Marijuana meets the government purchasing office
And now, for a story that could only happen in Canada.
In America, marijuana use is generally illegal. In any given day it is easy to find news of various drug busts that scoop up otherwise respectable citizens. There has recently been a concerted push to legalize marjiuana use for medical purposes, and some local jurisdictions support this, but marijuana possession remains a federal crime.
A few weeks ago, events in Canada presented a vision of what the future might be like if marijuana was legalized for medical use here. The Canadian government was forced into supplying marijuana to qualified individuals by a series of court decisions, but in the end it apparently decided to make the best of things. Financial records revealed that they were applying a 1,500% markup to the weed sold to patients. The resulting uproar had a comforting familiarity to anyone who has witnessed fights over health care prices in the U.S. It is a bit difficult however to understand the economics. According to this news story:
There are 1,742 patients authorized by Health Canada to possess dried pot as a medication. Of these, 1,040 are licensed to grow their own, and another 167 people are licensed to grow marijuana for the exclusive use of licensed patients.
So it would seem that the small number of customers could grow their own supply — unless the costs of running a smaller operation are greater than the markup. The imbroglio […]
Background check loopholes in Virginia start closing
A couple of weeks ago we noted a loophole in the gun background check requirements which allowed Cho Seung Hui to bypass rules preventing the sale of firearms to those of questionable sanity. He was able to purchase guns even though he had been ordered into psychiatric counseling by a judge. Given the terrible consequences that followed, it is not surprising to learn that Virginia has moved quickly to address the problem. On Monday, Governor Timothy Kaine signed an executive order explicitly stating that any involuntary psychiatric care, whether in-patient or outpatient, must be reported to the Central Criminal Records Exchange. This criminal database is used to determine eligibility for Virginia fireams purchases, and the order further specifies that these records are to be shared with federal authorities “as appropriate”.
There are limits to what an executive order can do, of course, and the Governor states in the order that he expects the legislature to deal with the issue more comprehensively in the 2008 session. As it turns out, there are ways to buy guns in Virginia without any background checks: gun shows, trade publications, and private transactions between gun owners. There have been annual attempts to require background checks at gun shows, but none have succeeded thus far.
More broadly, the majority of states do not report any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that is used to vet potential gun guyers. Privacy […]
What is the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)?
If you have been looking for companies to help you with a broad range of employment screening needs, you may have noticed that there are quite a few vendors offering criminal background checks — but that driving records are much harder to find. There are a number of legal and economic reasons for this, but the most significant is the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act. Passed in 1994, the law was a response to the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer. Her attacker had obtained her home address from the California Department of Motor Vehicles indirectly, through a private investigator. During debate on the bill, a number of stories recounted the ease with which a stalker could get home addresses based only a license plate, which is visible to anyone. The law passed, survived legal challenges that went up to the Supreme Count, and has since been updated with further protections. Many states, including California, have restrictions that are even more severe but the DPPA is the minimum they must all meet.
According to the DPPA only the following uses of personal motor vehicle record information are permitted:
- Legitimate government agency functions.
- Use in matters of motor vehicle safety, theft, emissions, product recalls.
- Motor vehicle market research and surveys.
- "Legitimate" business needs in transactions initiated by the
individual to verify accuracy of personal information.
[…]
Second Life calls in the police: If you gamble with fake money, does it count?
If you have any exposure to the increasing media frenzy of Web Bubble 2.0, you have probably heard of Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world where you can present yourself in ways untethered by your actual looks and interact with other people doing the same thing in a virtual landscape. There is no overriding goal such as Freeing The Princess or Finding The Magic Sword. Instead, the idea is to participate in a mirror world which presumably is cooler than our own. In a world like this, a few areas have economic value:
- “land” which is sold by the creator, Linden Labs, along with use fees
- design elements such as clothes, pets, and special effects created by users with the patience and talent to work through the code
- and of course, pornography
Similar to their real-life equivalents, all of these cost money. To facilitate such transactions, Linden Labs has created Linden Dollars, which can be traded for U.S. dollars.
In general Second Life does not show up on the radar for background check companies, except for some of their less savory enterprises. But as it turns out, Second Life hosts another familiar online business — casinos. And that is a heavily regulated industry. The U.S. government has begun enforcing gambling laws with substantial vigor recently. Two gambling executives of overseas companies were arrested during brief layovers on American soil, and it is worth noting that in one case at least […]
Mental health and its use in gun background checks
The shootings at Virginia Tech by Cho Seung Hui have predictably started another debate on gun control. But the Washington Post revealed a new twist. Apparently, existing systems should have been sufficient to prevent Cho from obtaining a gun — if the relevant records had been kept up to date. It seems that since 1968 anyone considered mentally ill by the legal system is not permitted to purchase firearms. And Cho was ordered to receive counseling in 2005. However, in a breakdown all too familiar in the public record system, the court order was never reported to the federal authorities. When Cho requested two handguns, his background check came back clean, and his purchase went through.
There are many depressing aspects to this case, but the worst may be that there seem to have been so many opportunities to prevent this tragedy. Cho was known in the university as being disturbed, and received some intervention. And Congress, apparently, has been aware of the defects in the federal background check database for some time. Congress has twice attempted to pass laws to address the issue:
Under the bill, states would be given money to help them supply the federal government with information on mental-illness adjudications and other run-ins with the law that are supposed to disqualify individuals from firearms purchases. For the first time, states would face penalties for not keeping the National Instant Criminal Background Check System current.
The […]
More background checks for college students
A week ago we posted about the increasing use of background checks for college students. Most of the usage there has been focussed on catching exaggerations that applicants use to get themselves in the door. But now the pendulum may swing back towards the more traditional background check that looks for criminal history. Yesterday, a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 people on campus, in the deadliest shooting incident of recent U.S. history.
Sad to say, violence on campus is not new. In 1991 a physics graduate student at the University of Iowa, Gang Lu, shot six people after losing an academic award. (The memory of this incident is quite vivid, as I was a graduate student in physics at the time.) Horrible as this was, there did seem to be an understandable motive — revenge is a universal emotion. But there are cases of more detached violence, as well. Perhaps the most similar one would be that of Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people from a clock tower at the University of Texas in 1966.
This story is certain to attract a great deal of attention, both in an attempt to explain such a horrifying event (rarely a successful venture), and how it can be prevented in the future. Should guns be banned? Should more people be encouraged to have guns so that sane carriers outnumber the insane? Can psychological screening and […]