Regulating Vice

Abstract

Regulating Vice provides a new, interdisciplinary lens for examining vice policy, and focuses that lens on traditional vices such as alcohol, nicotine, drugs, gambling, and commercial sex. Regulating Vice argues that public policies toward addictive activities should work well across a broad array of circumstances, including situations in which all participants are fully informed and completely rational, and other situations in which vice-related choices are marked by self-control lapses or irrationality. This precept rules out prohibitions of most private adult vice, and also rules out unfettered access to substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine. Sin taxes, advertising restrictions, buyer and seller licensing, and treatment subsidies are all potentially legitimate components of balanced vice policies. Regulating Vice brings a sophisticated and rigorous analysis to vice control issues, an analysis that applies to prostitution as well as drugs, to tobacco as well as gambling, while remaining accessible to a broad social science audience.

Embracing morals in economics: The role of internal moral constraints in a market economy

“…27 Debates about eating fattening foods, drinking alcoholic beverages, or consuming drugs have many similarities to those on morality. On one hand are people who believe that government must regulate, tax, or prohibit certain choices, and on the other hand are people who believe that individuals should be taught to control themselves (Leitzal, 2007). feedback and disfavor reprimands so they "first see the need to discipline themselves when they have contact with others."…”

The Human Rights of Sex Trafficking Survivors: Trends and Challenges in American Vacatur Laws

“…Any women engaged in sex work are viewed as either "deviant criminals who must be punished" or as "victims in need of rescue", characterizations which have been internalized into both national and international legal frameworks [15] (p. 413). According to the U.S. Department of State, "prostitution is inherently harmful" and it is the position of the United Nations that "no well-informed person would consent to being trafficked for commercial sex activities" [16] (p. 204). Implementing this approach leaves no clear way for law enforcement agencies to clearly distinguish between prostitutes and victims of sex trafficking since all sex workers are assumed to be caught up in the same exploitative system [15].…”