Discussion
Societies have tended to have an ambivalent attitude toward public intoxication. In some eras, alcohol consumption or drug-taking have formed the basis of religious or other socially approved ceremonies and festivals. In other eras of a more puritanical nature, intoxication has been stigmatized as a sign of human weakness, of immorality, or as a sin. This lack of consistency reflects different attitudes and cultural standards of public behavior and propriety. Alcohol and other drugs may affect the inhibitions that help to keep socialized individuals from breaking the prevailing social taboos which may or may not have been expressly criminalized. In more modern times and depending on the nature of the crime, the potential effectiveness of the defense will sometimes hinge on whether the defendant's intoxication was voluntary or involuntary. Hence, the potential defense would be denied defendants who had voluntarily disabled themselves by knowingly consuming the relevant liquids or substances, while allowing a defense to those who had unknowingly consumed them.
Read more about this topic: Intoxication Defense
Famous quotes containing the word discussion:
“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“My companion and I, having a minute’s discussion on some point of ancient history, were amused by the attitude which the Indian, who could not tell what we were talking about, assumed. He constituted himself umpire, and, judging by our air and gesture, he very seriously remarked from time to time, “you beat,” or “he beat.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)