How can anyone with an IQ above freezing seek to criminalize any one substance rather than just criminalizing a) bad results b) impairment?
I don't care what, if anything, you're on. If you can't drive you can't drive. If you can you can. Penalizing any one substance simply because we can measure it seems farcical at best.
Sure, on paper.
In reality 99% of enforcement is against alcohol because that's what they have the breathalyzers, blood tests and established law to go after.
It's exceedingly rare for someone to get a DUI for anything other than booze unless they are so high they fall asleep at the wheel
I find it so odd few see the absurdity in all these public health debates. Now we have a virus going around and people go full authoritarian, even though the majority of deaths is way above the median life expectancy in many countries. Meaning they'd not have lived much longer anyway. But drunks kill tons of random people including kids every year - no biggie.
Just to be clear I'm against prohibition, I think all drugs should be legalized. There are millions of people who have serious issues with alcoholism though, and we have to do something against that, because they cause a lot of problems, even beyond killing others. It's farcical that drugs like LSD are highly illegal, even though users aren't known to harm others, but then others like alcohol are so accepted we even arguing about allowing people to drive while impaired with them.
If there were data showing that legalizing drink driving would lead to fewer accidents I'd be absolutely willing to consider it. I've never heard of anyone seriously make such an argument though, it seems like total bunk. A professional drinker may be driving inconspicuously, until one day their slow reaction time may not be enough to not hit that person crossing the street at night.
Yep, and the law agrees… as you agreed. Does it take a freezing cold brain to argue against itself?
You can get upset that we don't have the tools to measure other substances but as soon as we do I can guaranteed they'll be deployed and I won't mind a bit. Don't drive intoxicated, it's simple, I do it all the time. If I drink or smoke, I uber to and/or from. It's not a hard concept to abide by.
Who said anything about penalizing any one substance? Alcohol abuse is just the most rampant and its effects tend to be the strongest when compared to other illicit substances. I think people that are selfish and ignorant enough to drive intoxicated deserve harsh penalties. Sorry not sorry.
If two people throw a stone at your head and one misses because he happens to be a bad thrower few people would argue that this matters rather than the intent to harm.
In your example, how much of a civil penalty should each perpetrator pay to reimburse the victim's medical expenses? If we only considered intentions and not outcomes, the civil penalty would depend on the average cost of medical expenses the victim would incur from this type of attack, multiplied by the probability such a throw would result in a hit, regardless of whether the stone actually hit the victim's head.
But in reality, a court would focus more on outcomes than on intentions for this kind of civil penalty. The perpetrators would pay a civil penalty that depends on the victim's actual medical expenses. It's simply not practical to make accurate probability-based calculations for every damage assessment, and the victim should always be fully reimbursed.
My point is rather that for criminal culpability to exist, there needs to be intent. And (excuse me if this is somewhat inaccurate because I'm not from a common law region), in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?
Insofar as people receive lesser judgements for crimes without adverse outcomes the argument is that the better outcome reflects less willingness to commit or go through with a crime.
To take an extreme example, no jurisdiction I'm aware of punishes attempted murder substantially less severely than actual murder even if the outcome is that there's no harm done at all. Likewise an accidental death is not a crime.
It's called "mens rea"
> I think you're actually giving a consequentalist account in both examples, just one time collectively and the other individually.
That's an interesting point, so let me revise my example. If we only considered intentions and not outcomes, the civil penalty would depend on how much damage the perpetrator intended to inflict (interpreted in monetary terms) by throwing the stone, multiplied by what the perpetrator believed to be the probability that the stone would hit the victim. The amount of the civil penalty could be wildly different from the victim's actual losses.
A financial system could be set up to ensure that the victim would always be compensated for their actual losses, while the perpetrator would always pay an amount that scales with the monetary interpretation of their moral culpability. There would be no guarantee that the incoming payments would equal the outgoing payments.
I don't think it's possible to implement this system, because there is no way to determine the required numbers with a reasonable degree of accuracy. As long as intent is established, courts rely on outcomes to determine judgments when the extent of the intent is unclear.
> My point is rather that for criminal culpability to exist, there needs to be intent. And (excuse me if this is somewhat inaccurate because I'm not from a common law region), in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?
Yes, intent is an important factor in criminal cases. I'm not trying to argue that intent doesn't matter in court, because intent does matter. My point is that, for a legal system to be practical, outcomes also have to be taken into consideration.
> Insofar as people receive lesser judgements for crimes without adverse outcomes the argument is that the better outcome reflects less willingness to commit or go through with a crime.
Outcomes aren't necessarily a good approximation for intent. A perpetrator who is more competent at executing crimes would generate more adverse outcomes, while an equally willing but less competent perpetrator would generate fewer adverse outcomes. The more competent perpetrator should receive a greater sentence, but the reasoning would be based on the perpetrator's greater harm to society rather than their intent.
> To take an extreme example, no jurisdiction I'm aware of punishes attempted murder substantially less severely than actual murder even if the outcome is that there's no harm done at all. Likewise an accidental death is not a crime.
The counterpoint is that, at least in the U.S., states differ on whether attempted assaults are recognized as crimes, and whether assault charges require actual injury. There are related charges that vary per state, so I'm not able to make a generalization on the difference between attempted crimes and successful crimes.
These two crimes have different punishments. It's quite normal to have outcome-based laws.