Lessons in Prohibition

Kerry Howley | February 21, 2005

They may have dumb ideas about the First Amendment, but at least some high school kids have gotten the message on the Eighteenth:

When Austin High School administrators removed candy from campus vending machines last year, the move was hailed as a step toward fighting obesity. What happened next shows how hard it can be for schools to control what students eat on campus.

The candy removal plan, according to students at Austin High, was thwarted by classmates who created an underground candy market, turning the hallways of the high school into Willy-Wonka-meets-Casablanca...

Soon after candy was removed from vending machines, enterprising students armed with gym bags full of M&M's, Skittles, Snickers and Twix became roving vendors, serving classmates in need of an in-school sugar fix. Regular-size candy bars like the ones sold in vending machines routinely sold in the halls for $1.50.

The Austin High administration, which won't elaborate on how much or little it knew about the candy black market, has since replenished the vending machines with some types of candy.

Whole thing here. (reg. req.)

Via Marginal Revolution

Comments

|2.21.05 @ 11:40AM|#

AH, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hahahahaha. Huh.

Pathetic. It's only believable because it's connected to our publik skools.

|2.21.05 @ 11:57AM|#

Does this news make anyone else as happy as it makes me? Maybe our next exercise in capitalism can be to see what happens when the schools look to regulate the number two pencil market.

|2.21.05 @ 12:25PM|#

I am going to sue that school for backing down in the face of the black market.

Clearly what the school needed was stricter enforcement of the candy ban. Banning something that people like can work beautifully as long as you strictly and aggressively enforce the ban.

Just look at how well it's worked for marijuana!

|2.21.05 @ 12:29PM|#

I hear these kids are ruthless. The first one is not Free! "You got to pay up, son, or you'll be eaten peanut butter celery sticks at recess!"

sage|2.21.05 @ 12:48PM|#

I think that if they allowed it to continue, the prices would eventually dropped below what the vending machines were charging.

|2.21.05 @ 1:05PM|#

Good on them.

|2.21.05 @ 1:22PM|#

The school doesn't realize how the black market fights obesity in itself. Schlepping a 25-lb duffel bag stuffed with candy bars up from class to class, up and down stairs, all day long...my God, those kids must have quads of iron.

|2.21.05 @ 1:27PM|#

zeroentitlement: Don't forget the consumers who have to track down the sellers as they shift positions to avoid hall monitors. That's a lotta sidling.

|2.21.05 @ 1:46PM|#

Here's a lesson in Prohibition Thomas Jefferson never learned.
Below is from milestones in the history of Sackets Harbor.
"1807
International tensions between the United States and Great Britain led to the U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 which forbade trade with Great Britain and Canada. This was understandably unpopular with local residents, and resulted in widespread smuggling along the U.S./Canada border. Until this time there had been a very profitable trade in flour and potash. Potash is an alkaline substance used in the manufacture of fertilizer, gun powder, and explosives. It was produced by burning timber from around Sackets Harbor, and was selling in Canada for $320 per ton."

|2.21.05 @ 2:08PM|#

Libertarians should be happy about this. Forcing kids to do this is like an education in both the joys of free market Capitalism and the lunacy of prohibiting substances whose entrance nobody can control. Good to finally see those stricter educational requirements are finally teaching our kids.

|2.21.05 @ 2:09PM|#

$320 a ton? In 1807 that'd be the equivalent of Pablo Escobar moving a ton of coke from the Medellin. No wonder the locals disn't care for the ban.

BigG, what makes me happy about the article is that even today, in the age of slack-jawed teleboob teens, there are still some grassroots entrepreneurs. Reminds me of a friend I had in grad school who made money at his yeshiva high school running a bookmaker operation--he did quite well on the point shave.

|2.21.05 @ 2:25PM|#

My brother ran a similar scheme in middle school 15 years ago. The key was selection. You will find entrepreneurs anywhere there is money to be made.

|2.21.05 @ 2:42PM|#

I wonder if any A.H.S. clubs or sports teams sold candy to raise funds while this was going on?

Kevin

The Wine Commonsewer|2.21.05 @ 4:36PM|#

That's a great story and a great illustration of market principles.

However, I can't figure out how the 1400 kids that went to my high school made it through four years of kid prison without a single vending machine on campus.

We did have the black market in dope, but not in candy. In fact, my old buddy Ed (not the US Representative) used to sell oregano to the freshmen (what are they now? Freshpeople or 9th graders I guess). They'd often get high, too.

I owned the concession that provided the coveted NCR re-admittance slips.

Struck a blow for anarchy regards,

TWC

|2.21.05 @ 5:02PM|#

Uh, how is a school not selling candy comparable to Prohibition? I mean, it's not like kids weren't allowed to eat candy, they just couldn't buy it there.

And I'm sure the school's re-entry into the candy biz had more to do with not wanting their vending machine profits to tank.

pococurante|2.21.05 @ 6:19PM|#

Yeah, why can't kids stop at the 7-11 before school to buy their own non-black-market candy of their choice? I don't get it.

|2.21.05 @ 7:11PM|#

crimethink, pococurante: You don't understand that schools not selling candy in their vending machines is just the next step in The Road to Serfdom. Next they won't even have condom vending machines in the rest rooms...

|2.21.05 @ 8:37PM|#

I think the deal is that the vending machines served (and helped create) a market for candy-type snacks during school hours, when students are unable or unwilling to leave school grounds to satisfy such a craving.

(I say "created" because we never had such vending machines at our school, and never felt the lack.)

The only reason a libertarian might applaud the student's actions is that taking away the vending machines was tainted with a health-nanny "fight against obesity" motive. In some minds, that elevates the student's actions to an act of revolution rather than just satisfying a sweet tooth.

Plus -- and this is probably more important -- it teaches students that you can't suppress trade just by making a rule against it.

|2.21.05 @ 8:51PM|#

I agree with Stevo. It isn't so much that there's anything oppressive about a public school not having vending machines. It's just a valuable lesson on economics and human nature:

When people get used to something (e.g. candy available in school) and then you try to end the availability by fiat, a black market will arise.

It's so blindingly obvious that I still can't figure out why drugs are illegal. I mean, even the public schools teach that alcohol prohibition was a miserable failure because of human nature and the laws of supply and demand. Even the public schools put the facts right out there for all to behold. It's not like the failure of alcohol prohibition is one of those things that the public schools try to suppress.

It's all right there, taught to every single kid in America. Is it that history teachers don't make as much of a lasting impression as the D.A.R.E. coordinator or something?

|2.21.05 @ 10:04PM|#

thoreau,

Again, if the school had also banned possession of candy, then it would be a Prohibition-like lesson. But since kids were free to bring candy to school with them, those selling sweets were not part of a black market, but merely capitalizing on the laziness and unpreparedness of their customers (which is the point of most service sector business, after all).

When the school conducts random blood sugar tests, inspects lockers for Snickers, employs candy-sniffing dogs to roam the hallways, and leads out in handcuffs anyone caught with so much as a trace of chocolate on their fingers, yet the candy dealers still ply their trade (for $30 a bar) -- that'll be a lesson on the drug war.

|2.22.05 @ 5:51AM|#

Sounds like my high school years would have been completely different if only they'd put marijuana in the vending machines. All that illegal horse-trading kind of made you lose a little respect for law and authority, you know?

|2.22.05 @ 10:03AM|#

Sounds like some kids had been reading The Great Brain at the Academy

|2.22.05 @ 1:19PM|#

crimethink-

OK, maybe it wasn't a lesson on prohibition, but it was still an economics lesson: When a central planner ends a program, the market will step in and fill the void if that program was satisfying a demand.