That’s only true if you’re willing to accept massive collateral disease, injury and death as necessary to weed out the stupid.
Keep in mind, when anti-vaxxers don’t vaccinate little billy and sally, that puts everyone’s infants at risk, and all the immunocompromised people, and those who can’t be vaccinated for legitimate reasons like life-threatening allergies.
Saying “it’ll all shake out in the end” is like saying gun control isn’t necessary because all the ammosexuals will shoot the badguys eventually.
I agree with that. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s better than sending people to jail and literally taking away all their opportunities for work and a bunch of their civil rights. On the other hand, I really hate that it’s gaming the medical system.
I guess my point is: If you blow up a norm to “do good” this one time, it will have consequences. And I suspect that applies beyond this particular instance.
On the other other hand, I’m not disputing that medical marijuana may have been a necessary stepping stone to sufficient public acceptance, so it’s difficult to weigh the total ethical outcome. Just pointing out the likely connection.
Except, the opportunistic diseases will attack both the non-vaccinated with healthy immune systems and the cannot-be-vaccinated with immature or distressed immune systems. Guess who is “punished” more?
seems like people are more polarized than ever, maybe we should create isolation zones so that instead of having to argue and feud about abortion or legal marijuana or vaccines we can just create micro states where proponents of X can love in peace.
theres enough land in this country that isnt being used for jack shit. every radical view could have its own cult compound
That’s a terrible idea. The land you are calling “unused” is marginal at best, and should be left as wilderness, or you failed to notice it’s being utilized about as well as it can be. For that matter, I don’t want to live in a bubble and would never move to such a place.
Datapoint of one but I quit smoking pot when I was 25 precisely because my use was putting others at risk. I caused a car accident, and although no one was injured, it clued me into the realization that my fun was having negative real-world consequences … so I quit for almost a decade.
Any mind-altering substance is going to put people at risk, so as you note the decision to prohibit one should be made on the probability of its putting a large number of people at serious risk of harm. Unfortunately the U.S. political culture has a tendency to make those decisions based not on statistics and medical consensus but rather on moral panics, pressure from favoured industries, or the prohibition’s utility in suppressing certain classes or races.
Once a popular mind-altering substance is banned under those faulty criteria there are always doctors willing to write scrips for it. During the otherwise dry 1920s in the U.S. medicinal and sacramental alcohol flowed more freely and copiously than they did before or after Prohibition. Prudish conservatives never seem to learn the right lessons from the past they claim to venerate.
Really, though, the “prohibition” in question here (namely, unvaccinated kids are prohibited from attending public schools) is not comparable to the prohibitions of alcohol or pot in the U.S. except as another illustration that there are always doctors who, for good reasons or bad, will attempt to circumvent them. That fact does not make the concept of prohibition of certain things bad and unworkable and of itself.
Yup. Sometimes because of it’s absence. The guys endangering other people’s life by not using non-mind-altering medicine clearly haven’t had enough of a drug called knowledge.
And while it’s not classified as a substance, it is far from insubstantial.
