why are cars and alcohol legal?

Question

i heard a fact once that if alcohol was discovered today, it would be put as an A class drug, it kills millions of people a year, and yet it is legal for an 18 year old to drink.

Cars kill many many people, and if any other form of transport had that many casualities they would be banned/ abandoned!

dont get me wrong, i drink and drive (not at the same time) but i was just wondering, is there a reason that these things are acceptable?

"salt is deadly"- ur a nob. Who has died from salt.

for a start i live in england, secondly yes guns should be banned, absoloutely a ridiculus point... thirdly YOU have never killed anyone in a car, but it is undeniable that people who are awesome drivers and did nothing wrong at all have.

Answer 1

Food kills people, should we banish it ?
Life is a long deadly sickness.
Try to enjoy what you can and accept that death that will come one day. Carpe diem !

You should think about banishing weapons first, their only purpose is to kill...

Answer 2

This question is a lot more complex than you might think, and the answer has nothing to do with safety, but everything to do with politics.

Alcohol is an institution in this country, billions of billions of dollars are exchanged with the production of alcohol. What who wants to be the politician to say "Alcohol is bad, let's ban it." They tried it once and it failed horribly.

Cars are even more political because even if they are the most unsafe kind of transpiration, they are by far the common. Our country would literally shut down if cars were banned. Most foods and goods still travel by some form of automobile, buses polices cars, ambulances and most important, pizza delivery and cable repair, all cars. So they may be unsafe but they are pretty well institutionalized.

Answer 3

They tried getting rid of alcohol. Look up the Temperance Movement. People are too drawn to the drug to respect the law, so it failed. It's just something we live with.

Cars kill people but so does falling down the stairs. We can't make stairs illegal. Guns kill people; are you going to ban guns too.

If you look it up, one of the top killers of adult Americans is heart disease. Are you going to ban McDonalds and red meat?

BTW too much salt can kill people. Sailors lost at sea can die if they try to slake their thirst with salt water instead of fresh. Salt is the reason why the largest bodies of water (the oceans) are unusable for drinking to the millions who live along an ocean.

Personally I think cars harm us in ways other than just death from car accident. They make us lazy. Without cars we wouldn't have this wasteful suburban sprawl. People would value what they could get locally. Right now everything is globalized, cheap as possible, and spread out... and we lose local identity, value of handwork, local identity, and so on. I really respect people like Amish who can live satisfying lives without the addiction to the automobile.

Answer 4

Basically what has happened with alcohol & cars is just similar to what was the case with cigarettes.

With cigarettes what happened was that when it was first made, it was something new & exciting, people wanted to try it out (to be daring or because it looked cool at the time, whoever made cigarettes found a way to make a quick buck & exploited it.

Later they found out all the side-effects cigarettes had (lung disease etc), through research, & them they demonised it.

They same thing has happened with cars & alcohol.
Only difference between cigarettes & cars/alcohol is that cigarettes can directly kill people around you (passive smoking) without an active decision from you.
Whereas with cars & alcohol, an active decision (or lack of decision) has to be made in order for a death to happen.

Also there is the implication of tax, a LOT of the government's revenue for their budget comes from sin tax (for alcohol), car tax, road tax etc.
It would be difficult for them to ban both because they would lose a LOT of revenue, it would be like cutting their own arm off.

Also there is the other fact that, with alcohol, it is a release of stress for people & a way to lose themselves & forget their problems for sometime (you must know what that feels like).

With cars, there is on important fact that stops it from being banned-TRANSPORT.

It helps you get around quickly, it is also freedom for people with disabilities it that they can get around without help.

It is transport not only for you, it is transport for the emergency servcies as well. It is a fast way of responding to an emergency & reaching there quickly, can you imagine how long it would take to respond to an emergency by foot, bicycle or worse tube?

One more point about alcohol, even if they did class alcohol as a class A drug, that would not stop people from drinking, like how it did not stop millions of people taking CURRENT illegal drugs.

One more thing about cars, the difference between cars & other forms of transport, say public transport, is that cars are used & maintained by individuals, it is their responsibility.
Public transport is maintained by the companies/government, if it killed many people it would damage their image, companies would lose money over it & governments could be voted out of office because it, you would not.

Answer 5

OK genius you are thinking on two different planes.
I have been driving 30+ years and I have not killed myself. I have not killed anyone else either.

I would like to add that most states like the one I live in drinking is 21. That way 3 years after you are an adult if you are stupid enough (still) go ahead and drink yourself to death. Your choice. Now if you want to add why not legalize drugs, because they hit you fast and kill slowly where alcohol allows you to be functional somewhat then eats the liver. And a bad enough car accident will snuff you right out.....

Answer 6

How would alcohol be considered a class A drug? Alcohol has many health benefits if drunk in moderation, check out the French paradox. Cars don't kill but the drivers, if we went on feeble arguments like this we would ban everything.... ban knifes thousand die each year from stabbings.....

Answer 7

Salt is deadly; if you eat enough of it, you will die.

Just about ANYTHING when misused is dangerous. We have come to believe that everything dangerous must be removed from our lives, and that is just impractical. When approving something, law makers make a choice - does the good outweigh the harm?

Answer 8

The only reason they are not banned is TAX

If they were banned then the goverment would have to raise the taxes from your wage packet :(

Answer 9

OK why can our men and women go to Iraq and die at18 but they cant drink till 21 we just have stupid laws written eions ago we need new laws written but no one has back bone to start

Answer 10

tax as with cigarettes the government simply earn too much many from cars and alcohol