Regulating Vice: Misguided Prohibitions and Realistic Controls

by Jim Leitzel

Regulating Vice focuses on public policy toward traditional vices such as alcohol, nicotine, drugs, gambling, and commercial sex. It explains why vice prohibitions generally are misguided, and also describes the dangers of unfettered access to alcohol, cocaine, or heroin. Sin taxes, advertising restrictions, licensing, and subsidies to treatment are all potentially desirable components of balanced vice policies. Regulating Vice brings a sophisticated analysis to vice control, an analysis that applies to prostitution as well as drugs, to tobacco as well as gambling, while remaining accessible to a broad audience.

318 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007