Originally Posted by
Robert Foster
Just because something is hard to do shouldn't mean people change the goal. IMHO. ]But it was a question that needed to be asked and the result shows how muddy the definition has become.
I think you have an idealized memory of the "good old days" when people had higher standards. It's a variant of what I call the "old man rant" - you know the one: it starts off with "These kids nowadays......!" You've mixed in a bit of the "slippery slope" argument as well. It's all about the decline of mankind.
There is actually no such thing as car-free or drug-free or sugar-free. Those are Platonic concepts like the perfect circle, etc. that exist only in the abstract. In real life it's all about getting a reasonable working definition.
People call themselves drug-free if they avoid ingesting certain drugs - opioids, benzodiazepines, crystal meth, cannabinoids or whatever, but often they smoke cigarettes like crazy and drink coffee and cola out of buckets. However they have adopted a working definition of drug free that tolerates those drugs.
Sugar-free is defined by authorities like the FDA as a sugar content below x% where x is a small number, but greater than zero.
And we define car free as we define it. Some have a stricter definition, some have a looser definition, and through a process of discussion we may reach a consensus, or we may continue to disagree. The forum header is simply one possible definition, not accepted by all.