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Want to legalize dope but outlaw transfats?

An editorial in Politico by William Bennett and Christopher Beach highlights the irony of the policy positions held by many people on the progressive left (something I also point out in the Food Police).

They write:

The very same year, for example, that Colorado legalized marijuana, the Colorado Senate passed (without a single Republican vote) a ban on trans fats in schools. Are we to believe eating a glazed donut is more harmful than smoking a joint? California has already banned trans fats in restaurants statewide, but now is on the brink of legalizing marijuana statewide come November. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg supported New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s effort to decriminalize marijuana in New York State, while at the same time supporting a ban on extra-large sodas. A 32-ounce Mountain Dew is bad for you, but pot isn’t?

The logic is dumbfounding. For many years, health-conscious liberals have waged a deafening, public war against cigarettes. Smoking bans in public places like restaurants and bars have been enacted in states all over the country. Recently, New York City, New Jersey and several other cities and states have extended those bans to include the newest tobacco fad—e-cigarettes. Yet, when it comes to smoking marijuana? Crickets.

What explains this obvious paradox?

They don't actually answer their own question - later saying simply that "The answer is not clear, and there may not be a good answer at all."  I think there is an answer.

One way to think about these sorts of issues is to turn to ideology scales.  A common view is that people's ideologies can be explained by where they fall on two dimensions related to views about economic freedom and personal freedom and willingness to use government force in these two areas.  In this framework, a "liberal" wants personal freedom (abortion, gay rights, etc.) but wants to restrict economic freedom (by, e.g., setting minimum wages).  Conversely, a "conservative" wants to restrict personal freedom (outlaw abortion and prohibit gay rights) but wants economic freedom (e.g., no minimum wage).  I think one has to augment this model to provide an account of what's going on in this case.   

Here we have two health-related issues: smoking marijuana and eating transfats.  What would possibly rationalize supporting the legalization of one and the prohibition of the other?  I think it has to with people's heuristic thinking about whether companies are good or bad and whether government is good or bad - or stated differently whether businesses or government is more likely to be corrupt.  I think many on the left see transfats as bad because they're sold by big-bad food companies who will kill us just to make a buck, whereas marijuana (at least at present) doesn't have ties to big business.  Thus, it is interpreted as a personal freedom issue by many on the left.  Conservatives, by contrast, are probably less likely to want to ban transfats because it is seen as an intrusion of "bad" government into the economics sphere.  Conservative's support for marijuana prohibition likely comes about from their willingness to use government force to regulate personal/social issues.

Interestingly, Bennett and Beach attempt to resolve their paradox in the Politico piece by seemingly arguing both transfats and marijuana should be banned.  The other seemingly logically consistent stance is to suggest both should be legal, which is the position of many libertarians. 

I suppose the economist could logically support one and oppose the other based on the results of a cost-benefit analysis or considerations of the extent of externalities, etc.  Stated differently, a consistent utilitarian (or the economist who will use cost-benefit analysis as the final word on whether a policy is "good") could very well end up supporting one of these issues and opposing another.  

The challenge, from the economic standpoint, is that many of these policies are advocated on paternalistic grounds - arguing that somehow people don't know what is in their own self interest, which seems to degrade the ability to know what is "best" from the consumers perspective, and thus the ability to even do a legitimate cost-benefit analysis.

My own view is that there is a legitimate role for government to play in researching and informing the public of the risks of smoking marijuana, eating transfats, etc.  But, to step in and decide which choice should be made goes too far.  It supplants the judgement of "experts" and politicians for the judgement of each person.  If we are willing to dismiss people's ability to decide whether to smoke dope or eat transfats, it seems a short step to say that they also can't be trusted to make their own health care choices, or decide where they should live or what job they should take.  Heck, why even allow these people to vote?  That might seem a bit extreme, but I'm simply following the chain of paternalistic thinking to its logical conclusion.

Obesity Stigmatization

A couple weeks, I engaged in a little kerfuffle over the role of personal responsibility in diet and health.

There I wrote:

But, didn't Moss just spend the preceding ~300 pages trying to convince us that our food choices are out of our control - that we are "hooked" - and that we are little match for the teams of scientists and advertisers employed by Big Food?  The implicit implication seems to be that consumers need a more powerful third party - the government - to constrain Big Food - because these are matters beyond our control.  

That's a story of helplessness - of victimization.  And whether they mean it nor not, narratives such as this can be demotivating.

To advocate people take personal responsibility for their food choices - as I have - is a message of empowerment.

Parke is right that some of the "food police" also encourage (and practice) personal responsibility, but I contend that much of their writing and their policy advocacy undermines their own message.

Today, I ran across an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology  that provides empirical evidence related to the phenomenon I mentioned.  The abstract:

America's war on obesity has intensified stigmatization of overweight and obese individuals. This experiment tested the prediction that exposure to weight-stigmatizing messages threatens the social identity of individuals who perceive themselves as overweight, depleting executive resources necessary for exercising self-control when presented with high calorie food. Women were randomly assigned to read a news article about stigma faced by overweight individuals in the job market or a control article. Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women, but not women who did not perceive themselves as overweight, to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles. Weight-stigmatizing articles also increased concerns about being a target of stigma among both self-perceived overweight and non-overweight women. Findings suggest that social messages targeted at combating obesity may have paradoxical and undesired effects.

Fat Taxes

Two recent students on "fat taxes" have emerged in the economics sphere.

Here is the abstract of a paper by Chen Zen and colleagues in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics

A censored Exact Affine Stone Index incomplete demand system is estimated for 23 packaged foods and beverages and a numéraire good. Instrumental variables are used to control for endogenous prices. A half-cent per ounce increase in sugar-sweetened beverage prices is predicted to reduce total calories from the 23 foods and beverages but increase sodium and fat intakes as a result of product substitution. The predicted decline in calories is larger for low-income households than for high-income households, although welfare loss is also higher for low-income households. Neglecting price endogeneity or estimating a conditional demand model significantly overestimates the calorie reduction.
Here is an exerpt of an NBER working paper by Harding and Lovenheim
Our main finding is that nutrient-specific taxes have much larger effects on nutrition than do the product-specific taxes we study. However, they do not cost more in terms of consumer utility. While a 20% soda tax reduces sugar purchases by 10.35%, it only reduces overall caloric intake by 4.84%. Taxing packaged meals actually increases slightly overall caloric intake, even though this product group is the unhealthiest per serving. Taxing snacks/candy also has at most small impacts on the purchased nutritive bundle.

In contrast, taxing nutrients has large impacts on nutrition without producing larger welfare losses than product-specific taxes, largely because of the broad-based nature of these taxes. Among the three nutrient-specific taxes, sugar taxes stand out as particularly effective. A 20% sugar tax reduces sugar consumption by 16.41% while also reducing caloric intake by 18.54% and salt consumption by 9.63%. Consumer indirect utility declines by 2.6% as a result, which is very similar to the utility cost of a soda tax and SSB tax.

Two points.

First, both these studies show certain kinds of taxes can have some effect on intake (although often in less than anticipated ways). However, even the most effective taxes (in both studies) causes consumer welfare to fall - although these are rarely discussed in dollar terms.

Second, we already have something akin to a sugar tax - farm policies that include production allotments, quotas, and trade restrictions which make sugar 2 to 3 times more expensive in the US compared to the rest of the world. Of course, we also subsidize corn, which makes HFCS relatively less expensive. Here is a nice paper by John Beghin and Helen Jensen on some of the economics of sugar policies.