The law of unintended consequences is a fact of life in West Virginia. Our Democratic leadership has unleashed this draconian condition time and time again because they rarely think through the effects of the laws that they create. Here is one example from several years ago. Sweeping anti-drug laws remove the prerogatives of school principals to deal with their own students, resulting in children expelled from school for illegally passing a Halls cough drop.
This is how it all starts. The people come to their legislators with a problem, such as poor attendance and dropout rates in West Virginia schools. Now everyone wants to increase school attendance and keep kids in school until they graduate. That point is hard to dispute. The law says that kids can opt out of school after age sixteen, so what leverage do we have to keep these kids on track to graduation? The answer is a state driver's license. Licenses are privileges, not natural, or constitutional rights (although most liberals rate it above the right to use a gun to protect your family.) The state Legislature wants the dropout rate to improve so driver's licenses are revoked on minors that are not attending school.
Terrific! Watch the school attendance rate rise and we feel much better about ourselves. We used the power of government to create positive social change.
But we forgot something. We forgot to think it through. We forgot about the exceptions to our scenario of lazy kids just ducking school to play video games. Some sixteen and seventeen year olds are not in school for a good reason. They have to work to help put food on the table. Some have children of their own. In Clark Barnes' district one minor mother has a child with a severe birth defect. The defect is so severe it requires constant monitoring. The mother made the right decision and put her child first. The law said that she could not have a driver's license, but she sometimes has to rush her child to the hospital from her rural home.
When a concerned citizen brought this to Senator Barnes' attention, he immediately went to work and got the Senate to amend the law. Luckily he acted in time. However what if the child had a severe problem before he acted?
We should all thank the humanitarianism of Senator Barnes because he did work to change a fairly popular law. However the lesson here is that we need to think very carefully before using the power of government to adjust the non criminal behavior of individuals. This usually does too much damage to warrant the assumed good.
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