I was thinking more along the lines of society ‘crying wolf’ about various drugs, causing people to blanket disregard such warnings after a few decades of finding out that every other one was mostly or entirely bullshit. (Pot didn’t make me lazy, LSD didn’t burn holes in my brain, and I tried coke twice over the years without a) getting instantly addicted, or b) even understanding why people are all that into it.)
That said, it’s been about three weeks since I last warned a friend about mixing alcohol with the pills somebody gave him on a Friday night. So I’m not saying all such warnings are actually bullshit, just that it surprises me not that anybody in our society would learn to ignore them over time.
Warnings are like any other pieces of advice. You have to consider the source and evaluate the risk. Living in California you see warnings about cancer risk on most hotels and places with microwaves. I don’t want cancer but I take that risk.
I take the risk by not reading my EULA terms that I agree to dump my private info all over the net, but what are you gonna do.
Combining drugs with driving is a good example; yes you need to be very sensitive to the risks but I have successfully driven the morning after taking a sleeping pill.
Establishment warnings about recreational drugs made for dissuasion purposes are an entirely different class from medical warnings about prescription drugs.
And @bolamig if the source is a medical one, or from the manufacturer it is probably a more reliable source.
That said, I’m glad I do not live in as daftly litigious a society as America - and California - where common sense seems to have been sidelined by a risk-averse lawyer-driven culture. Both of the fuckwits on planes with alcohol and prescribe pills were from the binge-drinking British culture rather than the ‘you can’t be trusted to drink alcohol until 21’ US culture.
Same. I think perhaps I should point out that I didn’t include phone eating in my earlier comment. Though some people eat Tide Pods, so what do I know?
