"Geoff Miller" > wrote in message
...
>
>
> Julianne > writes:
>
> > Drunk driving is not new but years ago, it was largely overlooked
> > until awareness of the dangers became a national passion.
>
> It moved into the public spotlight as part of the Nancy Reagan-
> sponsored "Just Say No" moral panic and scolding puritanism of
> the time. If you remember the early 80s, the news media were
> positively obsessed with fanning the flames of public fear over
> two issues: drunk driving and child molestation. Remember the
> McMartin Preschool hoax, and more to the point, how long it took
> for it to be _exposed_ as one?
>
I agree that the public morality took things to extremes with both drunk
driving and child molestation. What concerns me now is the push to lower
the legal limit from 1.0 to 0.8 for DWI. I'm not saying it is a bad idea
but I have yet to find compelling evidence that accidents happen in the
0.8 - 1.0 range that are directly related to alcohol. As a smallish woman,
I would almost bet that two glasses of wine after work would make me illegal
to drive. On the other hand, everyday I read in the newspaper about people
getting their 4th and 5th DWI. Maybe we should concentrate on the drunk
drivers who cause accidents rather than those who drink responsibly. I
guess MADD controls a lot of votes.

Society in general learned a lot from the McMartin case. While it is true
that children are not inherently dishonest, it is a fact that small children
will try desperately to please adults. They can be led and they are
convicted in their beliefs once they are planted.

Having said both things, drunk driving (a national past time to which I lost
two brothers in one night) and child abuse needed to come into public
awareness. Cases like the McMartin case also needed to come out so that we
as a society could see the powers that we invest in Prosecuting Attornies.
There is a sane, in between path to follow and generally speaking, it is the
one that involves an individual doing the right thing vs trying to sway
public opinion.

> (You know what a McMartin Sandwich is, don't you? It's a big
> piece of meat between two little buns.)

Okay, that's gross. Funny, perhaps, Zone Perfect, maybe, but gross.
>
>
> > Cigarette smoking was acceptable until public awareness increased
> > about the dangers.
>
> Correction: it was acceptable until society at large became ****y
> enough that people felt at liberty to bitch about things that
> they'd accepted for decades. The whole "secondhand smoke" thing
> is nothing but a way for people who simply hate the smell of
> tobacco to couch their protestations in more compelling terms.
> They know that if they simply said, "Ewwww, that smells icky,
> please put it out," they be dismissed out of hand.

I am waiting for the end result of this uprising. As someone who enjoys a
ciggarette with wine and beer, it was odd for me to go to California after
they banned smoking in all public places. My pre-dinner cocktail was
without a ciggarette and frankly, because I was in a smoke free environment,
I didn't miss it. I wonder, if in a few years, CA will be able to celebrate
a lower Cancer incidence. If so, it is a good thing. If not, screw it.
>
> If cigarette smoke is so toxic that even secondhand exposure
> to it is a health hazard, consider the level of concentration
> of the smoke that people inhale directly from their cigarettes.
> Why, it'd be so insanely toxic that smokers would all drop dead
> right where they stood, after a single puff!
>
>
You are right in that there are no conclusive studies demonstrating the
effects of second hand smoke on healthy adults. I would be leery about
smoking in the presence of infants who have very soft tracheas and can
easily spasm if presented with noxious stimuli. As far as I am concerned,
seperate seating for smoking and none smoking and adequate ventillation
should be fine for both smokers and non-smokers. If I had an infant, I
might look for a smoke free restaurant but it shouldn't be mandated by some
law.

Awareness is good. Crusades, driven by passion a la Jane Fonda and others
who embrace the cause of the week, are seldom beneficial except on a most
superficial level.

Nice post.

j
>
> Geoff
>
> --
> "Had Chinese food in Berlin once. An hour later,
> I was hungry for power." -- Alan Gore
>