<2. Most Americans today forget (or are ignorant of the fact) that tobacco, alcohol,
marijuana, heroin, cocaine, et. al. were once ALL legal in the United States. The
government left it up to individuals to decide upon their non-use, use or misuse.>
Father, with all due respect to your political views, I think one of the reasons drug and alcohol and smoking have become more regulated over time is not any kind of controlling, Prohibitionistic spirit in America, but simply that more is known about the dangerous/damaging aspects of them. Whether you believe there is a public health or not, it seems that public health education does work sometimes in changing subtance abuse patterns. Certainly in the case of children's welfare, there have been isolated cases recently where children have been given to the parent who does not smoke in contested custody situations, because of the dangers of second-hand smoke. In a car with the windows closed, the environment is even more toxic. Do you remember when there were no seat-belt laws, and no car seat laws and no motorcycle helmet laws? That was quite recently. Do you think these are unfair intrustions into our freedoms? They save lives, many lives of people without health insurance specifically, and this is definitely in the interests of public health, since taxpayer dollars are preserved. |
