quittin' smoking

[Jeremy David]

On 3/14/06, Chris Rapier <rapier1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

Yes, driving is dangerous. So we have laws that say that you can only
drive in certain places at certain speeds in certain ways. All i'm
asking for is similar rules about smoking.

> > *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.

So in the future less people will smoke. I'll bet that's true.
However, that doesn't matter. Because if just one person is allowed to
smoke next to me and force toxic fumes into my lungs, my rights are
being violated. The answer to this problem is not to just wait around
until the number of smokers in the world is zero. The answer is to
treat is just like other similar issues.

> > 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.

Public space is pretty easy to define, and legally so. If you're in a
shop/restaurant/bar that is open to the public, you're in a public
space.

But really, even bringing up the public/private issue is moot. We have
laws that protect us from the harmful actions of another party that
are applicable in any space, either public or private. I'm not allowed
to punch you, even if its its at my house on my private property.
You're not allowed to punch me either, even at your own house.
However, if for some reason, we really love punching each other, there
are permits and institutions to be acquired and used for just this
purpose, we can become bare-knuckle boxers and punch each other's
faces right off until we experience true sporting ecstasy. These
special cases are allowed by law, all you have to do is sign up ahead
of time and do it in an appropriate place. This allows the government
to be consistent in its application of law and say that punching is
dangerous and therefore not allowed, unless of course it's done in a
particular place in a particular way. Smoking should be the same way.