The Perils of Laws and Perceptions

I wrote this in response to an article about new tobacco taxes and the reasons for them. A respondent stated there were no conspiracies behind most things done by government. It has often been said that money is the root of all evil—coupled with the desire for power and you have the answer to most of the world's problems.

You are right, there are no conspiracies. If we follow the money we always find the force behind many of the things you mentioned(drug and alcohol laws). Statistics are padded and ignored to bring about the results wanted. A statistician will tell you he or she can support any belief.  Even when we ourselves look at raw numbers we can't be sure of the truth. I have looked deeply into  DUI statistics. They will tell us how many people are killed each year in alcohol related accidents, or how many people are killed by drunk drivers.

What the statistics and proponents of laws don't tell us is that a DUI caused accident doesn't mean the drinker was the cause of the accident. They don't tell us that speeding or reckless driving was the cause. We aren't told the road was covered in ice and it was truly just an accident.  When a beer can is found on the roadside, or a weeks old empty in the floorboard, the accident becomes alcohol related. If the attending officer can smell what he/she believes to be alcohol, even if it's cough medicine, it becomes an alcohol related accident.

Rush To Ban Energy Drinks, Why?

The FDA is in a panic mode to ban energy drinks laced with alcohol after 5 teens die from drinking.  After some research I found a variety of numbers for annual deaths from these energy drinks. The highest I found were 20,000 annual deaths, so I will operate from that prospective. I figure the real number is far less. I decided to list deaths from other causes.

Tobacco  ——————————————— 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity ———— 365,000
Alcohol ———————————————— 85,000
Microbial Agents ———————————– 75,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes ————————– 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs – 32,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect —– 17,000
Bicyclist ———————————————– 700