Victory for vaping

The report from Public Health England is highly significant.  A major health body has concluded after research that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than smoking tobacco cigarettes.  PHE is an executive agency sponsored by the Department of Health.  It asked a team of experts to conduct an independent review of the evidence, and the findings are unequivocal.

They conclude there is no evidence that e-cigarettes are a gateway to lead children or non-smokers into smoking.  On the contrary, they find that almost all of the 2.6 million vapers in Britain are current or ex-smokers using e-cigarettes to help them quit or to keep them from reverting.

They found that increasing numbers, now nearly half the population, believe that vaping is as harmful or more harmful than are cigarettes, even though it is estimated to be only up to 5% as harmful.  This could be because the anti-vapers trying to have it banned indoors or in public places have persuaded them that it is harmful.  The report makes a telling estimate:

At the moment, 80,000 people [in England] die every year as a result of cigarette smoking. If everybody who was smoking switched to e-cigarettes that would reduce to about 4,000 deaths a year. That's the best estimate at the moment. It may well be much, much lower than that.

It also makes it plain that e-cigarettes are an effective means of helping people to quit.  Those who oppose vaping because "it looks like smoking" are missing the point.  It is probably because it resembles smoking that it works.  Users put it with their hands to their mouth and produce vapour that looks like smoke, while giving them the nicotine kick.  They don't have to quit doing any of this, but the harmful cigarette smoke with its tars and noxious gases is absent.

The report suggests that e-cigarettes are a "game changer" in public health.  It is interesting that many of the big tobacco companies have bought e-cigarette companies, clearly spotting where the future is going.  There will be some who campaign against the acceptability of vaping because they claim it normalizes smoking.  This is not only silly, but threatens the most effective method to help smokers to quit.  It is not smoking that e-cigarettes normalize; they normalize giving up smoking.

Image credit to: www.vaping360.com

There's a fairly simple answer to this question

Over in The Guardian there's a question asked that rather horrifies us:

What is the correct number of children each of us should have? It’s a question to which we urgently need an answer – made all the more necessary by the latest reported figures, which show that Britain now has more families with four or more children than at any time since the 1970s. According to the European statistics agency, Eurostat, there’s a growing trend for large families – even though the average family size is getting smaller.

Should this be celebrated, or condemned? We need some guidance, surely. If not, how are today’s young people of childbearing age ever going to work out what to do?

The horror coming from the fact that if there is some "right" number of children that each couple, or woman, should have, then obviously there has to be someone, somewhere, who decides what that number is. And then, naturally, some system of enforcement. And when there's enforcement of anything like this we get to the horrors of those Chinese and or Indian systems of forced sterilisations, enforced abortions and the rest. Things that have also happened, on a smaller scale, here in Europe within living memory.

Thus the correct answer to the "how many children should people have?" question is: none of your damn business matey.

The sex industry is now larger than the housebuilding one

Cathering Hakim has a wonderful paper on the sex industry over at the IEA, a paper that contains this delightful fact:

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimates that the sex industry in Britain adds £4.3 billion (US$6.9 billion) per year to the economy (more than the amount spent on the construction of houses in the first decade of the 21st century), and adds over 0.4 per cent to national GDP.

Which gives a useful insight into how silly this idea of making the purchase of sex illegal is (the "Swedish Model"). No good at all is going to come from criminalising an economic sector of that size, not when it's almost entirely the activities of consenting adults making it up.

Our point about prostitution has always been that, however much it may be not to our taste as an activity, it is the actions of consenting adults and as such it's something that a free and liberal society will leave alone.

Hakim's paper is worth reading not only for its good sense. It also manages to trample on a number of sacred assumptions common about sexuality:

Nonetheless, the plethora of nationally representative sex surveys carried out around the world in the two decades 1990-2010 greatly increased information on sexual practices and sexual markets (Wellings et al. 2006). For example, national surveys show that the vast majority of men and women self-identify and act as heterosexuals: 97 per cent in Britain, the USA, Australia, Scandinavia and Western Europe generally. The tiny sexual minorities that are often the focus of attention in academic sexuality research and journals do not affect patterns in the majority heterosexual market. The sex survey results demolished many misconceptions, new and old (Vaccaro 2003; Hakim 2015). One supposed ‘myth’ that was shown to be a continuing solid reality in the 21st century, long after the contraceptive revolution, is the idea that men typically have stronger libidos than women (Hakim 2015). Male demand for sexual entertainments and activity greatly outstrips female sexual interest, even in liberal cultures. This gives women an edge, although many are still unaware of it.

Yes, this is a fairly common economic view. If you're the supplier of something in short supply then you do indeed have an edge over those who are seeking it. The paper's worth the fun of reading just to see quite so many modern beliefs being discarded as untruths.

The final recommendation we thoroughly agree with: the sex industry should not only remain legal many of the current restrictions upon it should be lifted. but with this paper there's also great joy in the way that the points are argued.

Can we really decriminalise sex work, globally?

Amnesty International have released a draft policy arguing for global decriminalisation of sex work. As a rule, decriminalisation of consensual actions between individuals that do not directly harm others is something I support. Prioritising the removal of legislation that disproportionately hurts the worst off/most marginalised is top of this agenda. However, wading into an unfamiliar political landscape and applying libertarian principles without care for the consequences is not something I endorse. In this case, I think Amnesty have missed a trick on nuance, in mandating a global recommendation for decriminalisation. In a previous paper, Amnesty say:

Approaches that categorise all sex work as inherently nonconsensual, actively disempower sex workers; denying them personal agency and autonomy and placing decision-making about their lives and capacity in the hands of the state. They also limit sex workers’ ability to organise and to access protections which are available to others (including under labour laws or health and safety laws).

Arbitrarily broad laws prohibiting organisational aspects of sex work often ban sex workers from working together, renting secure premises, or hiring security or other support staff, meaning that they face prosecution themselves if they try to operate in safety.

This is a sound argument for decriminalisation. Even those who think that we should categorise sex work as nonconsensual should nevertheless see that at least decriminalising it makes it safer (since we can regulate and sex workers can report illegal behaviour without fear of prosecution themselves!).

There are two main criticisms of Amnesty’s plan. One is the fact that they somehow see the needs of buyers as relevant to how we should treat sex workers (i.e. because some clients of sex workers often purchase these services because they would otherwise struggle to enjoy them unpaid, we ought to consider making it easier for them to do so). I sympathise with this concern - nobody has the right to sexual gratification, so the idea of legislating with this in mind just seems bizarre.

But the main reason to be sceptical of Amnesty’s call for decriminalisation globally, is that they don’t appear to have done an awful lot of research to understand whether decriminalisation is right everywhere.

Sure, it’s very likely to be a good idea in the UK and most European nations. We can debate the merits of various regulatory frameworks to put in place once this has gone ahead. For example, despite concerns that decriminalisation would lead to more prostitution, and more visible prostitution, the evidence in New Zealand post-decriminalisation does not support this. From other countries, we see that police are a huge source of violence against sex workers (the study attached to that link is very graphic) and by the admission of police and sex workers themselves, the lack of access to justice for sex workers is a huge problem. If decriminalisation makes any headway in increasing sex workers’ ability to use the legal system to assert their rights, this is a step forward. The BMJ recognises that decriminalisation improves sexual health for sex workers.

But in every other policy debate, we would always consider whether the subject of our enquiry differs depending on the context in which we’re applying it. Do cultural, social, economic and legal differences between countries inform the kind of effect we might expect decriminalisation to have? It is impossible for them not to have a huge impact on the success of decriminalisation.

Consider the example of a country where the stigma attached to sex work includes serious bodily harm to the sex worker by aggrieved members of the community to which they belong. By criminalising sex work on the part of the buyer (commonly known as the ‘Swedish’ model), you increase the incentive for the buyer not to ‘out’ the sex worker, which may actually make the sex worker safer. The example of Cambodia gives us reason to suspect that it isn’t as simple as decriminalising - according to the same source, Cambodia is highly restrictive of women’s sexuality, which indicates that decriminalisation is not going to deliver the benefits we might hope for, and might do much worse if society takes the police’s place.

Imagine a situation in which decriminalisation would actually result in higher people trafficking, masked as sex work to reduce the legal repercussions. Criminalising the practice, either by punishing organisers of sex workers or by criminalising buyers may result in higher welfare for sex workers particularly as it discourages their exploitation. In Sweden, anecdote suggests that traffickers are seeing it as a less profitable place to operate, suggesting that there are some perks to criminalising the purchase of sex whilst not criminalising the sale - this kind of outcome might be appropriate for countries which have particular concerns about people trafficking, or whose current legislation makes it difficult to appropriately address trafficking. Again, though, it raises the worry that this second-best policymaking actually targets the wrong problem and is evidence that Sweden hasn’t got to grips with trafficking and is having to do so via indirect means. We also need to worry whether global trafficking volumes have changed - or just been moved elsewhere, to places where perhaps women don’t have the same degree of access to justice.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t aim for decriminalisation in the long-term, but to recognise that there are a number of factors which will get in the way of achieving the aim we are pursuing in decriminalising in the first place - advancing the autonomy and, hence, safety, of sex workers. When embarking on a full-scale decriminalisation, perhaps we ought to consider addressing those problems concurrently. Certainly, Amnesty shouldn’t be mandating what the entire world should be doing with such insensitivity to the cultural, economic and legal norms of the various nation states that might alter the consequences of decriminalisation.

Liberalising Immigration is a Win-Win scenario

Draconian immigration rules represent the largest restriction on liberty in the UK today. They restrict the personal and economic potential of millions of people and achieve little in return. How to roll back these limits on freedom? Think tanks have a difficult dilemma. They want to build a reputation as radical thinkers, but at the same time propose moderate policies. Early drafts of this essay argued that Britain should be more open to this or that group, but the truth is that both hard-headed economics and human decency demand wholesale liberalisation. Immigration restrictions curtail our ability to hire, sell to, befriend and marry the people we want to. People understand this – it's why people view immigration to their local area much more favourably than on the national level. And they have an enormous economic cost.

The ASI's namesake argued that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. Everyone accepts the case for free trade, but that leaves markets incomplete, because non-tradable services (like haircuts) can't travel across borders. Freeing people to move where they wish would let people go where their talents would be best used. The productivity of someone with an engineering degree – the amount can achieve with their labour – is many times lower in some areas of the developing world than it is in the UK.

The benefits to migrants are best illustrated by the lengths migrants are willing to go to to cross borders. Smugglers charge thousands for passage from Libya to Europe, and the journey is fraught with risk, but hundreds of thousands make the journey anyway. Migration lets people escape poverty, war and authoritarian regimes.

The Mariel Boatlift is an example of this. In 1980, 125000 Cubans fled Castro's regime, landing in Miami. Their liberation increasing the size of the local labour force by 7% almost overnight. But economists found almost no impact on wages and the labour market.

7% of the UK labour force works out to approximately 2.3m people. The government could auction off permanent residency permits to that many people each year. Such a radical policy would be disruptive. It would have costs, losers as well as winners. But the potential benefits are too colossal to ignore – a Britain where not only workers and jobs but husbands and wives, parents and children, potential pub geezers would not be separated by arbitrary borders.

Theo Clifford is winner of the 18-21 category of the ASI's 'Young Writer on Liberty' competition. You can follow him on @Theo_Clifford, and read his blog at economicsondemand.com.

Well done to Enough Project and Global Witness over conflict minerals

You may or may not be aware of the provisions of the Dodd Frank act over conflict minerals. These were pushed by the Enough Project and Global Witness as a way of reducing the violence associated with the mining of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold in the Eastern Congo. We were originally told that this would cost some $10 million, one cent on each mobile phone made, and pacify the region. Even the SEC says that this has cost some $4 billion just in its first year of implementation. And it appears that it doesn't in fact work either:

There is widespread belief that violence in poorly governed countries is triggered by international demand for their natural resources. We study the consequences of U.S. legislation grounded in this belief, the “conflict minerals” section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Targeting the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, it cuts funding to warlords by discouraging manufacturers from sourcing tin, tungsten, and tantalum from the region. Building from Mancur Olson’s stationary bandit metaphor, we explain how the legislation could backfire, inciting violence. Using geo-referenced data, we find the legislation increased looting of civilians, and shifted militia battles towards unregulated gold mining territories. These findings are a cautionary tale about the possible unintended consequences of boycotting natural resources from war-torn regions, and the use of international resource governance interventions.

The money quote:

The evidence suggests the legislation significantly increased the incidence of looting and the incidence of violence against civilians by at least 291 and 143 percent respectively.

Lord preserve us from well meaning Social Justice Warriors, eh?

Currently Dodd Frank applies only to listed US companies. Global Witness is among those campaigning to have the same provisions written into European Union law for all companies, even down to the level of sole traders.

Should increase the level of violence they say they want to reduce quite nicely that, eh?

A certain disconnect from reality here

The idea that prisoners should be banned from smoking in their cells has reared its ugly head again. The true reason that such a ban is not in place is that, for the time of their sentence, their cell is their home. We do not ban people smoking in their own homes: we therefore do not ban prisoners smoking in their cells. We also do not want to give the government, any government, the power to ban people doing something entirely legal in their own homes: thus we do not want to grant this power to ban prisoners smoking in their cells. However, even given all of that, this does show a certain disconnect from reality, doesn't it?

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of charity Action on Smoking and Health, said there was no evidence to support claims that depriving prisoners of tobacco could lead to riots.

“Prisons all around the world have gone smoke-free with few problems and, in the UK, all high-security psychiatric facilities have already gone smoke-free, as have prisons in the Isle of Man and Guernsey, without any trouble,” she said.

Not paying much attention to the news, is she?

On Tuesday, hundreds of prisoners lit fires, broke walls and smashed windows in a 15-hour riot at a Melbourne prison in what authorities believe may have been a reaction to a smoking ban at the remand facility. It was one of the worst prison riots in recent memory and authorities and commentators moved quickly to either condemn or support the state-wide prison smoking ban.

No, she's not:

Police armed with tear gas and water cannons were on Tuesday evening still attempting to contain a riot that broke out at a maximum security prison in Victoria earlier in the day, after prisoners became angered by the introduction of a smoking ban.

All staff were evacuated from the prison in Ravenhall, Victoria, after several hundred prisoners rioted.

This happened only a few weeks ago.....at the end of June.

Shunning people: a defence

Last week, 30 students descended on Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, for five days of learning about classical liberal philosophy and economics. At the end of their week, they asked a panel of liberals their views on issues - including, whether it was right to ‘shun’ someone with views you found offensive, distasteful, or more generally, ‘bad’. Sam Bowman, our Deputy Director, said we shouldn’t shun people for having bad views or opinions. When the threat of being shunned exists, you raise the cost of expressing such opinions - which makes it less likely that people will express them. Ultimately, then, these ‘bad’ opinions don’t get aired and addressed - but likely continue to shape the conduct of those who affirm those views, even unwittingly. I have sympathy for this argument - I’m naturally inclined towards anything that helps us challenge people’s preconceptions. The problem is that I don’t think this works.

First, let’s look at market interactions for an analogy. It’s great when the method of production in a given industry varies - we’re more likely to discover which is the more ‘efficient’, which produces the higher-quality good etc, and, most importantly, we’re more likely to enable innovation. But, when I’m buying that good, I’m under no obligation to buy a more expensive, lower-quality version simply in order to ensure that these varied production methods continue. In fact, I would argue the opposite (as part of an ‘ethical capitalism’) - I have the obligation to do my research and pick the best product available, to help encourage production of that strain of good and promote welfare for others. If firms that produced the lower quality good go bankrupt, this is neither my responsibility, nor am I deserving of any blame. I’d argue it’s a similar situation with people with bad views - of course, I subscribe to an argument for humility, and recommend plurality of views as a way to best advance society (as per J.S. Mill). But, also, as Mill says, that doesn’t mean I have a responsibility to ensure this situation - or to tolerate bad views within my personal sphere. I defend your right to be a bigot, but I don’t need it in my living room.

I also think there’s something very dangerous about safeguarding people from the consequences of their actions or thoughts. If you truly affirm X, then you should believe it even when I refuse to be your friend because of it. But to argue that I shouldn’t unfriend you, is to do precisely that - it’s to make me suffer (from association from someone whose views mean I have come to dislike them) for some external agent’s behaviour. In addition, it’s hard to understand how you can have a marketplace of ideas without some kind of currency - and the currency is other people’s opinions. If I affirm ‘women deserve to be second class citizens’, then my understanding of the value that view has been given by those around me is the degree of revulsion/disagreement that provokes from them. If someone cannot be my friend because I have affirmed this, it effectively has been given maximum negative value. This is a clue that perhaps I need to think about what I’ve just said a little closer.

Look at the Liberal Democrat storm, because Tim Farron refused to say that homosexuality wasn’t a sin. He’s refused to affirm a view that I understood to be a staple position of the Lib Dems (and that I wholeheartedly affirm). His supporters have argued that he is still a good liberal (which I don’t deny - he recognises that this is his personal view) and that we should stand behind him. This is a classical example of refusing us the right to shun those whose views we find distasteful or offensive. In this case, I think his views betray an inability to judge which parts of an archaic book should be brought into the 21st Century. I don’t want to associate (personally) with such people, because I think views like his harm people and because I value good judgement (quips about how I’ve just joined the Lib Dems are not welcome here). The extent to which Farron faces disagreement and dislike will provide a currency for his views - it won’t stop him having them, but it provides an invaluable context by which he can evaluate them.

Nobody is under any obligation to disassociate with people they like, with worrisome views. But equally, nobody has any duty to retain relationships with such people. Tolerance is good insofar as it respects others’ private lives, and reminds us to show humility in the face of subjective judgements. But there is such thing as ‘too tolerant’. ‘Too tolerant’ improperly values judgements. It allows people to say horrendous things with no, or few, repercussions. This is market failure in the marketplace of ideas.

Hunting Foxes... Because You Like It

Last week, a new vote on whether the Hunting Act, the scorn of politics in the early 2000s, should be amended, was thrown out of the window. There was none of the anger that had filled the 400,000 protestors outside of Parliament Square in 2004, nor the 700 hours of debate that had occupied the Commons. Only a smug look from Nicola Sturgeon, as she realised she had outsmarted David Cameron.

Amending and repealing the Hunting Act has long been on the agenda for the Conservatives. Before the 2010 election, there were murmurings that, were a Conservative majority to take power, repeal of the ban on fox hunting with dogs would be looked at.

So let’s look at fox hunting with dogs. The Countryside Alliance declares the Hunting Act ‘bad for the rural economy, bad for rural communities, bad for animal welfare and a waste of police resources’. It is true that reports of malpractice on foxhunts and police prevention take up time and resources. Very few convictions for those hunting with dogs have ever been brought about, despite the amount of evidence which animal rights groups present. ‘Bad for animal welfare’ is somewhat difficult to comprehend, but if they mean that it is bad for animal welfare that poultry might be killed by a fox, before they are killed by the slaughterhouse, perhaps this is an understandable argument. Bad for the rural economy and rural communities is a dubious case to make. Many hunts have seen their numbers grow since the ban. The Burns Report, which examined hunting before the Hunting Act was introduced, registered 178 hunts in 2000; there are now 176. However, although there are fewer hunts, the number of participants has dramatically risen. 20,591 people were subscribed for foxhunts in 2000; around 45,000 now take part regularly in hunts. The demand for foxhunting has certainly not diminished.

Most interesting of all is to examine how hunting affects fox numbers. Perhaps the most reiterated reason which hunting enthusiasts enjoy promoting is that hunting is a form of culling – that without hunting, foxes would be ravaging farming communities. Realistically, fox hunting causes very little impact to fox numbers and likely increases them if anything. Fox numbers are determined by competition. Foxes will move into territories where they find it easier to find food and face less competition from other foxes. This means that there is a constant movement of foxes which cannot be stopped by hunting. Moreover, studies have shown that the more foxes killed in a winter cull, the more that are born in litters come springtime. The greatest regulator of the fox population are the foxes'  social factors themselves: social groups of foxes will defend their territory from other fox groups on a nationwide level. Other factors involve food availability and disease, but these tend to be local issues with little impact.

Fox hunting has very little to do with the actual real numbers of foxes killed. Those who participate should not try to convince both others and themselves that they are a necessity to the protection of farming. It remains their liberty to hunt, but it is for the purpose of their enjoyment, not conservation.

This article was written by Benjamin Jackson, a Research Associate at the Adam Smith Institute. Benjamin is half-way through his Classics degree at the University of Edinburgh.

Housing the Homeless

Homelessness in the UK is on the rise. 2014 figures show that 2,744 people slept rough on any one night in England, a 55 per cent rise on 2010. In London, there has been a rise of 16 per cent in a single year. Homelessness is a result of poverty and creates a downward spiral that is difficult to escape from. It is clear that it is an issue that needs to be tackled, particularly given the rising figures. The current policy on homelessness from the government centres on preventing long-term rough sleeping on the streets. The ‘No Second Night Out’ scheme has been successful in achieving this aim: its introduction led to 75 per cent of rough sleepers not spending a second night on the streets. An admirable success - but largely superficial.  It does not account for the ‘hidden homeless’, those who live in hostels, nor is it a lasting solution to homelessness. It is extremely difficult to build a life around inconsistent housing.

The root problem of homelessness is not achieved by taking people off the streets into temporary housing. It is only solved by people having places to live. And the current crisis in UK housing is not helping this. The severe lack of affordable housing is forcing people onto the streets and into homelessness. In 2013-2014, only 140,000 houses were built for the demand of 250,000, hardly enough to cover those who can afford to buy them, let alone those who live on the streets. Moreover, the cut to housing benefit announced in the July budget will not be conducive to preventing homelessness, instead, making it more difficult to combat it.

When examining the most successful solutions to homelessness, offering effective housing solutions is the best way. Preventative measures have been lauded, but these do not help those who are recurrently homeless. Schemes in America and Canada offering long-term housing have been hugely successful in turning around homelessness figures. Utah has dramatically reduced their homeless problem through their Housing First program that offers housing to homeless people with no strings attached. When given a stable home, rather than inconsistent halfway housing, people were able to effectively build their lives. Similar projects in cities across Canada have brought the same results, showing that it is also more cost effective to offer housing rather than pay for the upkeep of the homeless in temporary accommodation, particularly when we included costs accrued indirectly - such as healthcare.

But these solutions seem unlikely to be as effective in the UK while housing is at such a premium and remains as expensive.  Until then, the government will have to rely on preventative measures as its most effective solution until it can solve the real problem of housing.

This article was written by Benjamin Jackson, a Research Associate at the Adam Smith Institute. Benjamin is half-way through his Classics degree at the University of Edinburgh.