I have a personal theory about how legislation should be directed and why. I call it, ‘The Gray Zone’. The idea is, that we should make illegal something which is relativly benign and not enforce the law much or at all, in order to be able to enforce it harshly past the ‘gray zone when needs be.
An example.
Marijuana should be illegal. Not because it is necessarily that bad for you, although I think it is deleterious for a culture for a few reasons, but lets say its of no consequence at all. But the next drug, cocaine, crack, heroin etc. these have few redeeming features and when abused (heroin can be very beneficial for cancer patients I am told) ruin a persons life and bear a heavy cost to society. So why should marijuana be illegal? Because you need a wide line. Marijuana is that line. You need to be able to say, well, that person is dealing/taking/giving to children this noxious substance many many times worse than substance X which is illegal but we dont enforce.
Why? Because once we legalize marijuana we will legalize, or not enforce the next thing. The gray zone exists not because I think we need to consider it, but because it simply does. The fashion in legislation for decades now has moved towards liberalization of certain important practices to the extent that now, we can’t seem to find the line to draw in what has to be seen as, and punished as, criminal behavior. It is in that spirit that I post the video below. Not that it deals with an issue I wish this site to take on for its own sake.
I just feel it is an excellent example of a grotesque breach of the gray zone in legislation and a clear example of the consequences.
I don’t think I overstate the case when I say that abortion is the root of almost all our social ills. When we don’t care about the most vulnerable, why would we care about anyone else? And if we don’t care about them, why should they care about us?
the gray zone begins with the drug-alcohol.
When you start saying that you can kill kids before they are born it is a short step to allowing the killing of kids after they are born, one medical ethicist at Harvard (I think) says that parents should be allowed 12 months after the birth to decide if the kid should be allowed to live.
“the gray zone begins with the drug-alcohol.”
Perhaps. But in middle & southern Europe we have lived with alcohol for thousands of years and we know how to use it. There is little alcoholism and drunks are shunned. In Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain & Italy even the gas stations sell alcohol, but hardly anyone would drink it there and then.
Where alcohol is restricted like in Scandinavia, people drink to get drunk, not to enjoy.
As for cannabis I have studied the effects over many years and there is overwhelming evidence that it causes paranoia, dementia and schizophrenia.
The long term effects of cannabis abuse are very different and the long term effects are far worse than an occasional headache or a hangover.
There’s a “vodka belt” going at least from Russia over to Finland and to Sweden, Norway and Denmark. I’m not entirely sure if the british isles are counted in though. But in those countries I mentioned, people have problems handling alcohol and has have had it for many centuries. I suspect we might have some genetic defect in that matter.
I don’t know about the genetic defect but I do know that alcohol is easy to make and outlawing it only drives the people to drinking more. When it is legal you can buy a bottle and take one or two drinks and save the rest for later. When it is illegal you buy the bottle and drink it then so you won’t get caught with it.