Food coloring

Recently, the city of Baltimore has announced that it has extended its COVID policing policies indefinitely.  In the effort to control the spread of the virus, Baltimore decriminalized a large swath of previously punished behavior including:

    [Drug] possession

    Attempted distribution [of drugs]

    Paraphernalia possession

    Prostitution

    Trespassing  

    Minor traffic offenses

    Open container

    Rogue and vagabond

    Urinating/defecating in public

They also:

    Dismissed 1423 pending cases considered eligible by COVID policies

    Quashed 1415 warrants for the aforementioned offenses

    Reduce[d] the prison population...[with] the early release of 2000 people

    Of course a Broken Windows Policing Law and Order type looks at such things and immediately assumes the end of civilization as we know it.  But the BWPL&O type are not overly familiar with statistics since various places in Europe have decriminalized such things without resulting in the second coming of the the Visigoths.

    For those who are familiar with recent history, the results out of Baltimore are completely unsurprising.  Violent crime is down 20% over the year and property crime is down 36%.  If it weren't for grocery store brawls and home break-ins over toilet paper stashes, I daresay those decreases would be even greater.

    "But wait," you say, "Everybody was stuck at home, so of course crime went down over that time period!"

    Except crime went up in other major metropolitan centers.  And not just the ones where the citizenry were burning them down in protests.  Baltimore was an outlier among cities of its class.

    This has played out in our family's life as well.  When I was my children's age, I was dealing with parents who were...unwell.  We had lots of rules, but for various medical and mental reasons, the enforcement of those rules was quite arbitrary.  Much like most American adults today who commit by one estimate three felonies a day, we constantly lived at the mercy of "prosecutorial discretion."

    And so, many years ago, my wife and I decided to "decriminalize" all actions except direct defiance (to include lying).  Ever since, we have found that our children have stopped testing boundaries and have turned into generally respectful, compliant kids.  Certainly more obedient that I remember being at their age.

    There is, however, one barrier from describing our parenting style as fully libertarian:  Prohibition.  And not of alcohol or marijuana.  Oh no, something far, far worse:

    Red 40.

    Back before 60% of our family developed dairy intolerance to some degree or another, I decided one day to introduce our children to Strawberry Nesquik.  I remember liking it as a kid more than regular chocolate milk, although I eventually grew out of that.

    So I bought a can of the powder and gave our three kids their first dose.  What followed closely approximated Reefer Madness.  Now I'm not saying that mind-altering substances cause crime.  But I will say that the number of assaults and property damage that night definitely increased over our normal baseline.

    There were tears.

    And of course, the 15g of sugar per serving probably didn't help.  But our kids had no issue handling regular chocolate milk.

    Of course, being a scientist, I insist on the repeatability of an experiment before accepting a theory.

    There were more tears.

    Apparently, there were sufficient tears from enough parents that in 2015 Nesquik removed Red 40 from its strawberry offering, replacing it with beet juice powder.  But, of course, now our kids can't have milk for other reasons.

    And so there remains a ban in our house on Red 40.  Or at least a strict limit.  Because apparently, our kids can' handle their [redacted].