Friday, December 17, 2010

Banning things doesn't reduce the problem...weird.

I got an article today that said in 3 out of the 4 states that enacted bans on texting and/or use of phones in vehicles the rate of collisions increased after the ban.  Weird...

So banning stuff and putting restrictions on things doesn't reduce the frequency of them occurring, in fact, in some cases the problem grows.  Weird...

Where am I going with this, you probably know, banning alcoholic beverages and putting restrictions on their use won't cause the problem to stop, it will continue with another beverage or drug and may even escalate.  Here is an interesting quote from the article.

HLDI's new findings about texting, together with the organization's previous finding that hand-held phone bans didn't reduce crashes, "call into question the way policymakers are trying to address the problem of distracted driving crashes," Lund adds.

So legislating the problem away doesn't fix it?  Some things need legislation and I get that and I am not going all Tea Party on you here.  I just wanted to point out that forcing people not to do something without educating them of the perils of such a thing does nothing to stop it, in fact it probably emblazons them to do it more, especially when we are talking about teens and young adults.

 So think about the next time a ban on an alcoholic beverage is introduced.  I think education would do wonders in our society in curbing alcoholism.  I also think it would allow us to lower the drinking age to 18 if the kids are properly prepared.  Heck we give them a car at 16 but do so with education and training, why can't we do that with alcohol. 

We don't have an alcohol problem in this country, we have a overindulgence problem in this country.

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