Yes, I'd love a car that "drove" where I wanted, until someone found a way to hack it.
I don't trust "AI" all that much, period. I mean.... Okay, all the metros in DC were self driving but they also had an "operator." There are times that operator was "needed."
It's not about cost efficiency if you ask me (I'm sure there is an argument to be made), it's more about safety.
I don't consider "mandatory" AI cars to be remotely safe. Another argument really NOT suited to vaping.
I gotta quit, this thread is just going in circles.
If we're talking about personal safety vs. risk reduction laws, perhaps there is a smidge of relevancy.
I guess the analogy I'd make would be similar to the harm reduction component, and we need to be insistent about the fact that kids who chose to vape still have MUCH less relative harm than those choosing to smoke.
It is also the argument that the government does NOT want to see made, for that very reason. They want more smokers, and they want young smokers, and they want that, they don't care about ANYTHING but that.
Similarly, the US is criminalizing opiate use now, instead of just deregulating drugs, period. Any time a drug gets bumped up by regulation, it becomes more expensive. It also penalizes the dependent, not the pill seekers. The US wants MORE pill use, they can charge money, lock people up and criminalize legitimate opiate use. The more sane strategy would be deregulation.
And, my own personal opiate use story? Well, I got hooked on a synthetic opiate that was so fervently adopted by the pharm companies as non addictive, neither I nor my doc could find a SHRED of evidence it was. I wasn't criminalized (back then) for my use of it, and I see NO reason why I should have been. I also see NO rationale for a ...... addict to have to suffer as much as they do, given that clean, legal ...... being available and the funds used for further harm reduction efforts... They could TAX it to hell and back.
Most people don't actively SEARCH out an opiate addiction. It's not fun, it's incredibly unpleasant, and to then lock someone up for it? Trust me, the addiction and having to address it is more than enough fallout.
Really, what we are seeing in some states just brings it home for me. Job creation, tax creation, moving an illicit market to a licit one, not to mention there ARE health benefits.
The US government could have ALL that with vaping. But, they chose another approach, one that is very, very disturbing, if you ask me.
The US is so stuck up about "freedom from" that they forget about "freedom to." John Rawls has some cogent arguments about what "freedom to" can bring. None of us oppose traffic signals, or the fact that a roller rink is safer if all skaters move in the same direction. Yet, they curtail your freedom, if you really think about it.
Freedom to engage in harm reduction is a freedom TO. It is being attacked. Because it's not all about individual CHOICE, we find ourselves being squeezed down an increasingly narrow corridor, until what we hold in our hands is a "closed mentholated pod" as we have not advocated enough for our freedom TO choose harm reduction.
No one in the US gets that. Britain focuses a lot on "freedom to" sometimes at the expense of a liberty or two. However, unfortunately, the US remains blindly focused on our "rights" to whatever, while neglecting the very things necessary to have a society that contains "the good" not just the "whatever WON'T affect our individual liberties to do X" they also use children as pawns and I'm not a great big fan of that.
But, politicians today are NEVER going to focus on "the good" in our society and there are times where I consider our current situation quite, quite far from individual liberties, because someone can always make the argument "But, if one kid comes to HARM... etc."
I don't understand why the US is increasingly treating it's children as government property, well I DO understand it, but I don't accept it.
Vaping is no different. We need to address that teens need the "freedom to" be teens, without pawning them, and while accepting that some children will DIE as a result of their choices. That is a very hard thing to accept, and my argument is, and remains, "Vaping is overall a societal good. It should be in place, despite the amount of individual harm to a child, which is at this point not even really known yet."
You make that argument, you get yelled at. It is still truth that freedom from/freedom to need to be addressed in very different ways, and if you make the freedom TO argument, you will be ignored/targeted/spoken about in a bad fashion, because here, freedom FROM is the idea that gets bandied about. And being free of tyranny is a good, most certainly. But, there are other kinds of freedom.
I also believe any teen "cited" as OMG, a vaper, by our society, should be designated AS an adult from that moment forward, because the US is treating teens like "citizens" and using them to further their aims. I just say, issue fresh birth certificates to all teen vapers causing them to turn 18. I'm not kidding. Because a child is not a property of the government, to be used and abused as desired. I'm in a state of mild fury about it, actually. If the US wants to let a teen give a speech after a school shooting? Hand them a DL with "18" printed on it, hand them a GED certificate, and send them on their merry way.
Oh, what's that? She can't be an adult? BUT her views were blasted ALL over the media while the president watched. RIGHT, okay, that's not an adult behavior? Maybe someone else should have given the speech, who was, um, an adult?
Anna
