The Southern Presidential Primary: Regional Intentions With National Implications

Fifteen southern and border states have decided to hold presidentialprimaries around the second Tuesday in March 1988. Democraticparty reformers have backed this regional primary in hopes thatit will advantage politically moderate candidates for the presidency.This article discusses how enactment of the southern primarycame about and why this reform seems unlikely to achieve theintentions of the reformers. Four major criticisms of the reformsare discussed: 1) Republicans, not Democrats, could benefit;2) the importance of earlier primaries and caucuses—Iowaand New Hampshire in particular—could grow dramatically;3) the desired moderating influence on Democratic candidatescould be frustrated by plurality wins; and 4) the southern regionalprimary is not southern or regional but national.     

Minimizing the social cost of drug abuse: An economic analysis of alternatives for policy

The use of heroin, with its concomitant social problems, is facilitated by an illicit market process which functions similarly to economic markets in general. The analysis of this process, incorporated in a model embodying the interacting relationships of crime generation and control, permits evaluation of three fundamentally different strategies for social control. These are controlling supply through law enforcement and other strategies, controlling demand by detaining addicts, or reducing illicit market activitity by introducing an effective substitute for the services of that market. When all the social costs of addiction are taken into account and when minimizing the total of those costs is taken to be the objective, the authors conclude that the best solution will lie with the establishment of a drug maintenance program. Properly administered, such a program would undermine the illicit market by reducing demand. Furthermore, it can be expected to reduce levels of drug related crimes and to moderate factors encouraging addiction.The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments of Perry Shapiro and an unnamed referee and the support of the Russell Sage Foundation during the writing of this analysis.