My friend John Welch and I have been having a discussion about current anti-smoking laws in this thread over at his site. Several days ago, I wrote another response to his latest comments and submitted them for his approval to be posted. For whatever reason, he hasn’t gotten around to approving them yet. And that’s fine. He may be busy and hasn’t looked at the queue, or he’s composing his own follow-up comments before posting mine, or he may consider the topic old and not interesting anymore. It’s his website, and it’s totally his right to refuse any comments at any time for any reason. I’m ok with that.
I do, however, want to post my latest comments to my own site. This is a topic I find interesting and it’s my hope that perhaps I can cause a few people who disagree with me to re-think their position. It is in that spirit I post my unpublished comments to bynkii.com. John and I have known each other for a few years now, and I’m confident he understands this is not meant to one-up him or in some way play an immature gotcha game.
And now, the comment.
And when enough people realize that there’s a currently legal habit that is causing real health problems,
Like eating Twinkies, or McDonald’s? Obesity is a real health problem too. Would you like the government to regulate what you’re allowed to eat, and how much of it? You know, some governments have already stepped in that direction by banning tans-fats. Your behavior-conrolled utopia is rapidly being built as we write. And the anti-smoking crowd has given these governments the green light to regulate such aspects of our lives.
generally stinking up the area, and making common activities (going out to eat, dancing) impossible for a rather huge chunk of the population,
I just came back from breakfast. Two booths away from me, a badly misbehaved child picked up the syrup container and started jumping up and down on the booth seat, splashing syrup, and his mother yelled at the top of her lungs for him to stop. It was obvious that this kid’s behavior made the common activity of eating breakfast, at the very least, unpleasant for a rather huge chunk of the restaurant. And this sort of thing happens nearly every time I attempt to eat out. By your logic, because badly behaved kids make common activities unpleasant or impossible, they should be illegal, punishable by fines or jail.
they have the right to use the legal system to try and fix that.
I’d sign a petition to have the legal system deal harshly with unruly kids and parents. After all, I have the right to total comfort and non-offensiveness wherever I am, public or private (according to the anti-smoking crowd). Let’s not be half-assed about it.
No one enacted anti-smoking ordinances illegally. No one hired enforcers at the polls in the locations where it was voted in. This has all been done legally. Smokers don’t like it, they can take the proper measures to try to undo it.
Smoky McStrawman. I have never claimed that anti-smoking laws are somehow illegal or invalid. I have never challenged their status as enforceable law. I do, however, challenge the logic and the motivations of their proponents. And I support any legal method to have anti-smoking laws repealed.
Wait, you’re bitching about the legal system creating a nanny state, yet you want to hire how many more cops to watch your behavior that closely?
Again, Smoky McStrawman. I’ve never asserted that more police are needed. I’ve stated that littering laws already exist that are intended to deal with the initial complaint of cigarette butts littering the landscape in your original post. Additional law enforcement is not needed. I’d say that repurposing cops from stupid things like clocking drivers in the highway median to dealing with citizen complaints, like littering, is a good approach.
However, my point was that, instead of new laws that send people to jail for smoking, your original complaint could be addressed by enforcement of existing laws. Nothing new required, police or statute.
How much of a tax increase are you willing to support to hire the extra cops to properly enforce all the littering laws?
How much of a tax increase are you willing to support when, because of current laws and tobacco taxes, smoking decreases and smokers no longer provide the revenue to the state and federal governments they’re used to in order to fund programs? Understand that governments don’t eliminate or cut programs because a revenue source dries up, they just find another revenue source. By curtailing smoking and taxing smokers to oblivion, you will be raising your own taxes.
How about smokers start behaving correctly on their own? Why is THAT too much to ask?
It’s not, and I agree.
No Aaron, all that told me were the businesses who were smoke-free and chose to advertise it. That’s NOT the same, and you know it, as a sign that says “Smoking allowed here”. Since, by the way you state it, it wasn’t a requirement, that’s not even reliable.
Smoking was allowed everywhere by default. The exceptions were noted. That is functionally the same - anyone entering the premises knew what the smoking status was.
I could give a fuck about second hand smoke deaths.
So I don’t expect you personally to use it as a justification for anti-smoking laws (and you haven’t). However, the people petitioning states to pass these laws use the alleged health-endangering characteristics of second hand smoke as the cornerstone of their anti-smoking argument. And it’s primarily based on faulty science and emotion.
What I’m tired of is second hand smoke in my clothes, because some fucknut ten yards away had to have a butt.
Hyperbole isn’t necessary to make your case. But, as I alluded to before, as much as you challenge my right to smoke, do you also have a right to absolute comfort and non-offense everywhere you may be? No, none of us has that.
I’m tired of second hand smoke giving me nicotine headaches and hangovers because I had the temerity to want to go someplace a bit more adult than fucking McDonald’s.
Intense cigarette smoke makes my eyes burn. It’s painful. I solve the problem by not being in environments where that smoke exists. I don’t ask the government to fine or jail people because I don’t like it. Again, non-existent right to comfort, etc.
I’m tired of someone’s personal habit, that I don’t share being forced on my because there’s no ventilation system in the world that will keep your smoke in your personal space and your personal space alone.
I’m tired of someone’s kids, born of personal choice, that aren’t mine, and their bad behavior, being forced on me because there’s no containment system in the world that will keep kids and their noise and their mess local only to the parents who are responsible for controlling the little monsters.
Really, we all have our annoyances that other people thrust upon us. Part of being an adult is to learn to deal with, or avoid, those annoyances while letting others live their lives.
And your “I have the *right* to create clouds of smoke that fuck with everyone around me for a ten yard radius” is some how NOT emotional, and based on cold sober rule of law and logic?
My opposition to anti-smoking laws is based on pure logic: Private property owners have the right to determine what activities are permissible on said property, as long as that activity does not endanger another’s right to life, liberty, or property. Your argument, however, is that you don’t like smoking and the impolite smokers who litter, so it should be illegal. If that isn’t founded in emotion, nothing is.
Why should MY “right” to enjoy a legal substance in a legal way be impinged because of *your* personal beliefs?
Exactly the question I’m asking! Why should my right to enjoy legal tobacco be infringed upon because of your personal beliefs? On private property to boot!
Again, I still don’t see you being real happy about a stream of tobacco spit across your shirt and in your drink. Yet somehow, you cling to the right to do the same to everyone around you with smoke. What, pray tell, is the real difference?
The difference is that smoke, under normal circumstances, is emitted in all directions with no ability of the smoker to control it, where spit is purposely thrust out of an individual’s mouth in a direction the spitter controls and is aware of. Your analogy is broken. You should be comparing smokers who blow smoke directly into your face (of which it seems there would be very few) versus your idea of spitting on someone.
That would suggest that no, anti-smoking laws do not inherently put people out of business.
I don’t, and haven’t, claimed to speak for business closings or economic effects anywhere other than the place where I live. I do find it interesting, however, that the three states you indirectly spoke of (New York, California, and Massachusetts) are rapidly losing population because of things like absurdly high taxes and other government encroachments.
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