Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Vice Spiral
The beauty of Ricochet is how one thought spawns another, a true ricochet of thoughts bouncing from one member to the next. David Sussman‘s post on Las Vegas got me thinking about the spiraling effects of lawmakers preying on their constituents’ weaknesses in order to wring every last available dollar out of them for, you know, the children.
Nevada has always been the industry leader. When divorce was a complicated procedure in America, Nevada filled the gap. In 1931, the state simplified its divorce laws and reduced its residency requirement to six weeks. They essentially created divorce tourism. By 1940, almost 5% of the total number of divorces filed in the US were in Nevada.
Divorce resorts cropped up everywhere, but especially in Reno. The town’s name became synonymous with the “quickie divorce.” In The Awful Truth (1937), Cary Grant quips, “The road to Reno is paved with suspicions.”
But when other states followed California into the Soviet-style “no-fault” system of divorce, that all came to an end.
In the same year that they created the divorce tourist, they also legalized gambling. That, too, would come crashing down as other states got into the act. At first it was New Jersey’s attempt to build Las Vegas East out of the ruins of the Atlantic City boardwalk. Then, in 1988, President Reagan signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that allowed states to “partner” with Indian tribes to open casinos across the country.
Now there are plenty of places to lose your money but they’re so numerous that none of them are what you’d call “destination” places.
Colorado has now created “marijuana tourism.” While the state is benefiting right now, the true costs won’t be known for some time.
We do know the societal problems created by the first two legalized “vices.” But what we may not appreciate is that they are also agitating the monster they were supposed to placate. Take these two paragraphs from an article on legalized gambling in Social Work Today:
Gambling and its associated problems have been around for a long time. However, what is new is the recent increased opportunities to gamble as cash-strapped states desperate for new revenue streams relax prohibitions against slot machines, table games, and other forms of gambling.
And then it’s followed by this:
“The cost of problem gambling is high, both for the problem gambler and for their families,” Vander Linden says. “In most states, there is absolutely not adequate funding to address the problem.”
The man quoted is Mark Vander Linden, president of the Association of Problem Gambling Service Administrators. See, now that the states have created a bevy of problem gamblers the states need to find new streams of revenues to treat the problems. So they look for another vice to “regulate” and tax. It seems the merry-go-round just never stops spinning.
Published in Culture, Entertainment, General, Marriage
The government essentially nationalized Big Tobacco, and as a result, government revenue and power is threatened when people use E-Cigs instead – and tries to ban them, too.
RE: Legalizing a vice to monetize it for the state… Where does it stop? Seeing the decline in gambling revenue from the casinos has New Jersey talking legalizing sports books.
We have government-operated sports betting in Ontario. It’s pretty fun. The maximum bet is $100 (although one could walk to another retailer and bet $100 a second time, I suppose).
https://www.proline.ca/
I guess I read the posts differently. There is lots of talk about costs of prohibition, and very little acknowledgement of the downsides of legalization. Usually, when the other side brings them up, the legalization side downplays them.
I guess it is what people see as a “downside”. I see more addicts (of any vice) as a worse thing than forcing people into treatment. That is not the status quo, I know. Funny thing but, I can be against the War on Drugs, and also against legalization of heroin.
For Gambling, I don’t think the State should run a lottery while gambling is illegal, any more than the State should sell alcohol.
All that said, I was really tying to be cute.
I was. BGS. I like that. Sounds Like I am a Ship.
It is not that anyone thinks that “(nearly) everyone has the potential to become addicts.” It is that there are many who do have this potential, and, when they succumb, the results are awful. Gambling has ruined many lives, as have drugs and alcohol, and tobacco, and prostitution and porn. There is a huge societal cost to dealing with the wreckage of broken families, bankruptcies, neglected children and crime.
Libertarians joined with Leftists to win the day and legalize the vices. Now the Leftists want to take more and more of the assets of the upright citizens to pay for the damage done by the vices, while the Libertarians bewail this and insist that the victims should just suck it up and the Leftists should quit whining.
The state is allowed to tax even though theft is illegal.
I think addiction was a victimless crime? I am confused. ;)
Taxes do not equal theft. Taxes are a necessary evil. The question is not whether to Tax but how much.
But Ontario’s sports book is parlay betting only, yes?
Parlay betting means that you can’t bet on a single game, but must choose a minimum of four games or more. The thought there is that a player might be able to fix a single game but is powerless to sway a slate of them, especially over multiple leagues.
The NHL and MLB is firmly against Ontario allowing single game betting.
I spoke with a psychologist who said that problem gambling destroyed a lot of families. These were troubled families to start with. What he said was,
I fail to understand how the state accepting money voluntarily in exchange for a chance at a prize is unacceptable while the state taking money by force is a “necessary evil”.
Mis – In taxation the state is at least limited to what they may take based either on the percentage of a purchase or income. However in your way of thinking the state may take everything provided they’ve enticed the poor guy with a prize that that’s almost impossible to win.
I haven’t done it in years, so I’m not familiar with the rules, but at the web site it does indeed look like one must make at least six picks.
If somebody wants to give the state everything they own, who am I to tell them they aren’t allowed to do that?
Mis says, “If somebody wants to give the state everything they own, who am I to tell them they aren’t allowed to do that?”
And when your tax dollars are paying to feed and house his kids? What’s the exchange rate on that?
As far as I know, there is currently no limit on how much a person can voluntarily pay in tax, and there’s zero chance of a payout in that instance.
And who pays more voluntarily?
OK. So “nearly everyone” would be an exaggeration, then. Nonetheless, SoCons do seem to believe that alarmingly many more people would become addicts if given the chance.
I tend to believe Theodore Dalrymple when he says that drug addiction isn’t an accident that happens to unsuspecting users, but a vice picked up by those who are already antisocial or self-destructive. For one thing, Dalrymple’s hypothesis explains why so few people who use controlled substances legally as prescription medicines go on to become addicts.
If addiction to X is primarily evidence of an underlying moral weakness, rather than something “innocently” acquired by unsuspecting people upon exposure to X, then there’s good reason to hope addiction to X would increase by less than SoCons fear it would if X happened to become more obtainable.
According to this article, the US treasury received almost a million bucks in voluntary payments in the first four months of 2014.
I seems like a completely irrational act to me, but who am I to tell them they can’t do it?
I think there are more alcohol problems with alcohol more widely available, more gambling problems with gambling more widely available, more problem porn habits with porn widely available, etc. etc. Availability is one element; it is not the only element. With government sponsorship, though, comes special enticements, such as the TV spots for the lottery.
So now we have not only removed legal impediments, we now celebrate and promote vice. We are reaping the whirlwind.
And the Libertarians want to join again with the Leftists to continue to remove impediments to bad behavior, in the name of leveraging the vices for additional tax revenues.
Shameful.
There are lots of causes for drug addiction. I am aware of a couple of instances where guys were avoiding a medical diagnosis of a mental illness in order to keep their jobs, and ended up self-medicating their way into serious addictions. One managed to keep things cool until a family intervention got him help. The other one ended badly.
I am aware of a couple of young people who hid their emotional distress and self-medicated for depression with marijuana. One went on to other drugs and serious problems, and the other one eventually got help. That guy hated the medication that was prescribed for him, and went back to weed, but later got onto a medical regime that did him good. He is now off of weed.
The easy availability of drugs was not good for these folk. Fortunately it was catastrophic in only half the cases.
Addiction is rarely evidence of a moral weakness. Other sorts of weaknesses are more often at fault.
Mid, you implied taxes are theft. They are not. Not sure why my saying that us difficult to understand, nor what it has to do with me being against the state having a monopoly on trading in a vice.
Naw. The biggest impediments to bad behavior are having to take care of yourself. I admit that Leftists have been very effective at removing these impediments under the guise of the Welfare State. Libertarians, on the other hand, would like to see these impediments reinstated.
Please save your shame for where it belongs.
On the other hand, it’s reasonable to expect various addictions to funge against each other.
If I’m looking to mess up my mind to forget my troubles, I might find alcohol a reasonable substitute for an illegal drug, and vice versa. In other words, large quantities of alcohol and illicit drugs likely serve as substitute goods for that portion of humanity desiring intoxication and escape.
In other words, there was something already wrong with these guys predisposing them to self-destructive behavior. They began with a problem that would make it hard for anyone to function, then compounded it by not seeking effective help.
And again: the unifying problem strikes me as maladaptive coping.
As someone who very nearly torpedoed my life in a similar fashion stone-cold sober, I see the inability to cope with the underlying problem as the biggest moral issue here.
If it’s not illicit drugs, it’s alcohol. If it’s not alcohol, it’s cutting. Or allowing yourself to be a target of physical or emotional abuse. Or a flat-out suicide attempt. Etc, etc.
And I think that it is very bad public policy for the government to get in the business of promoting dangerous vices as a revenue-raising scheme precisely because it enables the weak and vulnerable to take even greater maladaptive behaviors to greater extents of self-destructive ends.
I have the same reservations as many others here about relying on the sale of vice-products to raise state revenues.
Misth mentioned gambling specifically as a revenue-raiser, and noted that the restrictions on gambling aren’t just about personal vice, but money-laundering. I doubt even Misthi wants to use sale of government porn or government weed to finance the public fisc.
With all due respect, this post and thread could be read on Slate with a slight tweak of topic. As we all know, illegitimacy and drug use are never personal decisions. Right?
I travel to LV twice a year and the people that sit there in casinos gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars would be blowing their money elsewhere if they had no access to this option. At least their irresponsible behavior funds an industry that provides tax revenue and lots and lots of jobs.
Yikes; I’m not even a Libertarian.