Empire State Building "shooting"

[whatthefunk]

I honestly don't see why whether or not a motorcyclist was wearing a helmet would have any bearing on who was liable for the accident. And I say this as a former motorcyclist who didn't have many good things to say about most car drivers.

If there are no helmet laws and you hit a motorcyclist and he dies, it is 100% your fault.

If there are helmet laws and you hit a motorcyclist who wasnt wearing a helmet and he dies, he was violating a law which could have saved his life. Therefore, although the accident was your fault, his death was his own.

[NickStone]

Do you really want some company actively trying to sell your kids, grandkids, friends, and other family members something that will, with 95% certainty, completely destroy their lives?

Its already being done, the company is called McDonalds.

[HalationEffect]

This is just painful to read. When it comes to heroin, there is no such thing as harm reduction.

I respectfully disagree.

Do you really want companies to compete and try to offer the best possible heroin to the most amount of people?

How is that any worse than criminal gangs doing the same thing?

Do you really want some company actively trying to sell your kids, grandkids, friends, and other family members something that will, with 95% certainty, completely destroy their lives? Do you want to watch the people around you sink into an abyss of needles, dark dirty basement apartments, and blank eyed stares? Do you want them to drop off the face of the earth for half a year and resurface from god knows where with yellow-white skin hanging off them and sores all over their arms, and instead of greeting you when you open the door, they ask you for five thousand dollars because they need to pay an over due video rental fee? Do you want to spend all your money to put them into rehab time and time again only to watch them fall back into addiction? Want to find them passed out on the floor with needles in their arms? Want to find them selling themselves for money? Want to be called by the police at 3 am to find out that your friend or family member has been involved in a terrible accident while driving home from scoring? After all this it is honestly a relief to find them dead. Im not kidding.

Is the status quo preventing any of those negative consequences of drug use? No, all of those things are already happening every day under the current system, with no sign that things are improving or likely to improve. What I'm saying is that system isn't working; we need something better.

[whatthefunk]

Its already being done, the company is called McDonalds.

Its a good example. Does McDonalds care about the well being of its consumers? Does any major corporation? They only care that consumers are able and willing to buy more product.

[whatthefunk]

How is that any worse than criminal gangs doing the same thing?

Criminal gangs cant advertise. Although these gangs do have a lot of money, its nothing when compared to the amount of money that major corporations have. Heroin companies could even lobby in the government to try to get more people to throw their lives away.

Is the status quo preventing any of those negative consequences of drug use? No, all of those things are already happening every day under the current system, with no sign that things are improving or likely to improve. What I'm saying is that system isn't working; we need something better.

I agree that the current system is working. But I dont know that legalization would work any better. I did just read about Portugal though...interesting.
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...893946,00.html

Like I said above somewhere, legalizing everything but heroin is alright by me. But heroin.....evil, evil stuff.

[HalationEffect]

If there are no helmet laws and you hit a motorcyclist and he dies, it is 100% your fault.

Going to have to disagree on this. If the biker chose not to wear a helmet, and if it was shown that wearing the helmet would have saved his life (by no means a guarantee), then I see it as at least partially the biker's fault for exercising his choice to not wear the helmet.

If there are helmet laws and you hit a motorcyclist who wasnt wearing a helmet and he dies, he was violating a law which could have saved his life. Therefore, although the accident was your fault, his death was his own.

I've known several bikers who died in accidents even though they were wearing helmets. One colleague of mine died by rear-ending a vehicle that came to a sudden, unexpected stop in front of him, and no, it wasn't a high speed collision (~25 MPH).

I've also read of cases where the additional weight of a crash helmet was the cause of injuries due to exacerbating the effect of whiplash, which is something I have personal experience of... my neck sounds like somebody is walking over gravel when I move my head a certain way...

[HalationEffect]

Criminal gangs cant advertise. Although these gangs do have a lot of money, its nothing when compared to the amount of money that major corporations have. Heroin companies could even lobby in the government to try to get more people to throw their lives away.

Well, there's a simple fix for that - don't allow the legit companies to advertise the product. In the UK, for example, we have banned tobacco companies from advertising their products, and it's not like they couldn't have afforded to have lobbied to try to prevent that ban coming into force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco...United_Kingdom

[Snowhog]

Going to have to disagree on this. If the biker chose not to wear a helmet, and if it was shown that wearing the helmet would have saved his life (by no means a guarantee), then I see it as at least partially the biker's fault for exercising his choice to not wear the helmet.



I've known several bikers who died in accidents even though they were wearing helmets. One colleague of mine died by rear-ending a vehicle that came to a sudden, unexpected stop in front of him, and no, it wasn't a high speed collision (~25 MPH).

I've also read of cases where the additional weight of a crash helmet was the cause of injuries due to exacerbating the effect of whiplash, which is something I have personal experience of... my neck sounds like somebody is walking over gravel when I move my head a certain way...

In general, the only thing that wearing a helmet ensures, is that in a crash resulting in the death of the motorcyclist, an open casket funeral is possible.

[woodsmoke]

One might consider the Boxer Rebellion.

There were multitudinous reasons for the situation but among them, pertinent to the below discussion, was:

By 1900, the great powers had already been chipping away at Chinese sovereignty for sixty years. They had forced China to import opium, thus leading to widespread addiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Criminal gangs DO advertise. It's called "graffiti", and its sprayed onto walls in cities, towns and villages all around the country. It's very effective and well targeted at its intended audience. Very economical, too.
http://www.gangsorus.com/graffiti.html

[vinnywright]

If America would decriminalize:

* all forms of consumable organic molecular chains
* the sale of activities that are already legal if performed for free

we'd have far fewer people in prisons.

about 50% less I think and a large portion of those are non violent simple possession and IMO that should be a medical issue (like alcoholism) not a criminal one.

Why do you suppose it'll be decades, if ever, before we see this happen? Discuss.

because it has become business and now we even have privatized prisons ,,,,got to keep up the head count to get those $

VINNY

[whatthefunk]

because it has become business and now we even have privatized prisons ,,,,got to keep up the head count to get those $

Thats the sad thing. Again we have an example of corporations having way too much sway in local and federal governments and their interests not in line with the interests of the nation as a whole.

[SteveRiley]

Wow, lots of interesting discussion while I was traveling again.

On the theme of whether to ban something based on its potential harm to society, I refer you to a study published during November 2010 in The Lancet: "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis." This study attempted to score popular drugs based not only the harm they may inflict on users, but also the harm users inflict on others. Here is the result of the scoring effort:



(Larger version: http://i.imgur.com/OOgIa.jpg)

[HalationEffect]

I'm a little surprised at how high cannabis is in the rankings, and at how low butane is. I also wonder if the score for mushrooms includes the possibility of people mistakenly consuming poisonous mushrooms, thinking that they were the 'magic' kind.

It comes as no surprise to me at all that alcohol would take 1st place, and by a comfortable margin at that. What boggles my mind is kind of thinking that goes: "Prohibition totally didn't work for alcohol, but it totally will work for other substances!".

Drug prohibition policies began, what, 70 years ago? 80? Longer? How much more time must pass before politicians admit that after all those decades, the problem is worse now, not better? That's a pretty clear indicator of a failed policy right there. Are politicians insane?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.