Politics trumps science again.
I don’t know about you, but I hate having to wait a long time to discover how an interesting story comes out. So today’s newspapers have a limited, modified form of good news. We no longer have to wait for Justice Roberts’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade to know whether electing George W. Bush will turn out to have seriously damaged reproductive freedom: that damage is happening right now, in a way likely to increase the number of abortions.
The delay in making a decision about over-the-counter sales of Plan B violates both the law and an explicit promise made to the Senate by the Secretary of HHS to secure the confirmation of the FDA commissioner.
And this time, as Slate’s David Sarno notes, they’re not even bothering to come up with an excuse that passes the giggle test. They’re obviously just afraid of the fundamentalist and Catholic mullahs.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman