The Drugs Don't Pay

It seems that paying people to stay off drugs works. Not too surprising I'd have thought. A basic lesson of economics is that people respond to incentives (this is essentially the central theme of Freakonomics and the reasoning behind Nudge).

Of course, one aspect of such a scheme that may be controversial is it means paying people to do what's already in their interests. It seems that the government has recently decided that people ought to pay for what benefits them - at least when it comes to university education, though their policy may not be entirely consistent, as my friend Thom discusses here.