Cops really do believe that and it really does affect how they do their job. I have told this story before in the BBS.
A woman who really really high passed out behind the wheel and she wrapped her car around a power pole in front of my house. The two cops who showed up were a bit scared to approach the passed out woman, so they waited until the ambulance came. So I stood there watching these two cops throw around a box a narcan to each other like a father and son playing catch in the park all while that woman’s young daughter was still in the car most likely traumatized about what just happened.
It’s happened quite a lot post-9/11 at various places e.g. airports when someone “smells something odd.” Suddenly lots of people start getting sick (throwing up, fainting, etc.) - and it turns out there’s no toxin.
Some government regulation is good and is a net positive for actual freedom for regular people… like not living in a destroyed environment like you saw in the 60s or 70s, or having a government body that oversees the production of drugs and food, to ensure that they’re not going to kill people or make them sick. Since the formation of the FDA and of the EPA, we’ve made great strides towards having a better food and drug system that is much safer and we’ve had a much cleaner environment… Since the Reagan era, we’ve seen government agencies that deal with that stuff being slowly gutted, to all our detriment. Events like the Flint water crisis are a direct byproduct of that deregulation. I’m not sure that the children who ended up with far too high levels of led are more free because of that push towards deregulation, do you?
Corporations should not be allowed to make us sick or kill us for their own bottom line. Investing in regulation is one way to ensure that large institutions like for-profit corporations are prevented from exploiting us or hurting us in order to make a few people very wealthy.
There is whole thread over in Healthcare PSAs and BSAs with multiple examples of needed government regulation and oversight. Unfortunately, it is much easier to make money if you don’t have to worry about sterility of drugs, purity of foods, and so forth. And “let the market decide” comes at the cost of a lot of dead and maimed individuals. Not OK.
Back when I used to take drugs, someone gave me a couple of high-test multi-day fentanyl patches. That shit is strong, but it didn’t kill me. I eventually binned it, because I I didn’t piss for about 36 hours (opiates are awful for peristaltic muscles and the like, as many fules kno).
P.S. it sure does look like the symptoms of these ‘overdoses’ are a: charitably, panic attacks or b: cynically, bullshit. I’ve seen opiate overdoses, shit, I’ve had them, and no-one is flailing around hyperventilating, that’s for sure.
Yes. I understand it may go too far at times, however regulations have absolutely had a net positive effect. I would bet that most regulations come into effect because we have learned something (i.e. electrical wiring with cloth wrapping may not be the best) or people have been doing stupid, greedy, terrible things to others. Generally the latter.
Certainly every warning label on a consumer device comes from someone doing that thing and getting hurt, which is why blow dryers have the caution not to use them while sleeping.
