John Stossel doesn't like lawyers. Or the drug war. Or the Food and Drug Administration.
In fact, Stossel doesn't like government organizations at all. The 20/20 anchor and author detailed the case against government Wednesday night in Page Auditorium to an audience of just under 400. Stossel suggested that government regulation of any kind--including monitoring of business, advertising and even the prescription drug industry--creates at least as many problems as it solves.
"When government protects us from bad things, they protect us from good things too," he said. He argued that prescription drugs should not be regulated and that the regulation process is so slow that it causes more deaths than it prevents.
He also came out in favor of legalizing drugs that are currently illegal, saying the government's regulation of drugs creates crime, corrupts law enforcement officials, deters people from "honest work" and creates a class of gangs "wealthy enough to buy nuclear weapons." "Nicotine is about as addictive as cocaine, but no one's knocking over 7-11s to get Marlboros," he said.
The reporter who made his name over the past two decades reporting what he himself calls "scare stories" also attacked the media for sensationalist journalism that creates a culture of fear in the United States.
He also chastised the audience for playing into America's litigious culture, explaining that lawyers have ruined safety labels by making them too numerous. He added that they have also degraded society by hurting hospitals, doctors and vaccine companies with lawsuits.
"You've got the brightest kids--even here at Duke--not going into science, engineering, physics. They're going to law school," Stossel said. "That doesn't make the country any richer!"
He also involved the audience, doing "ambush interviews" and showing off his white sneakers as he asked students for products they thought were dangerous. "When did we become such wimps in this free country?" he asked.
Stossel, a 19-time Emmy award winner, came to campus as the first of the Major Speaker Series put on by the Duke University Union, which seeks to bring a diverse group of speakers to campus.
"I knew about this organization that lists speakers and through them I found out about John Stossel," sophomore John Korman, chair of the Major Speakers committee, said. "I thought, yeah buddy, we're going for the libertarian."
Students in attendance said they felt "cool" for seeing the television star in person.
"I used to watch John Stossel on 20/20," said freshman Alexandria Lemus. "I can't wait to meet him and get his autograph."
However, some students said Stossel's logic fell short. "A lot of what he said involved specific cases and he left out a lot of counterarguments," sophomore Jason Shapiro said. "It was very one-sided but that one side was good."
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