O Canada!
From the Great White North comes this little story. I think the judge was smoking some of that fine fine herb they grow out in BC.
on 01/11/2008 at 01:49 PM
And yet a few years ago in America - Carroll O’Connor could not get very far in the trial against the drug dealer who continued even after rehab to go back to his son Hugh. Never one undaunted (an English teacher who committed multiple linguistic malapropisms as Archie Bunker)by circumstance, O’Connor fought on until a law was passed to allow the suing of drug dealers for financial reimbursement - it is a start.
I personally feel that drug dealers no longer deserve a single iota of compassion and should be shot in the street. . .
But that is just me.
Can you tell I did a little range time this AM?
You’ve been told all your lives that it’s addictive and that it’ll kill you. You decide to go ahead and do it anyway, and when it destroys your health you sue the guy who sold it to you?
HUH?!?
Does that mean if I cut my hand off with a bandsaw I can sue DeWalt? Okay, if I poke my eye out with a sharp stick, can I sue the US Forest Service? Waitaminit, it’s a *sharp* stick, so I should not only be able to sue the Forest Service cos it was part of a tree, I should be able to sue Buck Knives as well for enabling me to sharpen it. Right?
Hold it, hold it, suddenly a glimmer of “I like it” appears..... I should be able to file a class action against every liberal treehugger on the planet for encouraging people to actually GROW these hazardous, deadly trees! I shouldn’t even have to poke my eye out. A simple splinter should get me an award for my “pain and suffering”, right?
Ya know what the REALLY scary part of all this is.... think about it: Of the judge, the ersatz “victim” and the perp, THE METH DEALER is the SANE one of the three.
Who am I? How did I come to this place? What color is the sky on this world?
GOF you do have a point, but as a former addicted personality - I know it isn’t that simple. Yes, the individual has a responsibility (especially now) for the original action. The real problem is that despite the “War on Drugs” the healthcare community does little toward actually working on the ‘addictive’ personality - which can cure in an instant or at least turn off that ‘need’. Which would help turn the tide on the “War on Drugs” - but like the Tabacco ‘problem’ - this brings in so much $$$$$$$$$$$ to so many vast areas (crime, justice, healthcare) that the powers-that-be - have no real desire nor incentive to actually deal with the problem at all. Lip service - much like Welfare/Entitlement ‘social issue’- a little bit of education and/or job training and then a firm cut off date - hey the problem would start clearing up. But $$$$$ behooves the powers-to-be to keep on - besides they all need some place where a couple of millions for their own bank accounts can be ‘earmarked’ or ‘porked’ - and no complaints registered - ‘It’s for the children’.
I don’t believe in lawsuits either - for much of anything. The intentional desire to hurt or steal - He** every politician out there stands to lose under those guidelines!
I know well it isn’t that simple, I’m STILL an addictive personality, and have known many more. But ya know, I don’t think the government or the tobacco companies owe me a damn thing for a stupid decision *I* made, KNOWING it was stupid when I made it. To quote one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, “Any rational definition of freedom must include the freedom to fail, and to accept the consequences of your failure. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”
Or as I have told many people over the years, “I don’t think I should be forced to pay for the childishness and stupidity of others. Hell, I’m having enough trouble trying to pay for MY OWN.”I would say this reminds me of the madness that afflicts Britain, but a lot of this crap started in the US with people no longer prepared to accept the concept of personal responsibility and shysters who take advantage of this. I am with GOF on this one.
All debates about the ethics of deal aside, one of the side effects of methadrine CAN be a heart attack. The sometimes lethal effects of drug and alcohol abuse are pretty well known. Even our own Skipper’s death may have been related to the heavy doses of pain medication he had to take while he was awaiting his back surgery. Bad reactions happen, even with normal people. Sorry Skipper, I had to say it.
About 15% of us are seriously prone to drug or alcohol addiction. That figure is in addition to the “weekend warriors” who may screw up and have a problem. I thought that was fairly well known.
So, what happened? Did the attorney who struck out on McDonalds move to Canada? I used to think that our Northern cousins were a relatively quiet and sane bunch. What’s gotten into their kool aid?
Does this mean that alcoholics and their families can now sue Coors and Budweiser? Jose Cuervo? Jim Beam? Beer and whiskey may be hallowed by tradition, but alcohol was and is the drug of choice for most people.
It occurs to me that the US government better HOPE this trend goes away. You see, I know for a fact that the US military’s answer to nearly *anything* that is bad enough to justify pain meds/anti-inflammatories, yet not bad enough to justify morphine, is 800mg Motrin 3x/day by prescription. I would be surprised if that isn’t fairly common in the industrialized world.
Well after I had been taking such a prescription for back trouble for quite some time, I had an OR tech I knew point out to be that “as everyone in the medical profession knows”, any amount of Motrin over 1500mg per day is toxic and will cause kidney failure eventually.Okay, so if you choose to buy a product that was being legally sold, that everyone not a complete moron knew was bad for you, and you suffer health problems for it, the company providing it can be sued. Apparently if the product was not only known to be deadly but was *illegal*, so you had to CHOOSE to break the law to buy it, you can still sue the supplier.
So how about when you suffer physical damage caused by a medication that was known throughout the medical profession to be toxic in the dosage given, that you were REQUIRED under military law to take, as you were under orders to take it from a superior officer? And that the government supplied them just kept mum about the health risk they were subjecting you to?
01/13/2008 at 11:02 AM
