Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDoc
In Arizona you get a one year mandatory inner lock on your car, lots of fines, and 10 days in jail.. first time.
Poeple make mistakes, every day, in every way.. Why is this different? Because it's a choice? Well, most mistakes are.
The reality is, people ARE forcing people to do this - without every knowing it. That is "exactly" how advertising works. If they want to make it really fair, then ZERO advertising for alcohol on tv, radio, billboards, anything.. It has been proven that advertisements influence us in unknown - upper level - psychological reason.
It's also been proven the more you push people, and say no this is bad, the more they will do it. It's far better to create a system that works with the people than against them.
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Well, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. I don't know you or much about you, but you said you were an MP and I respect anyone that has served this country (plus you have a pretty cool blog too
) but I don't think anyone is being forced into anything. I understand advertising is meant to make you want to buy something because you think it will give you the life that the ad portrays, but advertising doesn't FORCE you to do anything. To me saying that seeing ads on TV, papers, billboards or wherever forces you to go out and drink and drive is absurd. I will agree that it is easy to to. You go to a bar or a club and it is very easy to be over-served. Plus if you are bar hopping they have no idea how much you have drank. You could have done 5 shots 10 minutes ago and then walk into their bar and they serve you 3 more and you are none the wiser. So people go out and getting served too much is very easy and then they decide to drive home. To me it is no different than if I decide to shoplift something or if I decide to drive 100 mph or if I decide write a bad check. I may get away with it, I may not, but doing it was my decision and my decision alone and if I get caught I should be punished accordingly and in the case of DUI (and I guess the case where I am doing 100mph) I am actively putting other people in danger when I do this.
Also about the punishment, I was just going off of what typically happens in my state. Here in Oregon you get a DUI and often you don't even lose you license. You go to a class, pay a fine and get to keep it, or you lose it for 90 days. You have to get caught 3-4 times before anything real harsh starts to happen.
I do agree that in a lot of cases the more you push people away from something the more they will want to do it and booze is a prime example of that. We have such a taboo about booze. Most people I know when they turned 21 went out and got hammered. Sure most people have had booze before that age, but usually not much and not that often. It is such a taboo that they celebrate getting to do it by over doing it. I think if parents were more open with their kids and let them have some wine every now and then or shared a beer with them on their terms it would help ease off that taboo and make it so that it wasn't such a big deal. That is how it was in my house and I never even had a drink on my 21st. I do drink occasionally, but even when I was in my early 20's it didn't have the allure to me a lot of other people felt because it wasn't something I was denied and I didn't feel like I had to make up for lost time with. The same can be said for sex. If you look at the parts of the country where they only teach abstinence in the schools you will see that those areas have the highest rate of teen pregnancy and STD as well. The more you tell the kids not to screw, the more they screw, only they don't use protection.
Talking about advertising and its effect on society is a fascinating topic I could discuss for hours. All that said, I still think, in the end, people make choices for themselves. We have free will and if we choose the wrong thing and that wrong thing could harm other people there should be some pretty strict consequences.