CIGARETES AND WHISKEY AND WILD, WILD DRIVERS
Recently we have targeted teenage health by legislating a substantial tax increase on cigarettes, hoping the high cost will deter young people from becoming smokers. The law’s intent has been deliberately selective, pointed at a single age group, and it is only a matter of time before young people object to this discrimination and erosion of their civil rights by taking all us old people to court in a class action. Considering the prevalence of expensive hard drug use among teenagers, even pre-teens, in a market worth billions of dollars, the relatively slight rise in tobacco products costs is not likely to be much of a deterrent.
We old folks are pleased to feel that we have "done something" toward saving the lives of teenyboppers! Nothing beats a clear (or at least dozing) conscience!
Teenagers don’t die from smoking...at least not yet. It takes a while. That comes later, during the "regretful years". Most youngsters who depart this earth do it while in transit through an automobile windshield.
Monday morning quarterbacking TV news anchors report just about every weekend how some sixteen year old driver manages to kill a few peer passengers by driving off the road at high speed, coming to an abrupt stop against some deadly immovable object, perhaps a deceptively harmless tree, lurking in waiting way out in middle of some otherwise empty field. Should we consider new legislation needed to ban immovable object from within driving distance of any road or highway? If we can’t ban them, then how about surrounded each dangerous object with those yellow plastic crash barrels full of water or sand or sawdust? An occasional social worker camped out on site too? Or failing that a Grief Counselor.
We should at the same time get rid of "enablers" which encourage inexperienced teens to reckless and fatal conduct:
1. Make "not to try this at home" disclaimers full screen size in motion picture and television car chases in which only the cars are hurt. The cars shown should be displayed crumpled or upside down with a mix of anti-freeze with stunt driver blood running into the gutters.
2. Prohibit car manufacturers from producing "sexy" TV ads in which their product is universally shown being operated at excessive speed, faking (by tilted camera) taking outside banked corners at incredible speed, driving at excessive speeds on wet leaf slickened roads, showing their cars in long slow motion airborne leaps, running at high speeds offroad in mountains and deserts, screeching to a stop in sudden button-hook turns, during which a willowy blonde passenger who should be wearing a jogging bra is instead in an extremely low cut dress and smiling promises, promises, and still more promises seductively at the driver.
3. Prohibit teenagers from wearing seat belts which give them a false sense of security. Instead teenagers in Driver’s Ed classes should be required to leap off the roof of the school with only a chest and lap belt attached to a steel cable, bungee jumping without the bungee, cables just short enough to stop them one foot short off the ground (but with unrestrained kneecaps).
4. Cancel all teenage automobile collision insurance coverage so that expensive crashes are the financial responsibility of the driver and family alone, not spread among more mature and cautious drivers. Why should we buy the kid a new $18,000 car in order to have "it" repeat the disaster. Insurance can be a paid in full in advance subsidy for idiocy.
5. Close, plow up and plant trees in all high school parking lots. Let everyone, teachers et al, ride the mass transit school busses we have been supporting, filling the half empty seats. Maybe install a few bike racks.
6. Develop anti-hormone drugs for teens which will help sublimate the production of excessive testosterone and estrogen. Home made transdermal patches laced with saltpeter? Boost this treatment with micro-encapsulated depressants which are released as an aerosol whenever the car’s sound system exceeds 100 decibels. (Statistically drivers who kill themselves in single car off road accidents have more bad skin than gray hairs.) Develop an ignition system which prevents the engine from starting if the car’s sophisticated chemical sensing system detects semen, beer or Clearasil.
7. Lower the draft age from 18 to 12, a six year hitch, during which teens could challenge each other in armored personnel carriers fitted out with immense rubber bumpers.
8. One car per family, or less.
9. Narrow the turnpike.
10. No more conjugal visiting in the back seat.
"Do as I say, not as I advertise".
Driver's Ed happens many places beside the classroom.