7 ms·

Having things unnecessarily banned is a trade off of enforcing regulations effectively. Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold.

Having things unnecessarily banned is a trade off of enforcing regulations effectively. Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. The FDA could do better but you’ll never fix that problem unless you don’t allow the FDA to enforce regulations.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. No they don't. If a product has a label that says "this product is considered unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration" and explains why and you buy it anyway, you got what you paid for.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Unfortunately all this would result in is everything being labeled unsafe. See California and cancer.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Label the things unsafe that are currently banned. Not everything is currently banned, is it?
    - VBprogrammer 3y ago
      I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect. Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of caution - better to claim it's potentially unsafe than pay the claims later. Or economics - why pay more for a safe sweetener when you can use the cheap and cheerful one and just label it unsafe.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them. California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their labeling rules are stupid. If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned. This would only be a problem if you would otherwise have banned lots of things people would still want to buy given a free and informed choice, in which case actually banning them is even worse. We didn't ban cigarettes, we informed people of the risk: https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco... And that's one of the most addictive products known. Around the same percentage of adults smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs. So what good is the ban?
        ben_w 3y ago
        > But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs. For me vegetarian is a choice rather than mandatory, but if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs. They made a product and told you what was in it. You're not required to read the ingredients first but you have the opportunity to. Are you proposing that we ban beef gelatin? > if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known. But what are you even suggesting here? That you can't make a product with nuts if someone might not expect it, even if you labeled it?
RobotToaster 3y ago
> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. Why? If someone buys deadly nightshade, and gets deadly nightshade, why should the government care?
- Eji1700 3y ago
  Basically for the same reasons they don't let you buy other toxins/dangerous materials with almost no alternative use?
- diob 3y ago
  I mean, can't you take this to the extreme and see why it is a bad point of view. Anything is sell-able as long as we slap a warning label on it. That seems like a recipe for disaster, right? We sold a highly radioactive substance to Jim, and endanger more than Jim. Consequences are often far beyond the individual, and I think folks believe they're too smart to get caught in the fallout of someone else's decisions. Oops, Karen from HR brought in deadly nightshade muffins to share ("small amounts are said to be good for the liver, I heard it on my favorite podcast!"). There's a middle ground here, where if it's dangerous enough, we don't allow it to be sold. It's not one way or the other. That's dangerous thinking in and of itself.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > We sold a highly radioactive substance to Jim, and endanger more than Jim. Gasoline + air is a high explosive. Most fluids at a hardware store are poisonous and some of them taste sweet. The MSDS for the things under your sink will tell you all the ways they can destroy you. You can have hydrofluoric acid send to your front door. It can kill someone if you spill it on them, but it also has legitimate uses and is such a simple compound that there is no point in prohibiting it because anyone can make it themselves. Dangerous things are widely available and everywhere and it's rarely a problem. > Oops, Karen from HR brought in deadly nightshade muffins to share ("small amounts are said to be good for the liver, I heard it on my favorite podcast!"). https://www.amazon.com/Belladonna-Seeds-Atropa-belladonna-Flower/dp/B07CRXCV3D/ https://www.amazon.com/Belladonna-Seeds-Atropa-belladonna-Fl... > There's a middle ground here, where if it's dangerous enough, we don't allow it to be sold. Many of the things all around us are even more dangerous than the things that have been banned. If you ask someone to choose a central example of things they think should be banned, they'll often start with military explosives like C-4. Military explosives are designed to be stable. You have to use a blasting cap to set them off because the last thing you want is unintentional detonation. If you fill your house with propane or natural gas, the slightest spark from anything will vaporize the entire building and everyone inside. Natural gas is dramatically more dangerous than C-4. But C-4 is scarier because Hollywood shows it being used in a different context, and that's how politics decides what's banned. And once you get into the banning things business (because you have to ban C-4, don't you?), people relentlessly want to add more things to the list. Which doesn't happen in any more principled a way.
psychlops 3y ago
"A business should only be permitted to exist if the government allows it." What could go wrong?
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  That’s a bit of a stretch. You’re not allowed to start a business selling cocaine. You’re not allow to start an airline without adhering to regulations. You’re not allow to sell certain unapproved pharmaceuticals or medical devices. This is a relatively narrow scope.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Pharmaceuticals and medical devices have life and death implications. But prohibiting a life-saving product is just as deadly as allowing an unsafe one, and there are existing mechanisms that punish the sellers of dangerous products (it comes out and they lose their customers and get sued). This comes from a facet of human psychology: If you do something and people die then you're a murderer, but if you do nothing and people die you're allowed to shrug and go home. This may be a reasonable heuristic when deciding whether you should do something but it isn't when deciding whether to prevent someone else from doing something.
  - davidthewatson 3y ago
    The problem is that some medical devices are approved despite their being demonstrably deadly as they are designed, manufactured, shipped, and used without sufficient oversight by the governing body of apologists put in place to oversee them. This pattern has only worsened since therac 25.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    I didn't make a judgement, was just pointing out the slippery slope of your argument. If you place someone in charge of allowing things to come to market, particularly those in the role of safety, their safest option will always be to say no.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
>>>> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. That's an odd take. Where do these uncorruptible angels live ? Who are they? Who put them there? Because we all know you are not corruptible, its always the other guy, right? What about by rights , by the way ?
LoganDark 3y ago
> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. Plenty of substances are risky, but can be worth the risk. For example, psychedelics, for the wrong person or in the wrong situation, can cause psychotic episodes or lasting trauma, but psychedelic therapy has already been legalized in at least 1 US state, because it can also be extremely helpful. I'm still not able to buy it and take it home (at least legally), but in my honest opinion, I should be.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. No they don't. If a product has a label that says "this product is considered unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration" and explains why and you buy it anyway, you got what you paid for.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
Unfortunately all this would result in is everything being labeled unsafe. See California and cancer.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Label the things unsafe that are currently banned. Not everything is currently banned, is it?
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect. Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of caution - better to claim it's potentially unsafe than pay the claims later. Or economics - why pay more for a safe sweetener when you can use the cheap and cheerful one and just label it unsafe.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them. California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their labeling rules are stupid. If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned. This would only be a problem if you would otherwise have banned lots of things people would still want to buy given a free and informed choice, in which case actually banning them is even worse. We didn't ban cigarettes, we informed people of the risk: https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco... And that's one of the most addictive products known. Around the same percentage of adults smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs. So what good is the ban?
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs. For me vegetarian is a choice rather than mandatory, but if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs. They made a product and told you what was in it. You're not required to read the ingredients first but you have the opportunity to. Are you proposing that we ban beef gelatin? > if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known. But what are you even suggesting here? That you can't make a product with nuts if someone might not expect it, even if you labeled it?

RobotToaster 3y ago

> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. Why? If someone buys deadly nightshade, and gets deadly nightshade, why should the government care?

Eji1700 3y ago
Basically for the same reasons they don't let you buy other toxins/dangerous materials with almost no alternative use?
diob 3y ago
I mean, can't you take this to the extreme and see why it is a bad point of view. Anything is sell-able as long as we slap a warning label on it. That seems like a recipe for disaster, right? We sold a highly radioactive substance to Jim, and endanger more than Jim. Consequences are often far beyond the individual, and I think folks believe they're too smart to get caught in the fallout of someone else's decisions. Oops, Karen from HR brought in deadly nightshade muffins to share ("small amounts are said to be good for the liver, I heard it on my favorite podcast!"). There's a middle ground here, where if it's dangerous enough, we don't allow it to be sold. It's not one way or the other. That's dangerous thinking in and of itself.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > We sold a highly radioactive substance to Jim, and endanger more than Jim. Gasoline + air is a high explosive. Most fluids at a hardware store are poisonous and some of them taste sweet. The MSDS for the things under your sink will tell you all the ways they can destroy you. You can have hydrofluoric acid send to your front door. It can kill someone if you spill it on them, but it also has legitimate uses and is such a simple compound that there is no point in prohibiting it because anyone can make it themselves. Dangerous things are widely available and everywhere and it's rarely a problem. > Oops, Karen from HR brought in deadly nightshade muffins to share ("small amounts are said to be good for the liver, I heard it on my favorite podcast!"). https://www.amazon.com/Belladonna-Seeds-Atropa-belladonna-Flower/dp/B07CRXCV3D/ https://www.amazon.com/Belladonna-Seeds-Atropa-belladonna-Fl... > There's a middle ground here, where if it's dangerous enough, we don't allow it to be sold. Many of the things all around us are even more dangerous than the things that have been banned. If you ask someone to choose a central example of things they think should be banned, they'll often start with military explosives like C-4. Military explosives are designed to be stable. You have to use a blasting cap to set them off because the last thing you want is unintentional detonation. If you fill your house with propane or natural gas, the slightest spark from anything will vaporize the entire building and everyone inside. Natural gas is dramatically more dangerous than C-4. But C-4 is scarier because Hollywood shows it being used in a different context, and that's how politics decides what's banned. And once you get into the banning things business (because you have to ban C-4, don't you?), people relentlessly want to add more things to the list. Which doesn't happen in any more principled a way.

psychlops 3y ago

"A business should only be permitted to exist if the government allows it." What could go wrong?

kayodelycaon 3y ago
That’s a bit of a stretch. You’re not allowed to start a business selling cocaine. You’re not allow to start an airline without adhering to regulations. You’re not allow to sell certain unapproved pharmaceuticals or medical devices. This is a relatively narrow scope.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Pharmaceuticals and medical devices have life and death implications. But prohibiting a life-saving product is just as deadly as allowing an unsafe one, and there are existing mechanisms that punish the sellers of dangerous products (it comes out and they lose their customers and get sued). This comes from a facet of human psychology: If you do something and people die then you're a murderer, but if you do nothing and people die you're allowed to shrug and go home. This may be a reasonable heuristic when deciding whether you should do something but it isn't when deciding whether to prevent someone else from doing something.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  The problem is that some medical devices are approved despite their being demonstrably deadly as they are designed, manufactured, shipped, and used without sufficient oversight by the governing body of apologists put in place to oversee them. This pattern has only worsened since therac 25.
- psychlops 3y ago
  I didn't make a judgement, was just pointing out the slippery slope of your argument. If you place someone in charge of allowing things to come to market, particularly those in the role of safety, their safest option will always be to say no.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

>>>> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. That's an odd take. Where do these uncorruptible angels live ? Who are they? Who put them there? Because we all know you are not corruptible, its always the other guy, right? What about by rights , by the way ?

LoganDark 3y ago

> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. Plenty of substances are risky, but can be worth the risk. For example, psychedelics, for the wrong person or in the wrong situation, can cause psychotic episodes or lasting trauma, but psychedelic therapy has already been legalized in at least 1 US state, because it can also be extremely helpful. I'm still not able to buy it and take it home (at least legally), but in my honest opinion, I should be.