mood: couphy
music: Orbital – Are We Here?
Can we, as a society, please come to a few agreements about the subject of smoking?
1)If you do it, you really should stop. There are many methods to help you.
2) Smoking indoors is unacceptable. You really need to stop doing this, because it makes most, if not all, of the non-smokers miserable.
3) Cigars are the worst.
Seriously, it’s the 21st century. Consider this: if you were sitting in a restaurant and I was sitting next to, and suddenly decided to spray a white powder all over my food, and some drifted over onto your food, you’d probably want to know what it was.
“Oh, just a inert medium with some arsenic, tar, nicotine, and a dash of benzene. It hasn’t been proven that the concentrations are dangerous, and it enhances my enjoyment of my meal.” I’d reply. I leave the ensuing legal chaos to your imagination.
Yet allowing people to smoke in food service establishments, or indoors at all is allowing the same thing. Just today I was seated in the corner of a hotel in Reno (which is also a casino, which I guess anti-smoking laws don’t apply to) enjoying getting some work done on my laptop when I noticed a burning in my throat. I looked over and – sure enough – a guy and his wife had plopped themselves down thirty feet away and began sucking on death sticks. He, a cigar; she, a cigarette. I packed up my things and moved on. The entire smoking section of the casino to inhale deadly toxins in, and they had to come invade my nice, quiet, relatively carcinogen-free oxygen.
All that to say this: “smoker’s rights” end where my lungs begin. Your smoke is contaminating my air.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks
What I want to know is why is it illegal to inject yourself with heroine, in which there are no second hand injections but it is more than legal to suck on a death stick. This argument would more than likely make heroine legal rather than smoking illegal though, strange how that works.
“You don’t want to see me any death sticks, you want to go hone and rethink your life.”
This is the challenge of humans. The most any person can do is present the truth to their fellow person. What they do with it is up to them. Arguing a view on anything usually only ends up in angry people.
Craig, Craig, Craig…..
What justification do you have for forcing anyone to do anything, or refrain from doing anything?
The Rule of the Commons. We have to share air, so there should be rules on how one can use that air.
Causality is the justification.
There is nothing that anyone can do, that will not have an effect on something. Therefore we have to consider the full influence of our actions. Regulations come from controlling what can be enforced for the better of the whole society (that does not however imply that they will always work.)
For example, if I am home alone and chose to change an outlet in my house without turning off the breaker and then get myself electrocuted. That is my fault and no one else was hurt right? Someone has to take care of my dead charred corpse. If my child were to be the one to find my body I would have no doubt left psychological scars on my child for the rest of their life. Through my lazy action of not turning off a breaker, I have destroyed my child’s psychological stability for life.
So why not have a law that says you can’t change an outlet with the power on? Well they do in industrial environments (OSHA,) but how could you enforce that in the privacy of someone’s own home.
I think a better example is requiring certifications for electricians. With improper, outdated, or poor knowledge or judgment, they could potentially be responsible for burning down your house, or your neighbor’s house.
Also, you realize that Carver plays the role of “comic troll”, right? 😛
Matt points out that we are sovereign over ourselves (Something I dispute, but for this discussion, I’ll let it slide) and therefore what justification do I have to force anybody to do anything?
The answer, as I said, was obvious. We can’t parcel up things like air or water. I can’t (within the bounds of practicality) exchange money for all the air that I breathe. Same thing with water – you have no right to dump dimethyl-33-ether into the water that we all have to drink from. It’s a common thing by its very nature.
You will notice, Matt, that I didn’t express a desire for a smoking ban to be enforced by law. I think that goes too far…though not by much.