Ugh, I know I’ve quoted her before, but I shall once again reference a statement by my Ukrainian born and raised girlfriend. “Oh, you Americans are so bored, worry about other people driving in cars, worry about other people’s beds, worry about who is offend. Try not having hot water or toilet inside in winter, then you people would be less bored and would not try to invent troubles.”
It’s an interesting topic, how far can you go. I find it alot that I am waiting at a bus stop and some random person will come and sit next to me on the bench and light up. There is nothing I hate more than cigarette smoke, and I could just move away, but why should. Its my damn bench as well. And then is it rude of me to ask someone politely to stop smoking, or move away from me?
Literally, it is an issue about rights, but at the same time it is a health comprimising behaviour and the rest of us non-smokers have our own rights as well. Cigarettes in my books are about as bad as hard drugs. The billions of dollars that are spent each year on treating lung cancer and other illnesses smoking causes is just money going down the gurgular (mine and your hard earned tax dollars). But smoking is so widespread there is no way we could outlaw it completely. The only think we can do for now is to ban it in public places and encourage those that we know not to smoke.
Yikes! Sorry, my (bold) bad!
Damn Bold Be Gone!!!
Asthma is a handicap, like any handicap and person carrying that burden should not go to places that do not accomodate them. It’s is very simple.
You cannot ban public smoking on the basis it is bad for people's health. The reason is because you simply cannot sigle out one form of a respiratory distress causing pollution. If you open the door on cigarretes, you open up the door on everything.
If you are so worried about something that is so small a problem, then you do not have enough problems I say. Don't sweat the small stuff. Also, don't legislate your self out of all your freedoms. You have to accept the protection of things you don't like in order to preserve the rights you yourself want to keep.
The last thing this country needs is more laws. If anything we need less laws. We are over legislated as it is. We do not need the government to hold our hands so that we do the right things. If you need that, go live with your parents. I'd like to knock the legislature back about 100 years. I want less government intervention in my life not more. Those who want the government to run thier life should join the military. It is a nobel cause and they will control the shit out of you --> As they should in the military.
Japan has a dilapidated economy and the highest suiside rate in the world for the past two decades, I am not feeling lots of joy from that country.
To elegua: A nice quote that does nothing at all to advance the argument or refute any of the points I put up Care to try again?
To Pat: Well, at least you addressed some of the relevant points. Kudos.
You said: "We do not need the government to hold our hands so that we do the right things. " Unfortunately, the historical truth is that there IS such a thing as too much freedom. To give only one very well-known example, look at Standard Oil. The nice IDEA was that the market/economy should be unregulated and fully competitive. But the actual reality was that some one like Rockefeller - a genius at business - could come in and within about two decades’ time so totally control the market that there was no more competition of any real meaning. So the government had to enact anti-trust legislation (i.e., control) in order to preserve freedom. Paradoxical, but that’s what happened. So there are cases where yes, in fact, we do need more controls, and a wish to go back 100 years or so, while on some level understandable, just doesn’t reflect today’s reality.
And yes, I do think that - within reason - a society should make the effort to deal with ALL sources of pollution. No argument there at all. But this doesn’t mean that this effort necessarily has to spill over into every other area of life. I don’t see why it’s so difficult to draw a line somewhere and stick to it.
As for your comments about Japan, my considered opinion is that no Western economist understands anything about Japan. They’ve been saying that Japan’s been failing for a decade now, and yet it was still very easy for me to open a (successful now for four years) business, people are still spending money like mad on their cell-phones and karaoke binges, the savings rate far outstrips any western country, you very rarely see homeless people around, the exchange rate is still about where it was 10 years ago, and so on and so forth.
As for the suicide rate, yes it is high. But this is a very complex issue that involves feelings of honor and societally-acceptable reactions to scandals and the like, and is really far too complex to address here. (Really. I’m not trying to duck the issue.) It does NOT reflect some sort of pervading moroseness, regardless of what it may seem like to an uninitiated western observer.
Ahhh… now we get to the nitty-gritty. Why can you simply ban public smoking and not affect anything else. Why can’t the line be drawn firmly as to not affect anything else.
If you ban smoking, there must be a reason. You cannot ban it simply based on the physical aspects of a cigarrete, paper and tabacco. So it must be something else. So what? They stink? - Lot's of things stink. They are bad for public health? - Lot's of things are bad for public health. They polute? - Lots of things polute. They burn? Lot's of things burn.
Once you ban something based on those 'merits', it is easy to draw parallel lines to other things that fit into similar catagories. Garbage stinks, Cars and factories pollute, Many things are bad for public health including supplements, etc. Historically, the domino effect is real. You look at cameras on highways to "monitor traffic". They were never intended nor supposed to be used to solve or prevent crimes. Now you hear more and more how they were used to find fugitives. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but where will it stop if they are already being used as they were not intended. Likewise you ban public smoking because it is unhealthy, what's next? Cheese burgers? Old cars? Air conditioning? Wood for burning?
The problem is it never stops and it is always done with the best intentions. That is the whole problem, the line is never clearly drawn.
As for the to much freedom thing, that is a slipery-slope. And I am quite sure nobody in this modern age has experienced what "too much freedom" is. Truthfully, we can't know if it is bad, but I would be happy to take my chances with it.
I am a smoker. I know its wrong, bad for my health and the health of others. I would like to quit and when its right for me I will. I also think that smoking should NOT be banned by law. To be honest i could deal with, altho I would be angry with a resturant/building type ban but outside, you have got to be kidding me. The truth is that second have smoke as well as regular smoking is harmful when enhaled regularly and for long periods of time. I know this isnt true for asthmatics, and if someone with asthma would ask me to put out my smoke for them you know what i’d say… sure no problem. The goverment should not have to be in this matter when it is so simple. If people have a problem with the smoke complain to the owner/manager of the establisment… with enough complaints they might issue a no smoking policy. This way smokers know when they are welcome and when the are not. Leave that choice to the owners now the goverment. People should deal with people not let the goverment make a law for everything. And as far as health care costs booming because of smokers, and everyone saying - that they shouldnt have to pay cuz they dont smoke- well smokers pay too, and everyone acts like they are getting personally billed just for smokers, this type of thinking could go on forever. My city is going to start building a new multi-million dollar elementary or high school, i can not remember which, but family and I do not have any kids going to school there so I shouldnt have to pay right?
Pat, dude, why is it that you’re not addressing the real point? Okay, I see what you’re saying about not having a definite criterion. Fine. My point is: we DO have a definite criterion! That criterion is: Is something harmful not only to the person who’s doing it, but to others as well?
I posted this above, but no one seemed to want to deal with it directly. So I’ll put it here again, in case it was just overlooked. MAIN POINT: I think it’s pretty easy to draw a distinction between banning behaviors that are harmful to others and behaviors that are harmful to no one or only to oneself. END MAIN POINT.
So yes, if something is bad for the public health, it should be banned. According to you, supplements fall into this category, but I don’t see how. Cars and factories, okay, they’re integral to society and therefore it would be pointless to try to ban them, but they should be made so that they no longer pollute. Legislation to this effect is being enacted all the time. Ban cheesburgers? Nah. Let the people who want to eat them eat all they like -it’ll be Darwinism in action. I’m all for that.
So let’s not talk any more about slippery slopes. The criterion is both clear and, in most cases, easily testable. If it only hurts you, then fine. If you’re an adult, do what you like. But if it hurts someone else, then it shouldn’t be allowed. Pretty simple.
Finally, to mace.J, I was going to reply to your post but it’s so ignorantly spelled and punctuated that I honestly can’t figure out what you’re trying to say. Seriously.
So, by that logic it is clear that we should ban behaviours that are harmful or potentially dangerous to others, like hmmm… driving. Last I saw it is still the leading cause of death in most age groups. We should ban it. Grilling out… that causes harmful smoke…ban it. People with communicable diseases should be banned for they are clearly a threat to those around them, they have no right to go out when others could get sick from them. People who put radical ideas in to other peoples heads are clearly harmful to others…lets ban speach.
I actually addressed your point waaay back. Everybody does something that bothers everybody else. If you want the government to deal with your neighbor for you by taking away their rights, be prepared to give up your own rights. I do not need the government to hold my hand and tell me what to do and I do not need their help dealing with my neighbor. If I don't like what somebody is doing I have two choices: Confront them or leave them alone. I am sorry to see that you want to be babied and coddle by the government. I for one do not trust them enough to let them control mine or other peoples lives. I'd rather take my chances with second hand smoke; it's the safer alternative to government control.
Okay man, whatever.
Just wanted to close that damned bold tag. Don’t know if it will work though.
This reminds me of the case in Utah when a mother filed a suit against Victoria’s Secrets. They were walking by the store in the mall, and she didn’t like the way her young son was looking at the poster on display. Filed a lawsuit to prevent them from advertising, or to try to get them closed down, something like that. What was at issue? Her right to not have her son look at a woman in her underwear.
I can understand both sides of this issue, and for those of you who have asthma, I feel for you. I detest the smell of cigarettes, and avoid them whenever possible. At the same time, I enjoy the occasional cigar, and I do my best to avoid offending others. Unfortunately, that is not always possible, as some people are really assholes. If someone comes up to me and politely informs me that I am really bothering them, I have no problem with that. It is the people that loudly and obnoxiously tell me that I am violating their “rights” that get on my nerves. P.J. O’Rourke said it best.
“The ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
What we’re looking at here is the belief that a small but vocal minority can tell other what to do, based on what they believe is good for them. What happens when obese people begin clamouring against those of us who stay fit, because we damage their already fragile self-esteem? I’m pretty sure that a creative lawyer can find an “expert witness” who will testify how harmful we are tho obese peoples mental health. As for the argument for anecdotal evidence, remember the “ephedrine drama queen”? She gave some pretty powerful anecdotal evidence about the dangers of ephedra.
One last thing: If you think it’s bad in Japan, try Singapore. When I lived there, gum was illegal, spitting was fined, picking flowers was prohibited, and you could be fined for not flushing in a public restroom. They were also stopping people at the airport who had haircuts deemed “unacceptable”.
Thanks for informing me on my bad spelling and punctuation. LOL, the bad part is I can’t even disagree with you. In the future, however, I will make a note to convey my thoughts better. Here are my points regarding smoking and a ban on it in public. I could deal with a public building ban on smoking however, I don’t think it’s necessary. A better way would be to complain to the owner of the bar, nightclub or whatever that the smoking is bothering you. This way if the owner wanted they could issue a ban on smoking, so smokers could go someplace else. Like Pat said, if you have a problem with the smoking confront the person or the bar owner and complain. What is kind of scary is the “knee jerk” reaction to make a law on everything. Also, if you are going to ban one thing because it is bad for the collective health then you must ban everything that’s bad for the collective health whether or not it is intergrated into our society. Secondly, to ban smoking outside would be nuts. The reason being: smoking and second hand smoke is really only dangerous when inhaled regularly and for long periods of time. A brief encounter with smoke, atleast in my opinion, wont harm you. I don’t even think a few hundred brief encounters will harm you, and third we need to stop taking people out of the equation. The goverment should not have to jump in and make a law when a simple, “Excuse me, could you please put that out” will work. Hope that clears things up a bit. Once again, thanks for the heads up.
Okay, I was going to let this thread go into oblivion, but with the last two (very reasonable and well-put) posts, I’ll give it another shot.
First, to mace.J: Thank you for not being a dick about the grammar thing. Seems like every time someone says something about a post’s being illiterate, the poster takes it as a personal attack on his masculinity or something. Nice to see that you’re a bit more mature than that.
Second, I disagree with the idea that simply to ban one thing means that we have to automatically ban everything else that might fall into that category. Yes, as an idea that might logically follow. But we’re not talking about some abstract system of thought, we’re talking about a real society. Any rule in society can and should be tempered with a bit of reason.
Take traffic safety, for instance. Slower driving tends to reduce traffic-related deaths. To hear some of the people who’ve posted earlier, this would automatically mean that ANY speed limit at all would automatically imply (and indeed, impel) a speed limit of 1 mile per hour (since this would be the logical extreme). Or perhaps that a speed limit of 65 MPH for cars would automatically mandate that helicopters had to travel at that speed as well. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. We have a speed limit that most agree is reasonable and that works to reduce traffic deaths while still allowing us as a society to use cars, which provide other benefits.
Other societies have other ideas about what’s reasonable (Germany comes to mind), and their speed limits or lack of same reflect their take on the matter. No problem. It’s not ALL or NOTHING. There’s a degree to which (and on which) people can agree.
So. If we can agree that perhaps a ban on one thing doesn’t automatically imply a complete ban for all time in all places on everything else forever (at least in the real world), then we can move on to take a little closer look at the things that should and should not be banned. My objection to cigarettes is not that I personally don’t like them. It’s that I can’t see the upside to smoking them. They provide no use to society other than the pleasure of those who smoke them. On the other hand, the evidence is pretty compelling (unlike the case of the ephedra queen) that they’re harmful. So, if those people want to smoke them in private, fine. Go for it. But in an enclosed public place, it seems to me that it infringes on others’ rights to a very large extent. And that the possibility of someone’s getting lung cancer or whatever is a more serious consideration than another person’s temporary pleasure.
If you want to extend the argument and say, okay, what about factories or cars, then I’d have to say that both factories and cars are different in that they provide a use to society (unlike smoking). Thus they may be something of a necessary evil. However, they SHOULD definitely be made as clean as possible. No problem there, either idealistically or real world-wise.
The case of the Victoria’s Secret poster is definitely interesting. To be honest, I don’t really know what I think about it, or how I would vote if I were a juror on the case.
As for Singapore, as I understand it, chewing gum itself was legal for a while - it was throwing the gum on the sidewalk that was illegal. When people couldn’t seem to stop throwing it away and messing up everyone else’s shoes, the authorities stepped in. Too much of a crackdown? Maybe so. On the other hand, how hard is it to throw your gum away properly?
I have to completely disagree with PJ O’Rourke, who, much as I like him as a writer, is (let’s face it) no great shakes as a political thinker. If you live in a society, you agree to its rules. Every society has rules, because without them you can’t get people to live together peacefully. The people who’ve complained about “nanny states” and so on have obviously been educated at universities and made use of other federal/state/municipal programs, etc. to make their way. I find them therefore to be somewhat hypocritical in that sense. Certainly, there is a point at which government intervention becomes overbearing and paternalistic. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask to try and have everyone take an objective look at the issues that come up and deal with them on a real world basis, rather than make up absurdly extreme what-if examples. In the totally “free” state that has been envisioned here, only the biggest baddest mofo around would really be free. And while the idea is admittedly appealing in a sort of abstract, T-man way, I think that the reality would be a bit less pleasant for everyone else.
Finally, considering that only about 25% of Americans smoke, and that the vast majority of non-smokers don’t particularly care for second-hand fumes, the people who want smoking banned aren’t exactly a minority. On the contrary, if it weren’t for the tobacco companies’ tremendous resources in their fight to keep their profits, smoking would probably have vanished long since.
No, banning one thing does not mean that everything else is automatically banned. But, it sets a precedent for all things with in a certain catagory to be banned, which in my opinion is worse in some sense. Waiting for something to become illeagal is worse than the point where it becomes illegal.
If you look at the lawsuites against cigarette companies where the most surreal outcome came to be. People who chose to smoke and got sick from it actually won the lawauite agaisnt the cigarette companies. If you look down the road a bit now, you see some fat, never trained, chose to eat junk, mother-fuckers suing McDonalds and the fast food industry, for poor decisions they made. The sad part is that they appear to be winning the suit. Do I really even need to detail how obsurd that is?
If you choose to ban smelly things you set a precedent to ban more smelly things. If you choose to ban bad-for-you-things, you set a precedant to ban more bad-for-you-things.
If you want historical proof of the "pecedent thing" just look at the evolution tax code. Once income tax became a reality the flood gates opened. Everything is taxed now including death.
I'll end with a quote "Even Communists are free to smoke."
Well, I totally agree that the lawsuits in America have gotten completely out of hand. No question about that. Hell, there are actually TV shows here in Japan that take ridiculous cases from the American legal system, re-dramatize them, and show them as entertainment (with comedians ripping them apart in after-commentary). A pretty sad state of affairs, especially to this particular ex-pat.
But I think that the fault here lies not with the precedent itself, but with the application of the precedent. If you say that you don’t want to do something because it might set a bad precedent, then I think you become paralyzed pretty quickly, as most anything can be (and has been) twisted around to serve as precedent for something that it really doesn’t have much relation to. If you want to say that the American legal system is totally fucked, you’ll get nothing but agreement from me. But that’s quite a bit different from saying that we don’t need any rules or government control in society.
I must admit, I had never really thought about factories and autos being a “necessary evil” in that they actually provide a legitimate service to society as a whole. Maybe we could argue that smoking helps cull the gene pool of people foolish enough to take such a risk? Yes, yes, I know, I happen to be an occasional member of this group, but hell, when they told me that the sun, milk, and exercising were bad for me, I just quoted Tom Cruise from Risk Business. “Sometimes, you’ve just gotta say ‘What the fuck.’”
I think that in S’pore, gum was legal, but it was when they put in the MTR that they quit selling it, and even stopped people from brining it in. As for P.J., well, he just appeals to the Libertarian in me. As for not being a great political thinker … I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. Karl Marx is considered a great political thinker, and look how good his ideas were.
I understand that the vast majority of non-smokers don’t like second hand smoke and that banning cigs is allot different than banning everything that can harm public health (cars, factories, running with keys, ect). It’s not that I am for or against the law, it’s that no law is necessary. Some public buildings, and I would imagine, some private buildings such as resturants and clubs have no smoking policies. Why can’t we just leave it at that? When you as a human being, step outside you understand that you take a risk. You could get: mugged, shot, hit by a car, hit by golf ball sized hail, ect , yet you take that risk. The risk also includes walking past or sitting next to a person that smokes. I agree with you char-dawg that we have to use reason, because although only 25% of the population smokes maybe 75% of the people that go to a particular bar or resturant, that is effected by the ban, do. Char-dawg, I like your analogy about speed limits, but I think it helped to prove my point. While driving fast is dangerous, they did not ban cars they just lowered the speed limit to something reasonable and agreed upon, however, this could also be done with smokes. If we let the bar or nightclub owners make up their own minds and enforce their own policies regarding smoking, smokers would know where smoking is acceptable just as a person would know where driving fast is acceptable, the world would be a happier less over controlled place. Just one more thing lol, if people are concerned about the butts getting thrown all over the place just let the police enforce the, already on the books, littering laws. Why make more laws? Well, I think I will let this thread go now, since only a few people (like me) are keeping it going and I am pretty sure that this could go on forever. Bye.
Well, if you think I helped prove your point, I guess we’re even -'cause I think that you just proved mine! You wrote: “When you as a human being, step outside you understand that you take a risk. You could get: mugged, shot, hit by a car, hit by golf ball sized hail, etc. , yet you take that risk.”
Exactly. And mugging is illegal, shooting someone is illegal and hitting someone with a car is illegal. (Can’t do much about the hail.) Banned, if you will. So why shouldn’t smoking be illegal?
Gotcha? I think so. 