Unintended Consequences
State‐level drug paraphernalia laws—on the books in every state except Alaska—prevent people who use illegal drugs from accessing the means to reduce the risk of infection or overdose. This makes nonmedical drug use even more dangerous because the laws often prevent access to clean needles and syringes along with products to test drugs for deadly contaminants, as Jeffrey A. Singer and Sophia Heimowitz demonstrate in “Drug Paraphernalia Laws Undermine Harm Reduction” (Policy Analysis no. 929).
Nothing to Hide?
The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requires financial institutions to assist federal agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering and other crimes. But this scheme of financial surveillance and reporting requirements both fails to deter criminals and imposes heavy burdens on innocent Americans, including weakening their constitutional rights, according to Norbert Michel and Jennifer J. Schulp in “Revising the Bank Secrecy Act to Protect Privacy and Deter Criminals” (Policy Analysis no. 932).
… To Spite Your Face?
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives broad authority to impose retaliatory tariffs and other trade barriers in response to “unfair” trade practices. Largely supplanted by the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution mechanisms, Section 301 was revived and repeatedly used by the Trump administration. That has serious negative consequences, as shown by Scott Lincicome, Inu Manak, and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon in “Unfair Trade or Unfair Protection? The Evolution and Abuse of Section 301” (Policy Analysis no. 930).
Peaceful Transition
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 is the antiquated, vague, and often contradictory law that was at the heart of the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including the joint session of Congress for counting electoral votes, which was the target of the January 6 attack. Reforming the law has been an urgent priority with broad support, and Andy Craig explains the details of the policy and offers a model template in “How to Pick a President: A Guide to Electoral Count Act Reform” (Policy Analysis no. 931).
Let He Who Is without Sin…
So-called sin taxes on vices such as alcohol and tobacco are popular in the United States, and such goods are heavily taxed at both the state and federal level. But that burden falls heavily on lower-income families, imposing a heavily regressive element on the tax system, often in ways that unintentionally overlap, compounding the effect. That neglected downside is demonstrated and analyzed in “Who Pays Sin Taxes? Understanding the Overlapping Burdens of Corrective Taxes” (Research Briefs in Economic Policy no. 297) by Nirupama Rao and Yinan Wang.
Big Government Clocks
The debate over daylight saving time has picked up, with legislation either adopted or under consideration in many jurisdictions to abolish the practice. The direct costs of this clock shifting are examined by Joan Costa-i-Font, Sarah Fleche, and Ricardo Pagan in “The Welfare Effects of Time Reallocation: Evidence from Daylight Saving Time” (Research Briefs in Economic Policy no. 298), finding that the costs are small but real and that abolishing DST would produce real benefits.
