Showing ID & signing in to buy OTC cold medicines?

[gekko]

I think you are confusing public safety with personal responsibility.

You would decide for others what is a sufficient source of addiction and abuse for them?   

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I shouldn't, no. But neither should it always be left up to the individual. People are stupid. Not all people; but a lot. We shouldn't have to make laws prohibiting sex with minors, but we do. We shouldn't have to make laws against racism, but we do. We shouldn't have to tell people that some substance is too dangerous, too addictive for them to use it responsibly, but we do.

Your car analogy does not hold up.  You 'could' stay accident free at high speeds - until you find yourself about to hit someone who just turned onto the highway and doesn't have that 1-90 in three seconds kind of car.  ;)  (That was pointed out to my husband one fine day when his driving record brought him in for an interview, many years ago.)

I'm not talking about 300+ km/h. I'm talking about 100 or 120. Many people DO drive at those speeds, every day, and are not in accidents. Or are you going to claim that 90 km/h is perfectly safe, but 91 km/h is not? My point was simply that there are many times, in law and in common sense, where it's impossible to accurately make a specific dinstinction between safe and harmful; between good and bad.

If you take a drug, you are still responsible for your behaviour while on that drug.  Our Supreme Court threw that one out the window some time ago when a rapist tried to use the 'but I was too drunk to realize' argument.

The problem with only enforcing behavior after the fact is that it fails to prevent problems in the first place. My argument is that there ARE drugs (whether we can agree on exactly which ones or not) that are inherently too dangerous; it is not possible to use them responsibly. Therefore, it IS society's responsibility to ban those drugs, to the benefit of all.

gekko