From: bell@pooh.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Legalizing drugs
Date: 23 Nov 92 16:29:41 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In article <1992Nov20.225051.25114@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:
>How many people die each year from cancer?

About 300,000 from cigarette-induced lung cancer,  most nearing retirement
age or already past it.  Actually, that 300 K probably includes deaths from
emphysema, but for the current argument I don't believe that's a particularly
important distinction.

>How many of these cases are directly related to tobacco and liquor?

Liquor doesn't seem to play a major role in cancer deaths, save possibly
liver cancer.  There are about 50,000 deaths a year from cirrhosis and
other liver ailments.

>Half of all traffic deaths are caused by alcohol.

About 11,000 of these are not the drunk driver himself.

>These three things adds up to an amount that is 
>staggeringly high when compared to ILLEGAL drugs.

Staggeringly high to whom?  *I* don't pay out because of cigarette-related
deaths; actually, the death rate results in a savings to me because the
gov't pays out less in Social Security.  Insurance companies charge smokers 
higher rates than non-smokers, so they're paying for their health care.
Now, I'm not going to go out and encourage people to smoke to save me
money, but claiming we have a right to hold a gun to people's heads and
tell them they can't smoke because it's costing us money is simply wrong.

Should we outlaw cars because of all the other traffic deaths?  Hamburgers
because their cholestorol clogs arteries?  Are you going to be leading us
all in mandatory exercise every morning?

>Brewers and tobacco companies are getting rich

So?  They aren't doing so by holding a gun to anyone's head.

>and people are being killed because of it.

Everybody dies someday.  Cigarette smoking results in an average lifespan
of about 4 years less.  Seems like that's something for smokers to worry
about, not me.

> When are we going to do something about it?

About what?  Drunk driving?  We need a War on Drunk Driving, not on
alcohol.  We need to free up some prison space (to put some teeth behind
the drunk driving laws) by eliminating all prison sentences for marijuana
possession and sales.  We need to put video cameras in every police car,
so convicting an impaired driver is a 99% bet without need for a trial
(I've a newspaper article detailing the success of this approach, I'll
try to bring it in tomorrow.)  That's how you stop drunk driving.
Prohibition didn't work the first time, and it won't work now.

A problem about as serious as drunk driving that you don't even mention
is fetal alcohol syndrome.  One of the few possibilities for helping
deal with this is marijuana legalization, as studies have so far shown
no link between marijuana use and fetal damage.  Compare that to
alcohol, the leading cause of mental retardation in the Western World*.
We need to give the people safer alternatives.  If we don't, they'll
seek out intoxicants anyway, with results that we all know about.  Given
the nasty side-effects of alcohol (my wife's cousin's wife is in detox
even as we speak), something less harmful would be nice.

   Andrew Bell
bell@cs.unc.edu



Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.perot,alt.president.clinton