From: peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Drug Legalization. Was: College Was: Perot
Date: 11 Apr 92 07:49:02 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: dopey.crhc.uiuc.edu

dsh@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:

| peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy) writes:
| >dong@oakhill.sps.mot.com (Don M. Gibson) writes:
| >> Further, if legalized, the big pharmaceutical companies would take
| >> over.  They would develop drugs, which are 90%-95% addicting 
| >> on the first try.

| > 1)  If a drug company were able to find a drug so addictive, they would
| > either have to boldly advertise its addictive qualities or find themselves
| > being sued from San Juan to Point Barrow.

| Several drug companies already sell a product which is highly addictive, 
| and they do not "boldly" advertise the addictive qualities of their 
| product, yet lawsuits have not driven them out of business. 

| They are called the tobacco companies.  

| Remember, the warning labels are required by the government, and the
| tobacco companies would gladly drop the labels if they could.

The reason these lawsuits haven't gone anywhere is because of the widely
known (suspected) effects of tobacco, specifically included on the warning
labels.  If I recall correctly, this is their defense in the courtroom:
the government has forced them to put these labels on to warn the
consumer; how can they be liable?  This defense has worked, and I
happen to agree with it.

Besides, one could contend that such a well-known drug needn't necessarily
have labels anyway.  (I would disagree, but one could contend it.)  I think
the spirit of the post I responded to went along the lines of some company
which spent millions of dollars developing a highly addictive drug and
then sprang it on the unwarned and stupid consumers who all got hooked.
Tobacco, alcohol, coca, marijuana, etc., clearly don't fall in this
category.

| > [... deletions ...]
| > But I do know that a known company cannot sell
| > something known to be injurious without telling the purchaser.  

| The tobacco companies have denied that there exists a causal link 
| between smoking and cancer. They claim that the link is not causal, but 
| correlational, and they have produced studies supporting their claims. 
| They believe that tobacco smokers get cancer because of other factors, 
| like poor eating habits and lack of exercise. They have, in the past, 
| used doctors to endorse tobacco as being "healthy". They would gladly
| choose to misinform consumers, if they could, rather than be forced
| by the government to warn consumers about the dangers of their product.  

And if taken to court, in a world without the warning labels, who would
win?

| The tobacco companies have shown that they are more concerned about
| profits than the health of the consumer. Why should the situation be
| any different if other types of recreational drugs are legalized?

Any company is more concerned with profits.  That's why it's a company.
However, one does not maximize profits by willfully and secretly poisoning
one's customers.  Not only do the deaths or other reactions of customers
remove revenue and create bad publicity, but the lawsuits that result
could be fiscally fatal.

Mike Peercy
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu