Forum: Close to Home
Topic: Viewpoints - Should nicotine and alcohol be further regulated?
Topic Posted by: Close To HomeDate Posted: Wed Mar 18 15:22:22 1998
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Posted by: JGE
Date posted: Sun Mar 29 23:23:57 1998
Subject: Regulation
Message:
It's really important that we differentiate between danger people pose to THEMSELVES and danger people pose to OTHERS. We typically have these two confused. The former is no place for the government. It should be legal for people of age to take any drug they want (although we should undoubtedly distribute them differently, with an eye for relative danger). The latter has to do with people hurting others. Here we're dealing with social policies, laws, and enforcement (among other things). As shown by the first two episodes of Close To Home, addiction is both chemistry and environment. Very powerful chemistry is often involved, affecting people's behavior, attitudes, and view of the world. Addictive chemical reactions can be triggered in the brain just by being exposed to cues that remind the person of the drug and its use. For this reason it is unconscionable that we allow alcohol and tobacco to be advertised when we know that the cues in the advertising have this effect on people (often being designed specifically to have this effect). People of a certain age should be free to take whatever drug they want because they are only hurting themselves, but deliberate encouragement of addiction should be illegal. In the case of advertising, it would even be cheap and easy to enforce. We could do it tomorrow if we had the courage as a society. But it would mean getting past our denial that our two favorite drugs are in fact drugs. It would also mean we would have to distinguish between harm users do to them self (which is their business) and harm people do to others (which is the whole society's business).
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