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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (17970)	2/3/2002 8:11:31 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Since the majority of children are also going to shop-lift, cheat on tests, drive under the influence, or exceed the speed limit, we should just erase all of those laws too..." You're missing my point. *I'm not in favor of changing laws against drug use* (or any of the other things listed). I'm just pointing out that $3.4 million for one drug user is way, way, way too expensive for us to even consider spending. Heck, putting him in jail for six years would be cheaper, though he'd probably find more drugs there than outside. Money is not free, and drugs are not the only thing government has to spend money on. Let's put this in perspective. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that there are about 3 5 serial murderers currently killing in the United States. vig.prenhall.com Suppose the advertisement were directed at catching serial murderers, and it caught just one of those 3 to 5 serial murderers. Would it be worth it? Heck yes! Murders in general, but serial murderers are extraordinarily expensive to society for several reasons. First, they kill off useful people. Second, it takes massive amounts of police work (that could be used instead to do useful things like preventing teenage girls from becoming pregnant in parked cars). Third, the murders create a climate of fear. But the fact is that a single serial murderer takes far more than $3.5 million to catch, try and convict. For example: king5.com A far better use of the money would have been to put an advertisement from the FBI asking for people to give leads on the anthrax mailer. They have a pretty good idea what kind of a guy would do it, making everybody aware of it, and the associated award, might have been enough to take a terrorist threat (that cost far more than $3.5 million to investigate &c.) off the table. If you're going to make a point about the $3.5 million being useful, you're going to have to use rhetoric that doesn't assume that it's only a single kid that's being influenced. One is just not enough. What I have given are examples of things that the government can do that people might not ignore. The drug, AIDs and cigarette smoking ads are already pervasive (on radio, I don't watch TV). I doubt that they're very effective. -- Carl