The news came out that Austrailia has recently passed a law that will basically force all head shops to close down. They made it illegal to possess a bong, punishable by up to 2 years in jail or a fine of $50,000. If that's not rediculous enough, the woman who supported the bill (and somehow got elected to the government) couldn't even keep her own daughter off of heroin. Heroin is illegal in Austrailia, but this legislator still lost her own child to the drug because she was a bad mother. I'm saying this without any hesitation: if your child dies of a heroin overdose, then you are a bad parent. If you're a bad parent who had a child die of a drug OD, then you have no right to tell me how to live my life. It would be one thing if she had saved her child, but she didn't and is still trying to tell everyone in the country that she knows best. The most amazing thing about the death of her daughter is that she had founded the drug rehabilation center BEFORE her daughter died, so even her treatment was useless. So what was her reaction to losing a child to Heroin? The logical one of course, to make it illegal to have a bong, water-pipe or any other pot-smoking accesories. Now obviously my pro-marijuana opinions come into play here, but it's also about the same kind of reactionary thing we do here in the states. They (especially American voters) see a tragic event and say "what can we do to prevent this?" but there's no way to prevent something that already happened, and the solution is almost always something that wouldn't have prevented the tragic event in the first place. These knee-jerk reactions never solve anything and tend to be something that wouldn't prevent the original tragedy anyways.
I am against these kinds of reactions to tragic events because they never actually help. After 9-11, they made these rediculous laws saying we couldn't bring a 2" Swiss Army Knife or a pair of nail clippers on the plane, but they completely ignored the fact that the hijackers didn't take their weapons through security, or the fact that I couldn't hijack a plane with my Swiss Army Knife any more than I could with a plastic knife or a broken CD. Even professional baseball has done things like this in reaction to tragedy. Last year a base coach in the minor leagues was hit in the NECK by a foul ball and it killed him instantly right there on the field. It was an incredibly tragic event to happen to a great guy, Mike Coolbaugh, but the reaction by the league didn't make sense. The man was struck in an artery in his neck, so what was Major League Baseball's reaction? To make it mandatory for base coaches to wear a helmet! Had Mike Coolbaugh been wearing a helmet when he was killed, all it would have done is made him look protected while he lay dying in foul territory. If this same thing happens again, another man will die because his helmet wont protect him...in fact, it's more likely to kill him by hitting his neck than it is if it hits his head even without the helmet.
Not only do I find these knee-jerk reactions to be stupid, but they are usually more trouble than they are worth. In ice hockey there was a girl killed by a puck flying up from the ice in Columbus a few years back, so the NHL made the teams put up these annoying screens to protect us from the puck. Maybe it's just me, but when only one event happens in 50+ years (That's 10,000s of games) that means it's an anomaly and not something that needs to be protected against. So millions of people have to be subjected to these new rules (which in this case would have actually saved the girl) that get in the way of their experience. What ever happened to "at your own risk"? I know that when I am at a baseball game, there's a chance a ball will be hit at me and I wont be able to avoid it, but it's a risk I take for the glory and love of baseball. What happens if one day a player or umpire collapses on the field because of sunstroke, will they make it against the rules to play on sunny days? If something happens once every 50 years, just let it happen and have a tribute to that person instead of making a huge deal out of it and instituting some kind of rule that forces people to protect themselves from something that is less likely to kill them than their own driving.
So I'll get back to the parenting rant now...if your kid dies of something as a result of their own choices, YOU ARE TO BLAME, not what killed them. If your kid commits suicide because of their depression, you are to blame because you didn't step in and help them when you had a chance. If they die in a car driven by a drunk friend, it's your fault because you didn't teach them to never get in a car with a drunk driver. Simply put, if your kid dies of anything other than a freak disease like cancer or a drive-by, it's probably your fault and you should just accept that instead of going on some pointless crusade. It's people like those mothers who will make us live in a police state with everything monitored and basically everything illegal simply because they are bad mothers and didn't raise their kid up right. This all may sound heartless, but if your daughter is doing enough heroin to OD, you failed in there somewhere and it's your fault that she died.
If history has taught us anything (and it always does, but most people don't learn from it) it's that more laws does not equal more order. In fact, the more laws there are, the more anarchy spreads. People need to be free to make mistakes, if you have a kid and you raised them right, you really don't need to worry about a head shop in Sydney or the prostitution service recruiters turning them to a life of drugs and performing degrading acts for money. Just like with candy, it should be there for us to have and if we have too much, we'll pay for our mistakes with our life. Making more things illegal never makes them go away, it just makes their use more dangerous. Illegal alcohol led to dangerous moonshine being sold on the black market, illegal drugs leads to unregulated ingredients creating a dangerous mixture in the heroin purchased from a street dealer, illegal prostitution leads to un-tested girls walking the street and spreading STDs, illegal bongs leads to kids making pipes out of 20 oz bottles, glass sculptures, vases, a 2 litre bottle and a pitcher of water...etc., because there is ALWAYS a way to circumvent the rule.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment