This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Smoking and the Law.

Post by Sinespe

It means they're engaging in risky behavior statistically linked to shorter lives. If that equates to suicide then so does everything from drinking to boxing to skydiving to riding a motorcycle. Plus add in that smoking laws are not generally driven by the notion of the personal risk involved (if we thought that way then we'd get sensible and treat tobacco as a narcotic). It's a false comparison from top to bottom.

It equates to euthanasia in the sense that they have the right to make that choice if they are of sound mind. That is what I mean: I am not satisfied that I could justify the relaxation of laws over one choice while banging the table to completely ban another choice, when enough precautions have been (in the case of euthanasia, could be) practicably taken in both cases to ensure minimal risk to others.

I do still shudder whenever I see mothers lighting up a cigarette when they are pushing a pram, however.

Post by buzz3070

how smoking is controlled in a private setting should be left up to the owner of said private property and how it is controlled in a public setting should be left up to the people/local/regional government.

Post by fenomas

It means they're engaging in risky behavior statistically linked to shorter lives. If that equates to suicide then so does everything from drinking to boxing to skydiving to riding a motorcycle. Plus add in that smoking laws are not generally driven by the notion of the personal risk involved (if we thought that way then we'd get sensible and treat tobacco as a narcotic). It's a false comparison from top to bottom.

It equates to euthanasia in the sense that they have the right to make that choice if they are of sound mind. That is what I mean: I am not satisfied that I could justify the relaxation of laws over one choice while banging the table to completely ban another choice, when enough precautions have been (in the case of euthanasia, could be) practicably taken in both cases to ensure minimal risk to others.

I know what you meant, but the fact is that we don't infer an obligation to legislate things similarly just because they are connected by a vague notion of voluntary risk. Further, as has already been noted smoking bans have more to do with the risk to others than to oneself, and euthanasia laws generally do not concern suicide at all but the act of assisting it.

Post by Sinespe

Post by fenomas

I know what you meant, but the fact is that we don't infer an obligation to legislate things similarly just because they are connected by a vague notion of voluntary risk

But they are connected by a stronger notion of personal choice.

As are skydiving and motorcycles in the rain and seat belts and promiscuous sex and a hundred other things, as I said already. I'm a guy who considers analogizing an art, and the worst analogy is the one that's so broad it includes everything.

Post by Sinespe

As are skydiving and motorcycles in the rain and seat belts and promiscuous sex and a hundred other things, as I said already. I'm a guy who considers analogizing an art, and the worst analogy is the one that's so broad it includes everything.

And none of those things are outlawed, because they don't (necessarily) cause harm to other people. I'm not including everything -- I'm supporting the un-demonisation of things which don't cause harm to other people -- and euthanasia falls within that category.

Let me put it another way -- in a way in which I tried to hint at you engaging with in a previous post.
The same person makes these two statements:

A: "Smoking should be outright banned; people should not have the choice of this recreational, but potentially dangerous, drug."
B: "People should have the right to choose to have their life terminated by loved ones or medical practitioners in certain regulated and reasonable circumstances."

In what way is it not hypocritical in the one instance to legislate against personal choice and in the other instance to legislate in its favour?

Post by fenomas

Post by Jubilee

Post by MrSCH

Post by Jubilee

This is going to sound horrible.

So because one person's asthma is terrible, the other 99.9999% of the population should stop doing things which harm you?

We should all stop driving cars too because of that one person who has brittle bone disease, just in case, you know?

And we should block out the sun, I once heard there was a person who couldn't tolerate it.

Should we not stop slavery because one group of people were suffering from it? At what point do you draw the line, or as the drunk Ron Paul supporter so besottedly put it, "‎What's the legal limit of hurting somebody?"

Post by MrSCH

Slavery was a blatant abuse of human rights forced by few onto many, for personal gain.

However, stopping many from experiencing their human rights because of few is equally wrong.

Post by Jubilee

Slavery was a blatant abuse of human rights forced by few onto many, for personal gain.

However, stopping many from experiencing their human rights because of few is equally wrong.

Does not every person have the right to not have their well being put at risk by others?

Post by MrSCH

Then why do we put up with cars on the road?

Or is it ok to put health at risk if you benefit from it personally?

Post by Jubilee

Then why do we put up with cars on the road?

Or is it ok to put health at risk if you benefit from it personally?

Cars are heavily regulated, if you added up every scrape with the law average people get into I would not be surprised if traffic violations are first by far. So that analogy would demand strict regulations for smoking too, no?

Post by MrSCH

Don't think so.

the only analogy I was making is that every single car that drives past you is in some way endangering your health (unless you enjoy carbon monoxide!)

Therefore why do the people who complain about smoking in the street not complain about this too?

I would say the car was doing worse for Funden's health than the smoker. It's rare the smoker blows it right down your throat, so we're talking the small amount from the burning or some carried on the breeze. Add up every car which drives past you and it's probably worse.

Post by fenomas

I would say the car was doing worse for Funden's health than the smoker. It's rare the smoker blows it right down your throat, so we're talking the small amount from the burning or some carried on the breeze. Add up every car which drives past you and it's probably worse.

But surely you see you're glossing over a lot. There are other reasons to ban smoking besides to protect the odd asthmatic, and t's not as if cars are a random leisure activity we could just do away with if we didn't enjoy the emissions so much..

Post by fenomas

Outside of a certain hard-core flavor of libertarianism it's inane to suggest a person cannot without hypocrisy think some should be legal and others shouldn't.
I believe his point is exactly that a person cannot do that without hypocrisy. You calling his argument inane isn't a very positive response.

I didn't mean it as an insult, it's just a silly premise. To suggest it's necessarily hypocritical for someone to believe, say, boxing should be legal but heroin shouldn't, is essentially to suggest that most everyone is hypocritical - without even considering their motivations for the belief in question.

Post by MrSCH

Well, we managed for over a million years without them, something tells me it's not exactly impossible ;)

Post by fenomas

Well, we managed for over a million years without them, something tells me it's not exactly impossible ;)

That's a pretty broad use of the word "manage", but if you're going to be glib then you can have a lecture. :P Before the car came along the world's largest cities were essentially on the brink of ecological crisis, from horses. At the turn of the century New York alone was producing 2.5 million pounds of horse manure every day, mostly left in the streets where it dried into a fine powder that got into everyone's lungs, spread typhus and cholera, caused diarrhea that tended to kill children, and bred legions of flies that spread more disease. Plus you had a couple of dozen horses dying each day, which were often left in the street to putrefy because it made them easier to dispose of. Not such a messy thing, the car, given the alternatives.

Post by Sinespe

I'm supporting the un-demonisation of things which don't cause harm to other people -- and euthanasia falls within that category.

I'm aware of that, and as I've already told you the only tiny problem is that cigarettes don't fall into that category (at least by the reasoning of legislation against them) and neither does euthanasia (laws concerning which still pertain to the assisting, not the dying).

Smoking definitely does fall into that legislation when you take into account the fact that there is already enough* legislation against smoking as pertains to the issue of causing harm to other people. At least, there is in my country, where it is illegal indoors in every instance apart from in people's homes. It has gotten to the point where the pro-smoking lobby doesn't any more argue that there are no health risks -- it instead argues that the people who are still smoking are doing so in spite of and in full knowledge of the risks.

*Well, to be fair, this is not entirely true: an argument can be made for tightening up the law to prevent anyone smoking around their own children -- which, as I have said, makes my skin crawl to see, and so I would support such a bill -- because children have very little autonomy over where they live or where they go, and very little knowledge that tells them that they should avoid second-hand smoke. As it pertains to adults, however -- I know I'm able to avoid smokers very easily, so they certainly don't bother me.

Laws and ethics are not painted in such absurdly broad strokes. If we take your statement A, and change the word "drug" to "thing", then it could be made about smoking, skydiving, driving without seat belts, experimenting with dangerous chemicals, body piercing, heroin, most sports, etc. Some of those things are legal and some aren't. Outside of a certain hard-core flavor of libertarianism it's inane to suggest a person cannot without hypocrisy think some should be legal and others shouldn't.

(And that's setting aside the straw-man aspect of your question - you've chosen two rationales you think contradict, but people can support smoking bans for a variety of other reasons which may have nothing to do with personal risk at all.)

You definitely cannot harm anyone but yourself skydiving, unless you are tandem jumping -- and that, as with full contact sport, is fine, because all participants equally know the risks to themselves and know the risks from the other people involved. It is regulated.

Travelling in a car, in any of the seats, without a seatbelt on, can definitely harm other people in the event of an accident.

In the case of all non-lethal drugs that give some kind of high (And by "Non-lethal" I mean anything which, properly produced and taken within a pharmacologically-tested "Safe dose", does not kill you), I support full legalisation and regulation. This removes all criminal elements from the system, and would actually allow for proper testing so that those things I list in parentheses could actually be determined, the same as we understand legal limits for drink-driving. The present system of arbitrarily determining some substances illegal and others legal is clearly ridiculous, especially when we have legal drugs that do more harm than illegal ones.

And, yes, most people are hypocritical. Not through bloody-mindedness, but through absent-mindedness. People go through life with preconceptions and received wisdom that they pick up from half-thoughts, the reception of misinformation and the opinions of political and media bias. If they actually stopped to think about what they thought, they would come up with a philosophy that was not inconsistent.

Smoking and the Law.

Post Reply