quittin' smoking

[Chris Rapier]

On 3/14/06, Jeremy David <epistemology at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. Bars. I think I've heard of those once.
>
> My point is that at a bar, you can drink all you want and it doesn't
> hurt the guy next to you. But if you smoke all you want, it *does*
> hurt the guy next to you. One of the basic ideas of living in a free
> society is that you're not allowed to hurt other people without their
> consent.

My question is where are you going to draw the line in terms of shared
risk? We need to establish a baseline meausre of risk and then compare
it to other activities an individual might engage in that can harm or
kill another person. Such as driving. Or leaving the house when they
have the flu (kills 50-75k people in the US annually).

> *bad* time. The Invisible Hand of unfettered capitalism seems unable
> to solve this problem.

Actually it seems to be working. Its just not necessarily a rapid
process. If you look at who and how many people are smoking you see a
steady decrease over the years. Thats the result of marketing and
market forces changing behaviour. The problem is that it is going to
take another few decades.

> A main job of local governments is to define
> what is allowed where. Pragmatically, local governments seem to be the
> best option. Why can't cities hand out a certain amount of licences to
> establishments making some of them places where you can smoke, and
> some of them places where you can't?

I like this idea. However, we'd still need to define what is public
and non-public space.