It is only a couple of weeks into the new year but it looks like we already have a strong contender for the dopiest article of the year, emphasis on "dope" as we shall see.
A bizarre solution to reducing campus rapes comes to us by way of Annie Lowrey of New York magazine. Her solution is to raise taxes on beer while also encouraging people to smoke more marijuana. After acknowledging that the Rolling Stone story about a drunken fraternity rape case was just a fairy tale, Lowrey takes a deep plunge into the world of utterly stupid:
Whatever happened in that discredited Rolling Stone story, whether the proportion of female students victimized by campus sexual assault is 0.6 percent or 20 percent, even if crime rates are falling, far too many women and men face incidences of sexual harassment and abuse in a given year. But economists have one little-discussed way to help drive down rates of abuse: raise taxes.
The taxes in question are alcohol taxes. They are a surprisingly powerful tool to stem alcohol abuse and binge drinking. And they have tremendous knock-on effects on crime rates.
Which economists were these, Annie? I really would like to know who was stupid enough to want to punish 99.99999% of us in order to supposedly hinder a minuscule number of people via a highly dubious method. Now Lowrey tosses a ridiculous statistic at us:
Social scientists and public-policy types have long recognized the deep linkages between alcohol use and crime on college campuses. According to government research, every year, 97,000 students are “victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape,” with alcohol consumption having a profound effect on perpetrators’ behavior. Alcohol reduces inhibition and attention to social cues, and increases aggression. Individuals also use it to justify and abet assault, or to muddy a victim’s memory of and manipulate his or her feelings about the act in question.
97,000 yearly cases of alcohol related sexual assault or date rate meaning about 300 per day. Yet the most famous of these recent cases, as Lowrey admitted, was a fraud. Of course, there was that Duke LaCrosse sexual assault. Oh, wait. That was proven to be fraudulent too. So where are all these cases? At 300 per day they shouldn't be too hard to find.
Now we have Annie Lowrey playing wannabee economist:
So how to get college kids to cut back on the booze? Hew to the fundamental law of economics and raise its price. Study after study has shown that “higher prices or taxes were associated with a lower prevalence of youth drinking.” That includes a reduction in “heavy drinking” and “binge drinking.”
And further studies have linked high prices for beer to lower chances of young individuals “taking advantage of another person sexually or having been taken advantage of sexually,” underscoring that there is a causal mechanism at work. Cheap alcohol means more alcohol means worse behavior means more violence. Expensive alcohol means less alcohol means better behavior means less violence.
Upping the price is the easy part. Impose higher taxes on alcoholic beverages. Add extra levies on the purchase of large amounts of alcohol, like kegs or handles. Slap fees on liquor stores that are located near college campuses. Ban the sale of alcohol near schools. Colleges and universities themselves could also try to influence the price of drinking — charging sororities, fraternities, and social organizations for throwing parties, say, or barring them from offering alcohol for free. A college rager with a cash bar asking $5 a Solo cup is no college rager at all, hard though that rule might be to enforce.
Yeah, Annie. Just snap your fingers to raise prices on beer via higher taxes and problem solved...except for all those losing their jobs due to fewer beer sales. Punish the vast majority in order to fulfill a liberal fantasy on the causes of campus rape based on laughable stats.
So how does Lowrey get such bizarre ideas? Well, you can probably guess when reading part two of her "solution" to campus rape:
There’s a fun thing that economists and public-policy types think might cut back on alcohol-fueled violence, too: the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana. The studies are a little thinner and shakier here. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that young people tend to substitute pot and alcohol. They either burn one down or chug one down; more pot means less beer. And there’s also evidence that increasing the price of beer nudges young people to switch to pot — with some significant effects, including lower rates of violent crime. “Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship,” according to one paper in the journal Addictive Behaviors. “Cannabis reduces likelihood of violence during intoxication.”
There you have it: Tax the frat boys for their beer and booze, lower the price of pot, and make campuses a far safer place.
There you have it: Shut down the brain cells by smoking lots of dope so you don't burst out laughing at the proposal to raise beer taxes to reduce campus rape.
Exit question: Do liberals ever have a solution to social problems that calls for a tax reduction?
