For my final paper, I would like to address the "bath salts" epidemic that seems to be sweeping the nation. Many people here at Clemson have not even heard of this new, so-called legal crack. It is sold under many different titles, all aimed at calling it something else to make it legal. Right now the federal government has put a Schedule 1 substance control on the "bath salts" while the long term effects of these drugs are studied. The short term effects included paranoia, rapid heart beat, and the like. The amount of people overdosing on the so called bath salts is rising at an alarming rate and that is why the government has decided to control the substance for a year to determine whether or not they should be made permanently illegal. As with many drugs, there are people who support the ban and those who do not. The media firestorm surrounding these drugs has only contributed to the confusion of what these " bath salts" actually contain. For my final paper, I want to look at how the media portrayal has affected the laws that have come about and if not allowing these drugs to be sold freely is unethical.
The case of Dudley and Stephens seems to fall under at least one of Bentham's cases for why punishment should not be inflicted. The fact that the circumstances surrounding the incident for which Dudley and Stephens were punished are extremely rare and not likely to ever occur again would point to the idea that there is no mischief to prevent. Just because something happens once and has unforeseen results, would seem to make the punishment groundless. Not many people are going to willingly kill someone and eat them. In fact the idea would probably disgust most people, even in the time period Dudley and Stephens lived in. That then points to another one of Bentham's points, the idea that punishment should be avoided if it is needless. People in society were not going to just start going around and killing people for food on a daily bases because of the ruling on this case. The mischief that occurred when the men were lost at sea will not happen on the mainland because it is not necessary to eat people to survive. Therefore ceasing the mischief before it begins, which means Dudley and Stephens would not need to be punished to set an example, making the punishment needless. All in all, the punishment of Dudley and Stephens can be argued either way. Yes, they killed someone, but they did it to survive. The extenuating circumstances in this case allow for one to see that maybe they shouldn't have been punished at all since the likelihood of the exact same thing happening again is so low, making it a one time thing. If you just look at the case through Bentham's eyes, the punishment of Dudley and Stephens was unnecessary.
I think that the criteria for Bentham's case for an unmeet punishment is a good way to think about punishment. The ideas all are related to the precedent that may or may not need to be set by a certain case. They focus on the ideas that punishment is not always needed and weigh the cost that certain punishments would have if they were inflicted. The way that Bentham suggest punishment be measured, while maybe not in proportion to the crime, takes more than just the crime into account. This way, the an eye for an eye idea can be taken off the table as a way to punish people and the effects of the punishment can be looked at.
No comments:
Post a Comment