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CommanderROR · 10-03-2007, 06:53 AM

I'd like to give an example from a different area...

Smoking and Alcohol...

Both are forms of drugs, dangerous to individuals and their environment.

Now, you could make a law that says "Smoking is illegal". What would happen is, that the whole deal would go underground. It has happened with Alcohol (Prohibition?)
Now, if you start to teach people that smoking is dangerous, raise prices for cigarettes and make smoking "more difficult" by not allowing it in public places and things like that you won't get immediate effects, but you will see a slowly diminishing number of smokers. We're having this "slow change" in Europe at the moment, and it is working It's slow because the addicts don't die quickly and there is still far too much "Media-induced coolness-factor connected with smoking", but give it another 10-20 years and we might have quite considerably reduced our number of smokers.
This is of course a process that works the other way round, but in principle it's the same
story.

10-03-2007, 06:53 AM	#25
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	I'd like to give an example from a different area... Smoking and Alcohol... Both are forms of drugs, dangerous to individuals and their environment. Now, you could make a law that says "Smoking is illegal". What would happen is, that the whole deal would go underground. It has happened with Alcohol (Prohibition?) Now, if you start to teach people that smoking is dangerous, raise prices for cigarettes and make smoking "more difficult" by not allowing it in public places and things like that you won't get immediate effects, but you will see a slowly diminishing number of smokers. We're having this "slow change" in Europe at the moment, and it is working It's slow because the addicts don't die quickly and there is still far too much "Media-induced coolness-factor connected with smoking", but give it another 10-20 years and we might have quite considerably reduced our number of smokers. This is of course a process that works the other way round, but in principle it's the same story.