Cato Daily Dispatch for February 8, 2006
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Drug Database: Prescription for TroubleRepublican Breaks Ranks
D.C. Baseball Lease Approved in Extra Innings
Drug Database: Prescription for Trouble
"The White House Wednesday will announce a national anti-drug strategy that includes prodding more states to set up databases that can track people who get multiple prescriptions of frequently abused prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin," reports USA Today. "The strategy, to be announced in Denver today by White House drug czar John Walters, does not include any new programs, a reflection of how the tight federal budget is limiting anti-drug initiatives."
In the Cato Policy Analysis "Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA's War on Prescription Painkillers," Ronald T. Libby, a professor at the University of North Florida, argues that over the past few years, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been aggressively targeting doctors who prescribe pain medication such as OxyContin to their patients, and as a result, the agency has ruined the lives and careers of many physicians, and has made it more difficult for people in pain to get treatment. Libby claims that the government's aggressive pursuit of pain doctors has led to well-meaning physicians being labeled as drug dealers.
Radley Balko, a Cato policy analyst, writes in "Restricting Cold Medicine Won't Curb Meth Use" that the government's war on drugs is "misdirected, ineffective and likely to create more problems than it solves." According to Balko, "despite 30 years and many billions of dollars spent on the Drug War, America's appetite for illicit drugs really hasn't subsided. It merely shifts, as the same drugs (or incarnations of them) come in and out of vogue. Inevitably, reaction from media, politicians and regulators to a particular drug's fashionability is overblown and does little to diminish actual abuse. Instead, efforts to thwart drug use often result in costly, needless hassling of law-abiding people that chip away at civil liberties."
Republican Breaks Ranks
"A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency [NSA] broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program," according to The New York Times. The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had 'serious concerns' about the surveillance program."
Robert Levy, a Cato senior fellow in constitutional studies, comments that President Bush has authorized the NSA to eavesdrop, without obtaining a warrant, on Americans and persons outside of the United States: "[Bush] argues that, but for his ability to order such surveillance, he would be severely handicapped in the war on terror. That's plainly an overstatement. First, the president has expansive power outside the United States. Second, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the PATRIOT Act, and other statutes have given him broad leeway within the United States. Third, he has considerable, although not plenary, inherent authority under his power as commander-in-chief. But if Congress has exercised its own authority and expressly prohibited what the president has undertaken, the president's is bound by the duly enacted statute."
Tim Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, argues that the legality of the NSA surveillance program is an important question, but an even more important matter is whether President Bush has made still other decisions, in secret, that will allow the police and military to bypass other laws enacted by the Congress. "It is noteworthy that Attorney General Gonzales has declined to answer that fundamental question," Lynch says. "The Attorney General's silence is troubling because the White House seems to want to revise or ignore certain laws and then avoid congressional oversight and judicial review of its actions."
D.C. Baseball Lease Approved in Extra Innings
"The D.C. Council voted to reject a baseball stadium lease agreement last night, then reconsidered four hours later and approved the deal after a plea from Mayor Anthony A. Williams and a threat from Major League Baseball President Robert A. DuPuy," The Washington Post reports. "The dramatic about-face came at 12:40 this morning after the council added its own price cap to the lease, limiting the District's spending to $611 million for the project. With the cap in place, the council voted 9 to 4 for emergency legislation that approved the lease deal."
In the Cato Briefing Paper "Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball," economists Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys argued that a taxpayer-subsidized ballpark for Washington's new baseball team would not improve the District's economy. They examined all 37 U.S. cities that had one or more professional football, basketball, or baseball teams between 1969 and 1996. Their findings suggested that the District can expect at best no economic impact and at worst a negative effect on the local economy.
Coates and Humphreys found that the presence of pro sports teams: (1) had no measurable positive impact on the overall growth rate of real per capita income; (2) had a negative impact on the level of real per capita income; (3) had a negative effect on the retail and services sectors of the local economy; and (4) tended to reduce wages in eating and drinking establishments by about $162 per year.
Greg Garner, editor, ggarner@cato.org