Banning consumption itemsFollow

When I was in college, and shortly thereafter, we used to drink a Sparks for the caffeine before moving on to other things. They've since removed the caffeine from the drink, which really just forces me to slam a Five Hour Energy before going out.

Good for you. Realizing you're a weak person without the ability to exercise a little self control is step one.

I live in my mom's basement, too.

I've got my own controller. Can I come too?!

F'uck that. Totino's Pizza Rolls or nothing.

Ur just friad of gettin' ur butt-kicked by an gurl.

But would you listen?

You're going to live longer, too. Yay!

An individual is part of the whole. So while, yeah, I agree, personal liberties are pretty important, you can not simply claim that you can do anything in your own home you'd like, and it's no one else's business so FO.

Anything you do, whether it be in your home, your bedroom or your mom's basement, can and often will have some impact outside of your home. If/when that impact, collectively, becomes a burden on society as a whole then it's governments place to step in.

Stupid unthoughtful blanket statements are still stupid.

They should totally ban suicide then.

Agreeing with me should concern you more than agreeing with Varus. With him, even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'm a pathological misanthropic narcissist, but mom just calls me a sociopath.

Still reading through the thread, but wanted to comment on this:



I think the point Joph was making (and which I agree with 100%) is that if they want to ban something because it is unsafe or whatever, they should come up with the standard they are using and actually ban the substance. But what we're seeing is a trend of passing semi-related regulations designed to inhibit the sale of things without actually banning them. To me this is problematic because it reinforces a mechanism that is itself detached from the substance being affected.

If you think fast food is too unhealthy, then place more strict requirements on it. Banning the advertisement methodology is not just dumb, but sets a dangerous precedent. What's funny is that there's a slippery slope aspect to this which the OP skimmed right past. Some of you may be too young to remember when the movement to ban certain advertisements for tobacco products was in full swing. We're talking late 70s through the mid 80s. They made it illegal to advertise them on billboards, or in magazines which had a target audience of minors. They also made "Joe Camel" illegal (a cartoon camel which appeared in ads for Camel cigarettes).

The Joe Camel one was the precedent and a lot of people argued that it was a bad idea. It's one thing to say that you can't advertise for a product only legal for adults in a magazine targeted at kids, but in this case they argued that even if the ad only appeared in magazines targeted at adults, the cartoon nature of the character might appeal to kids and therefore couldn't be allowed. Sound familiar? It's the same argument being used against toys in happy meals. Only in this case, the product isn't illegal to sell to kids, nor is it illegal to target advertising to kids.

So the "method" of banning something attractive to kids on the grounds that it will entice them to use a product that is unsafe for them has now shifted from preventing them from buying something that is illegal for them to use, to reducing the purchase of something that is not illegal at all. IMO this is where the laws go wrong. Once you've created that precedent, where does it stop? Do we make sales illegal because they encourage people to buy things they might otherwise not? Do we just ban advertisement entirely?

I'll go a step further (and a step which I suspect Joph will *not* agree with me), and suggest that the purpose here had nothing to do with cigarettes, and has nothing to do with happy meals. The purpose is precisely to attack the use of advertising. How many people on this forum have attacked corporations for "unfairly" using advertising to create a consumption based economy? There's a social engineering aspect to this that goes well beyond the product being sold. Obviously, you'd start such a process with things that people feel strongly against and then build up a tolerance within society to the idea of banning forms of advertising that are considered "unfair" or that encourage people to buy products that some people think aren't good for them (which is a whole lot of them if you think about it).


Dunno where this goes, but this was predicted back when Joe Camel was on the chopping block. Some of us saw then that this would not stop at preventing kids from smoking. Shocking how we were right once again...

I disagree, not on any particular grounds of defending the people in question who set off to ban such things, but because I feel that good ole fashioned "won't somebody think of the children" hand-wringing is sufficient motivation to embark on these crusades without needing any greater impetus or grander plan.