing politics of L.A. to be roughly as follows: Wal-Mart and big box stores = evil, and need to be stopped at all costs. Also, we need more cheap supermarkets! Mom and pop stores need to be defended from Big Corporations, unless they sell fried chicken or used tires, or get in the way of a big development project. We have an affordable housing crisis, which is why we need to raise property taxes, limit the footprint of houses on their lots, and bulldoze thousands of affordable houses to make way for schools that we don't need!

Actually, the worst evidence I ever saw of the latter was in my little bus tour with Parks. We'd go through lower-middle class neighborhood after lower-middle class neighborhood, where entire swaths of bungalows and palm trees had been flattened, often (as Parks complained bitterly) without the L.A. Unified School District ever really notifying the relevant local elected officials. (Bought-out homes and bulldozed property have a way of creating irreversible facts on the ground, as opponents to eminent domain have long known.) So he was sensitive to eminent domain abuse, and interestingly opposed (unlike most of L.A.'s political culture) to condo-conversion restrictions and even rent control.

I guess I should be happy that the concept of private residential property held at least some sway with an L.A. politician, but after enough of these moratoria you just kinda want to throw your hands up in despair.

UPDATE: Lousy L.A. Times editorial in support of the ban here. Not-quite-as-lousy L.A. Times editorial from a previous regime here.

'I'm Sure That You Think You Don't Want Help'

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Over at The American Spectator, reason contributor Shawn Macomber reviews Scott Stein's satirical novel Mean Martin Manning, which imagines a not-too-distant future in which nosy social workers are empowered to forcibly improve crotchety shut-ins:

Pitney [the social worker] is there to make Manning [the shut-in] eat his vegetables, both literally and figuratively. If Martin Manning isn't renouncing the things or behaviors she believes he should, he isn't progressing. And if he isn't progressing, he certainly isn't improving. Failure to improve clearly places him in noncompliance with the rules and regulations of a life-improvement zone, however content he may erroneously believe he is.

"I'm sure that you think you don't want help," Pitney tells the shut-in when he tries to opt out of her non-optional assistance. "That's standard. In fact, not wanting help is one of the signs of needing it. Yours is a textbook case."

Last fall in reason, I interviewed Stein about his book.

The Sun-Times Embraces the Nanny State

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:43:00 EDT

Chicago's second biggest daily responds to my article on the Windy City's Nanny State proclivities with an endorsement of many of the policies I criticize.

Reason mocks the city for requiring that fat cops shape up, providing them with nutritionists and trainers to help.
We don't. Police work is physical work. A cop has to be in shape.

Fair enough. But my mocking was more about the fact that after a year of headlines about police abuses, it just struck me a bit odd that the Board of Aldermen's biggest concern while I was in town researching the article was a proposal to assign cops personal trainers at taxpayer expense.

Reason knocks the mayor for regulating thousands of taverns -- evil peddlers of demon rum -- out of existence. Chicago has only about 1,300 taverns today, compared with about 7,000 in the 1940s.
We don't. A lot of those joints were buckets of blood that loomed within a short stagger of neighborhood schools. And nobody in town complains they can't find a drink.

Ah, yes. For the children.

And "buckets of blood?" Really? You know, I'll bet if we compare Chicago's crime rate in the tavern-happy 1940s with its crime rate now, the modern, 1,300-tavern era doesn't fare so well. In fact, let's go back a bit further. There was a time when alcohol in Chicago and the rest of America was banned altogether. What was crime like between 1919 and 1933? What was it like in Chicago? Also, is it really a good idea to make people travel farther from their homes to find a drink?

Reason finds fault with Chicago's gun control laws, said by the magazine to be among the most restrictive in the nation.
We don't. The Sun-Times has had to write too many stories about too many people killed by guns. Repealing our gun laws -- hey, let's all ride the L with pistols -- won't help.

Actually, it might. Chicago has an out and out ban on handguns right now. How's that working out? And if the use of guns for self-defense is such an abomination, why are Chicago's politicians allowed to carry, while its citizens aren't?

A couple of other nanny-state regulations cited by reason fall into a gray zone for us. Unlike strict libertarians, we support the ban on smoking in the workplace, but we agree that taverns should have been left to decide the matter for themselves.

Not sure what the difference is. Private property is private property. But fair enough. I could live with a workplace ban that exempted bars and restaurants.

And, as we wrote last week, all those surveillance cameras make us nervous, but it's hard to deny the unintended consequence that those doing the watching are being watched, too. Security cameras have caught more than a few police officers stepping over the line.

Actually, if memory serves, private security cameras caught those cops beating on citizens. Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but I'd guess that if a city-owned camera caught a Chicago cop breaking the law, there's a decent chance those tapes would disappear in short order. Not sure why I would think such a thing. Just a hunch, I guess.

If Chicago is a bit of a nanny state, the impulse springs from a good place -- a widespread sense that this is a remarkably healthy, vibrant and livable city, and we don't want to screw it up.

I see. It's the intent of the laws that matter, not their actual consequences. Good to know.

I love Chicago. But Chicago was a world-class city long before it started instituting traffic and surveillance cameras, taxing bottled water, banning foods that offend interest groups, and shutting down taverns. Here's a thought. Maybe the Nanny State stuff is making a vibrant and livable city a bit less vibrant and livable. Maybe, just maybe, Mayor Daley and the Board of Aldermen's suffocating paternalism is part of the reason why Chicago is losing population faster than friggin' Detroit.

Addendum: My last line was a bit overwrought. According to Census data (link goes to xls file), Chicago lost 59,358 people between 2000 and 2007. Detroit lost 34,318. Given that Chicago is more than double the size of Detroit, it wasn't correct to say that the city is bleeding population "faster" than Detroit. Chicago also gained about 8,000 people between 2006 and 2007.

'The truth--well, the truth is that I've had a long-standing problem with heroin addiction'

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EDT

Bill Day was a reliable source of clean needles for San Antonio's heroin addicts until authorities forced him to shut down his operation. Day helped found the Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition in 2003, and collected over 10,000 dirty needles since the program started. And ironically, he had legislative support:

Day, who has AIDS but didn't get it through drug use, started passing out needles in San Antonio regularly a little over a year ago. Around the same time, the state Legislature authorized Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, to set up a separate pilot program.
But [District Attorney Susan] Reed said in August that anyone with a needle, even in the program, was breaking the law. "It's just a question of law," she said.
Attorney General Greg Abbott backed up Reed, saying people who possess drug paraphernalia as part of a needle-exchange program can be prosecuted because the law didn't specifically exempt them.

Read the whole story here.

Steve Chapman wrote in support of needle exchange programs here.

Hat tip to Austin reader, KJ Radebaugh.

What About Famous Original Singas Pizza?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:40:00 EDT

New York City's regulation requiring the conspicuous posting of calorie counts on restaurants' menu boards was supposed to apply just to big chains that standardize their dishes and already do (or can easily afford) nutritional analyses. But A.P. reports that the threshold for the rule, 15 or more outlets nationwide, is low enough to include obscure local chains and quasi-chains:

"This has been an absolute nightmare," said Enrique Almela, director of operations at Singas Famous Pizza, which has 17 restaurants, most in the borough of Queens....
Almela spoke with The Associated Press from his car Wednesday as he rushed sample pizzas to a food laboratory. He said the calorie tests for his 35 different pizza combinations will cost $10,000, and he doubts they will produce accurate data.
"I may put 15 pepperoni on a pie. Someone else may put 12. We don't measure the amount of cheese we put on," he said. "If you put up roundabout numbers, how does that help anyone?"
The deadline also looked problematic for a unique class of New York City eateries: loosely affiliated, largely immigrant-owned restaurants that share the same name and sometimes the same suppliers, but operate independently.
Afgan Paper & Food Products, which distributes food and packaging materials to many of the eateries, said it was scrambling to get them calorie info.
"The stores are all calling and asking for information. We don't have it," said Mariam Mashriqi, a receptionist at the company.
In the meantime, Mashriqi said, some owners were paying for the laboratory tests themselves.
"These are small stores. They are barely making a profit," she said.

You can find recent reason coverage of the menu board rule here, here, and here.

[via Scott Stein at When Falls the Coliseum]

Can Drunk Driving Be Funny?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:07:00 EDT

The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten wrote a very funny column a couple weeks ago, in which he gets schnockered in a driving simulator and documents the results.

Recently, he discussed the process by which a column making light of drunk driving might get approved, and offered an interesting insight into the kinds of topics that are still a bridge too far, even in an age where presidential candidates admit to doing "a little blow."

When I first proposed the idea to [my editor] Tom the Butcher, he was very concerned about one possible result: What if I continued to ace the test, well into staggering drunkitude?
"Well," I said, "I can make that funny."
"I'm sure you can," he said, "but I will not publish it."
A spirited and enlightening conversation ensued, the details of which I cannot go into here for reasons of propriety. In essence I was arguing for the transcendence of truth, and the Butcher was arguing for the transcendence of moral and civic responsibility. Both arguments had merit, but he had rank.

Fortunately, Weingarten's driving after a bottle and a half of wine on no sleep and an empty stomach was...well, I'll let the test administrator tell it: "You ran off the road after a curve. You crashed into a bus. You killed a pedestrian. You had a frontal collision with a car driving in the opposite direction in the other lane. You killed a bicyclist. As the test ended, you were beginning a dangerous maneuver that might have caused a rollover if it had continued."

All's well that ends in a fiery crash, I always say. But seriously, would it have been a public service to spike the column if Weingarten had slept well, eaten a big dinner, and been more or less OK after a few drinks?

More on the ever-falling acceptable blood alcohol level here.

"They Think Foot Massage Must Be Something To Do With Sex"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:30:00 EDT

A crackdown on Chinese foot massage parlors is underway in Los Angeles: "Authorities have raided about a dozen foot massage parlors in recent months, from San Gabriel to Rowland Heights, charging operators and masseuses with fines of up to $1,000."

Which is weird really, because if you think about it, who needs a cheap foot massage more than a jackbooted thug?

An attorney representing a new association of foot massage parlor owners has argued that the industry employs more than 1,000 people—many of the poorest Chinese emigres hoping to establish a foothold in the United States.

So is it protectionism? Or prudery?

"They think foot massage must be something to do with sex," [shop owner Ching] Lau said. "They don't understand how popular this is in Asia. It's part of Chinese culture."

More on the thuggery of cosmetologists here and here.

Via Virginia Postrel's Dynamist blog.

McGill Also Found That 90% of Congressmen Talk Out of Their Asses

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:39:00 EDT

Last month the House Financial Services Committee rejected a bill co-sponsored by Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) that would have blocked Treasury Department regulations aimed at preventing online gambling. Speaking against the bill, Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the committee's ranking Republican, explained that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the law that requires the regulations, is all about saving the youth of America from a potentially lethal addiction. "McGill University found that one-third of college students who gamble on the Internet ultimately attempted suicide," he averred. He added, "That is why the rate of suicide on our college campuses has doubled in the past 10 years."

In a belated response to Bachus' startling claim, the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, an industry group, cites McGill University gambling and addiction researcher Jeffrey L. Derevensky, who says:

This assertion, which is reportedly based upon our empirical research, is not predicated upon any factual evidence. None of the studies conducted with adolescents or college students, to the best of my knowledge, have looked at a connection between Internet wagering and suicide attempts.

In a June 25 press release, Bachus revised his claim, saying, "A study by McGill University found that nearly one-third of teenage compulsive gamblers attempted suicide" (emphasis added). That sounds a little more plausible, depending on how compulsive gambling is defined. But according to Derevensky, Bachus is still wrong to cite McGill research in support of his assertion. In any case, given that only 7 percent or so of online bettors qualify as "problem gamblers" (according to a 2007 survey by the British Gambling Commission), throwing everyone who has ever gambled online into that category is a pretty big mistake. Then, too, while Bachus said suicides on college campuses have doubled in the last decade, the CDC says suicides among 15-to-24-year-olds fell by 28 percent between 1990 and 2003, then rose by 8 percent in 2004 before falling by 3 percent in 2005, the latest year for which data are available (PDF).

You can watch Bachus rail against online gambling here. I explain why financial institutions are vexed by the proposed UIGEA regulations here.

Addendum: Several commenters wondered whether Bachus is conniving or clueless. Last summer, after Radley Balko testified at a hearing on Internet gambling before Frank's committee, he described an exchange with Bachus that supports the latter interpretation.