Re:Is Every Speed Limit Too Low?
by geofft on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @07:50PM
(#14199327)
I think the problematic logic of the War on Drugs is a bit subtler than "If some people want to do something, it's a bad idea to make it illegal."
Off the top of my head: Many of the drugs in question are responsible for far fewer deaths than cars are, and so it's not obvious why the penalty fits the crime and there's a strong argument for outright legalization. Many of the drugs are physically addictive and not merely something people want to do with full free will; many people arrested would be happy to stop doing drugs if they got treatment instead. The war involved foreign policy and foreign military activity, whereas nobody is suggesting that we bomb Toyota if they refuse to make slower cars. The war has been waged particularly aggressively among historically-oppressed races and classes (cf. The New Jim Crow), whereas no directly analogous danger exists from enforcing low speed limits.
Off the top of my head: Many of the drugs in question are responsible for far fewer deaths than cars are, and so it's not obvious why the penalty fits the crime and there's a strong argument for outright legalization. Many of the drugs are physically addictive and not merely something people want to do with full free will; many people arrested would be happy to stop doing drugs if they got treatment instead. The war involved foreign policy and foreign military activity, whereas nobody is suggesting that we bomb Toyota if they refuse to make slower cars. The war has been waged particularly aggressively among historically-oppressed races and classes (cf. The New Jim Crow), whereas no directly analogous danger exists from enforcing low speed limits.