U.S. Should Halt All Junk Mail

October 22, 2001 | Woodstock

[Woodstock]

U.S. Should Halt All Junk Mail (my headline)

In the wake of a massive and devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil on September 11 and country-wide concern about mail tainted with virulent forms of Anthrax, would it not make sense to halt all unsolicited mail sent via the USPS?

And what about Publishers Clearinghouse mailing OxiClean samples in their November sweepstakes kick-off? Are they crazy? I hope they postpone this idea.

Effective immediately, all junk mail should be halted until the FBI, CDC and US postal Inspectors have a better handle on the situation. (And if you asked me, it should stay halted permanently.)

[Fred Mertz]

Maybe we should all stick our heads in the sand and re-emerge in the Spring.

[NOLBRLS]

Thats a great idea! but lets go further and make junkmail illegal.

[spycatcher]

All spam too

[FITZ]

No bills should be sent to the mail at this time, they're scary enough without the anthrax on top of it.

[TopDog2]

But who's to say what is junk and what isn't? After all, one man's junk mail is another man's freedom fighter..OOPS wrong analogy.. ;-)

[gumbo]

Wouldn't this cause a huge loss in revenue to the USPS?

They'd have to make up for it by hugely increasing the price of postage.

Of course, some might think it's worth it, just to be rid of junk mail.

[cynwoody]

And what about Publishers Clearinghouse mailing OxiClean samples in their November sweepstakes kick-off? Are they crazy? I hope they postpone this idea.

Calm down. The OxiClean is only being sent to people who ordered it, according to this news report.

[goodieD]

Why would you say that? Anthrax is a real threat, and junk mail has no good purpose and is a blot on society. All it does is create more trash (not that i'm an envirowhacko but really now....)I think another good idea would be requiring a return address on all mail.

[AgThorn]

Thats a great idea! but lets go further and make junkmail illegal.

Nah, let's combine the issues ...

You can't mail any junk mail without a national ID card! how's that?

[Woodstock]

And all telemarketers too!

[Mo1]

Fine with me .. they can stop those annoying sales calls also ..

[ikka]

Dumb idea.

Better idea would be to load a couple thousand pounds of mail at a time into an airtight hopper, then shake it around a lot and sample the air for anthrax.

[Fred Mertz]

It's like saying ban all boxcutters or ban all commercial jets. At least that's how I took it.

[Arkinsaw]

I really can't stand television commercials, many have been inappropriate during this time of crisis. They also should be stopped. We also need to stop magazines and newspapers as they could be used by terrorists. In fact, anything delivered to our homes should be stopped to avoid delivery of disease. Ryder trucks and airplanes need to be looked at also. Each person should only be allowed to use his car one time to head for the hills and after that they should be carefully burned.

[ken21]

Wouldn't this cause a huge loss in revenue to the USPS?

don't think outloud! it might be confusing to some on this forum.

[Timesink]

All the anthrax was sent by individuals, FIRST-CLASS. And you want to turn around and hurt the innocent junk mailers? Think about it, that's the sort of thing liberals like to do: make innocent, law-abiding citizens' lives harder while doing nothing to actually tackle the problem, but that's okay as long as it makes the liberals LOOK like they're doing something. I don't think we should go down that road.

[GuillermoX]

Why do you think a terrorist is going to try to poison YOU? Are you a pol? In the media? CEO of a large corp? This is all hysteria.

[Sir Percy Hot Spurs]

I agree, ban all junk mail...Use e-mail for everything...Bills, greeting cards dropping a line to relatives, etc...Sir percy Hot Spurs