Reply #78: oh dear, pardon me

[iverglas]

I should really have checked with ebay. Mea culpa.

The baby walkers have been banned in Canada; there appears to be only a voluntary recall in the US.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/media/releases/2004/2004_15.htm
(It's a govt press release; no copyright issues.)

This prohibition also applies to the sale of baby walkers as second-hand items and so they may not be sold at flea markets or garage sales. Persons who already have baby walkers are advised to permanently dismantle and dispose of them.

... Typically, incidents linked to baby walkers involve head injuries that result from falls down stairs. However, other injuries occur when the child in the baby walker is able to reach dangerous objects that are otherwise inaccessible.

This prohibition has been implemented through an amendment to Part I of Schedule I to Hazardous Products Act, as published in Part II of the Canada Gazette.

Now, I think that the baby walkers will make a fine analogy for us in future.

"It is the safety of our children that is of the most vital importance and today I am pleased to announce that Canada is the first country in the world to ban the sale of these products. I would also like to commend those businesses who complied with a voluntary ban in the past."

See?? We're thinking of the children!

I'll now hear argument for the case that a ban on the sale of baby walkers is an unjustifiable interference with the exercise of some right or other.

Due to safety concerns, a voluntary retail industry ban on these products had been in place since 1989. However, in recent years, more and more baby walkers have found their way onto the Canadian market and as a result, injuries to children continue to occur.

Look! An incipient black market! Surely now that there is an actual ban, business can be expected to pick up.


Wasn't someone mailing <anthrax> all over the place a while back? I don't know if I'd call it a huge black market. I doubt demand for anthrax is particularly high.

Gosh. Doesn't that kinda contradict your It doesn't really matter what you're prohibiting. Prohibition is prohibition.??

To put it another way ... well, I've pretty much already put it this way, but of course you haven't actually bothered to respond ... where there is justification for prohibiting/regulating an activity, the onus is really on the party alleging that the prohibition/regulation will exacerbate rather than reduce the harm that is sought to be remedied and that the prohibition/regulation could, prima facie, be expected to effectively remedy.

A ban on possession of anthrax (more accurately, of course, extremely tight regulation of the possession of anthrax) seems to work relatively well. We'll have to wait and see how the ban on the sale of baby walkers in Canada works out.

Then there's the ban on the sale of cars that are not equipped with, oh, seatbelts and headlights ... the ban on the sale of leaded paint ... the ban on the sale of aerosol products containing CFCs ... just so many bans on so many things. And so many black markets in them?


Call it what you like War on Drugs War on Some Drugs War on Some Drug Users War on Certain Classes of Drug Users. It's all the same to me and the prohibition analogy still holds quite well.

Yeah, it's all the same. The fact that the victims of the "war" happen to belong to a particular class of people, and that the class of people in question are also subject to all sorts of other oppressive measures, is just some big coincidence.

Back when right-wing RC governments in Quebec were busy outlawing Jehovah's Witness activities (distributing literature on the public sidewalks) on the pretext of regulating roads and highways, their motives were pretty transparent. They weren't regulating roads and highways: they were persecuting JoHos. The "war on drugs" may be a tiny bit more subtle, but it doesn't take a microscope to see what its real purpose is. And it ain't to protect individuals or the public from the nefarious effects of drug addiction.

So ... no fucking wonder it hasn't achieved that objective. It was never meant to.

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