Thoughts on "The Jennifer Act"?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sorry, I was doing other things earlier...

Just to give some background, the lady who this bill was named after died after an addiction to drugs. Her family repeatedly tried to help her with her problems, but were unsuccessful in doing so. Now, her mother, whom I know and admire, is pushing to pass this bill in her honor.

The general point of this law is to allow parents/relatives to petition the court for treatment on behalf of their family member who is suffering with a drug addiction. The person will be evaluated by several health physicians to determine whether or not treatment would be helpful for them. In the end, if the judge finds that that the person believed to have an alcohol addiction needs treatment, they can order that person to be treated for up to 360 days, but can be less.

http://thejenniferact.com/the-jennifer-act/
Scroll down a bit and you can see the full text of the bill.

Seems good enough to me.

Will work certainly far better than sending addicts to jail.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oppose the law because it is a clear violation of privacy rights.

Certainly Jennifer is now very glad her rights to privacy have been respected.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oppose the law because it is a clear violation of privacy rights.

Certainly Jennifer is now very glad her rights to privacy have been respected.

Unless you can prove otherwise, I see no reason to assume that Jennifer did anything other than make personal choices that she felt were proper decisions in her desire to live a fulfilling and enjoyable life. While I understand the hurt her family may feel, the notion that we could dictate happiness is ridiculous.

...and these personal choices turned out to kill her. We all believe in personal authonomy and free choice, but when someone is endangering his own life, it's the government's duty to avoid that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I believe in freedom, but not in absolute and unchecked freedom. I think individuals should generally be left to take most of their decisions alone, but not all of them. When there is a real, objective and serious danger, regulation is necessary. This is true for drugs as for everything else.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well first of all....why is it in the government's (and further: the peoples') interest to tell someone they're not allowed to do something that only has the potential to harm themselves? As long as nobody else is in any danger, what's the problem?

"What's the problem ?" ? I hope you're kidding.
I advice you to go to the funeral of someone who died from drug overdose and tell the parents "well, after all, it was his/her choice". I find it quite scary to see how you libertarians, with your abstracts concepts like "free choice", manage to forget human reality. Of course, you don't make laws out of emotion : I'm the first one to say it. But you make laws in order to find how to make people's lifes better. If freedom has far more negative consequences than positive ones, I see no rational reason to prefer freedom to constraint.

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The State imposes you some precautions when you go climbing mountains. It imposes you to put on your safety belt when you drive. Aren't these horrible limitations of the sacro-sanct free choice ?

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Well, that's your opinion. I'm just glad not everybody thinks like you.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I take offense at being called a libertarian!

You are a libertarian, in the proper sense of the word. It's not because Americans perverted the word to the point of making it mean "tin-foil-hatted crazy hack who wants to come back to the Stone Age" that we must stuck by this definition.

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Of course I don't want to ban fast-foods. While I want the government to protect people from this kind of dangers, we must look for the most effective way to do this. Banning might be the solution in certain case (see drugs), sometimes regulation is enough (for fast-foods, alcohol, or mountain-climbing). What, however, I find unaceptable, is letting such things totally unchecked in name of "free choice".
 

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The last sentence is obviously wrong. Otherwise, of course I support education campaign, but it's pretty clear that most of times they are not sufficient.

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There are conscious choices (people who know what taking hard drugs mean, who know how they will suffer and who decide to do that and are ready to suffer or die for the sake of having this kind of experience), but let's be serious, it's a microscopic minority. Most people who make this kind of "choices" don't realize what their choices imply, or just don't act rationally.

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There are none, really ? Well, there should be.

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Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Another day posting, another discussion where good people who believe in freedom have to help Antonio realize he is essentially a social conservative.

Thanks for giving your thoughtful contribution to the debate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Simfan, don't waste your time trying to discuss with stubborn hacks like Napoleon. Life is much better if you just ignore them.