quittin' smoking

[Chris Rapier]

>  Ah, but my comfort and that person's comfort aren't truly commensurate: my
> comfort doesn't impose something on them, while their comfort-- which is
> avoidable with a quick trip for them outside-- imposes carcinogens on me.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Mostly because you are arguing to the extremes.
The amount of exposure most patrons get at a club is highly unlikley
to cause any sort of cancer. Of course the risk isn't zero but if they
were trying to avoid risks they wouldn't be at a club in the first
place. So I'm really not thinking that health concerns in this
specific exmaple are valid for the vast majority of people - sure
there will be outliers who are so dramatically affected by smoke that
even incidental exposure can seriously harm them. Unfortunately, in
the big scheme of things, they are outliers.

Speaking of all of this really started making me think about public
risk though. I'm wondering, if people are really concerned about
health risk than why isn't anyone arguing for a forcible quarentine of
people with the flu? Or AIDS? Or other communicable diseases. Its a
much much much bigger health risk (3000 possibly killed by passive
smoking and 75,000 killed by flu alone). Really, I'm not trying to
present a ridiculous case here. I'm really just wondering why the
*less* significant threat receives so much more attention than the
*more* significant threat.