Smoking Bans

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Seth
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Seth »

I'm slightly biased by personal experience on this particular topic.

When I was little, my parents took me bowling with them every Monday and Wednesday night. I'd spend an hour and a half in the video arcade. I remember this clearly, 20 years later, because every Tuesday and Thursday morning I would cough up a golfball sized piece of mucus during my walk to school in the morning.

That particular business was legally obligated to put little plastic protectors on the unused electrical plugs, but the actual air in the place was completely toxic.

At a minimum, I'm for a smoking ban in any enclosed public place open to minors.
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Sareth
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Sareth »

In my opinion, if you knowingly go into a bar where smoking is allowed (even though you do not smoke), you are making a choice. Neither the smokers nor society at large are responsible for your choice. The argument "Gee, these people must not mind getting in fights every night because they keep coming back" presented by pillar_of_hate strikes me as nothing more than a call for the removal of choice from people's lives. Even though I agree that smoking is an inherrantly bad idea, I am no more in favor of removing people's choice in that matter than I would be in favor of Big Macs being made illigal because people get fat eating them.

It's simple really. If you don't want to deal with second hand smoke (and I don't blame you one bit!) don't enter a bar that permits smoking. If you don't want me endangering myself by entering a place where I will be exposed to second hand smoke, feel free to warn me, attempt to persuade me. But do not decide for me through legislation.

There is, as always, an exception I am willing to consider, and Seth brings it up. Children. Because children do not have choice (owing to maturity and parental control), and because not all parents or guardians are particularly good at being responsible for their children, I am willing to accept laws that state private places that permit smoking are off limits to those under the age of 18.
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by pillar_of_hate »

SgtSareth wrote:Even though I agree that smoking is an inherrantly bad idea, I am no more in favor of removing people's choice in that matter than I would be in favor of Big Macs being made illigal because people get fat eating them.

It's simple really. If you don't want to deal with second hand smoke (and I don't blame you one bit!) don't enter a bar that permits smoking.
But here's the catch (and this is why I made the point about businesses being after profits): they don't give you a choice. I've lived in three different places since I reached the legal drinking age, and in the jurisdictions where smoking in bars was legal, it was impossible to find a bar that didn't allow smoking. In fact, the suburb I live in now has a stretch of two blocks with nine drinking establishments, and another single block with three more. Of these dozen, exactly zero are smoke free. Therefore, if I want to go to a bar in town, I have to go to one that permits smoking. Libertarians in the crowd will say that, in the strictest metaphysical sense, I don't have to go to these bars, pubs, taverns, and inns. But practically, if I want an occasional drink with friends, I have to expose myself to others' smoke.

And, for the last time, smoking is not like eating Big Macs, or bungee jumping, or nearly any other risky behavior people want to use as a counterexample, for the simple reason that it affects those around you. You won't get heart disease or diabetes based on what your neighbor is eating, but you might still get cancer from his smoke, just like your house might catch fire if he burns his own down (which, incidentally and unsurprisingly, is also illegal).

It's not about removing choice from people's lives; if they wanna dip snuff or whatever that's fine with me (for the record, I think chewing tobacco is probably the grossest thing people do in public) because they don't really hurt anyone else.
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Elessar »

SgtSareth wrote:So to go back to the original topic, in the case of waiters and waitresses risking their health, it is their right to try to convince their employer to change his policies to respect their health. If he refuses, they may seek employment elsewhere or organize.

Again, this is far from a perfect solution, but there are no perfect solutions.
Is this even a solution? It's easy to say "quit your job and go find something better", but as anyone who's been in the workforce scrimping by with nothing to their name can attest, that's not always an option.
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Forrest »

I'm a strongly libertarian-leaning person with some differences to the principles I so strongly adhere to, the most relevant one here being, I believe that everything which is not private property is public property - there is nothing that is "unowned", only things over which no one has exclusive control, meaning that everyone has inclusive control over them. From this principle I justify laws limiting pollution and environmental exploitation - the public (or any member thereof) has every right to complain when some party (individual, corporation, whatever) is polluting a public space or otherwise depreciating public property, because it's their property (inclusively), even if nothing which is exclusively their property (i.e. private property) is being directly affected. In other words, you don't have to own a building in a big city that's being blackened by smog and corroded by acid rain to complain about the air pollution - you can just complain that the air, which is partly your property, is being in essence vandalized by the polluters. Likewise, just like you would have a rightful complaint about someone dumping sewage on your lawn, you have a rightful complaint when someone's dumping sewage in your lakes, even if nothing which is your exclusive property is in the lake. The lake itself is partly yours, so you have a right to complain about mistreatment to it.

From here, I support bans on public smoking on the grounds that it is pollution. The closest analogy I've come across thus far is urinating in public. Both of them are mild health risks, and though neither will kill you just from one exposure to one person doing it, if everyone does it it creates a disgusting and unhealthy public environment. I really don't care what people put into their own bodies (rather, I care for their sakes, but I acknowledge that I've got no right to tell them not to), so I'm all for ditching all drug control laws. People can put in their bodies whatever they damn well please. But I'm strongly in favor of smoke control laws, because I don't want people putting into my(inclusive) air whatever they damn well please.

As far as things like restaurants and storefronts go, I believe in a concept I call "pseudo-public property". This is property which is technically private, but has been temporarily opened to the public (and can be closed to the public again at the owner's discretion). The archetypical example of what I'm thinking of is storefronts and restaurants, but a privately owned "public" park could be another example, and I'm sure we could come up with others if we thought about it. Unlike truly private property, like your home, storefronts and restaurants don't require that you get the owner's permission before you enter: they are explicitly made open to the public, so that anyone can come in and look around and so forth. I believe that for the period that a piece of private property is thus opened to the public, it is actually "pseudo-public property"; which is to say, all the rules regarding public property apply to it, even though it's owner can decide to close it off again whenever he feels like and return it to its private status. Thus, in bars or clubs with bouncers, where you require permission of the property owner or his agent to enter, apply whatever damn rules you want; but if you've just got a door that says "come in, we're open", the same rules apply in there as apply on the sidewalk outside.

Another issue is children. I'm not entirely sure where children stand in my philosophy yet; I'm generally inclined to assume that everyone has the exact same rights and responsibilities regardless of age, but there does seem to be some problem with that, and I'm not really sure how to resolve the issue on principles alone. However, having been a child of a smoker and absolutely hating it, I'm generally of the opinion that smoking around your kids, even in your own house or car, is a form of child abuse, just like it would be if you were pissing all around your living room and had kids living in that environment. If you need to spew toxic fluids, do it somewhere that they can be disposed of and won't pollute the rest of the house - build yourself a smoke room or something, and make sure you "flush" when you're done in there.
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Boss Out of Town »

Elessar wrote:
SgtSareth wrote:So to go back to the original topic, in the case of waiters and waitresses risking their health, it is their right to try to convince their employer to change his policies to respect their health. If he refuses, they may seek employment elsewhere or organize . . . Again, this is far from a perfect solution, but there are no perfect solutions.
Is this even a solution? It's easy to say "quit your job and go find something better", but as anyone who's been in the workforce scrimping by with nothing to their name can attest, that's not always an option.
Yep, that's an argument thrown out in work-related issues commonly by people who, who reasons good or bad, just don't feel the fear that unemployment brings to most of us. I recall my uncle, a half-century ago, arguing that the that there is a living available for anyone who wants to work--"just look at all the want ads in the paper"--so if anyone is poor or distressed in their job, it had to be their fault. He was a career army man who did twenty years as a security job for Honeywell thereafter. He worked hard and never lacked for secure employment, so he assumed the situation was the same for everyone.

But, of course, organizing is what finally secured those complaining waiters their chance to work in a healthy environment. Some number of them apparently organized a political campaign, petitioned their elected representatives, and got a smoking ban enforced in restaurants. Good for them.

Anyhow, I would posit that arguing a rights/non-rights position on these issues assigns them too much legal distinction. That is, local governments are perfectly free to outlaw my screaming, complaining, fighting, copulating, farting, pissing on the floor, or discharging a firearm in a bar if they see that as a matter of public safety or community or commercial interest. If they want to ban or restrict smoking, that is not an issue of anyone's rights, just a balancing of interests and goals. I like the idea myself, much as I sympathize with other people's battles with addictive behavior.

Americans are culturally trained to complain about their rights whenever something comes up that displeases them. Usually they are baffled or infuriated when you ask the first pertinent question--"Are you talking about moral rights or legal rights?"--because they have not thought the thing through enough to know the answer. They just know "rights" is a powerful and satisfying thing to yell about in an argument.

Obviously, to the true libertarian (a rare thing) almost any government action is a possible violation of personal rights. But, as a non-libertarian, I don't feel obliged to debate that point every time they bring it up.
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Forrest
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Forrest »

The American attitude you describe in the second to last paragraph above is precisely due to the libertarian attitude described in the last paragraph. American government was founded on extremely libertarian principles, where by default the government isn't allowed to do shit unless We The People grant it the power to do so. Now, that per se is not quite libertarian because it still allows that We The People, or at least 50% of those who vote, could decide that we don't really believe in such-and-such (moral) right and consequently such rights really do not exist and whatever the government does is (morally) fine so long as a majority of people consent to it. Which is just to say, democracy does not necessarily entail liberty. But coupled with the very Lockean notion of "life, liberty, and property" which is used almost verbatim in our Declaration of Independence, American government is by design supposed to be pretty much libertarian. (Now, whether or not it's sticking to it's design is a whole other topic).

Now, I'm right there with you that this notion of all nice things being "rights" has gotten out of hand, but that's mostly arisen with the idea of positive claim rights (obligations on others to do certain things), as opposed to liberty rights (permission for you to do things) and negative claim rights (obligations on others to NOT do certain things) which this country was founded on. I recently saw a movie called "The Anarchist Cookbook" and literally cringed during one of the opening shots when some supposed "anarchists" sleeping overnight in a university library declared "housing is a right, not a privilege" when a security guard tried to throw them out. So yes, I agree wholeheartedly that many people complain too quickly about their rights being violated as a means of saying "I want it I want it give it to me NOWWW!!!" in a more persuasive way.

However, as someone who might consider himself a "true libertarian" as you put it*, I'd like to ask you not to be so quick to dismiss the question of "does the government really have any legitimate authority to force people to [not] do that?". Even when you do frame the issue in terms of rights, it's still not as open and shut as "people can do whatever they want, shut up and go away you stupid Statists" as many libertarians seem to react to the smoking question. While I consider myself libertarian, I frequently run into conflicts with other self-professed libertarians because, while we both agree that the only thing any government has legitimate power to do is enforce people's claim rights (i.e. to enforce peoples moral obligations to each other), and that it definitely should not ever be infringing on people's liberty rights (i.e. prohibiting people from doing things they are morally permitted to do), we often disagree on what is or is not a claim right or a liberty right.

You saw my post just above yours presumably, where I made an argument from a libertarian, rights-based basis that smoking in public is a violation of people's claim rights, because the air is public property (meaning everyone has claim rights to it), pollution is a form of defacement of public property (and thus a violation of people's claim rights), and public smoking is a form of pollution; thus, public smoking is a violation of other people's claim rights to the public air, and as a claim right of one person just is an obligation on all other people, public smoking is thus something everyone is morally obliged not to do, which is just to say something they are morally forbidden from doing, which is just to say something they are not morally permitted to do (ah, I love deontic modal logic); and as a liberty right just is permission, smoking in public is thus NOT within people's liberty rights, and it is thus not a violation of anyone's liberty rights to prevent it. It is in fact enforcement of people's claim rights to prevent it. Or so my argument goes, at least.

So, just because many people often have fixed, dogmatic and largely unfounded visions of what their rights are ("periodic vacations with pay" I believe is in the UN Declaration of Human Rights... hah), doesn't mean you should dismiss arguing about things from a "who's within their rights here anyway?" perspective out of hand. Just saying "government shouldn't violate anybody's (liberty) rights, it should protect their (claim) rights" by itself doesn't really say anything about what the government should or should not be doing. There's still the further question of what really is within whose rights, and while most self-professed libertarians seem to think that's an open and shut case that was settled hundreds of years ago with Locke et al, I for one still see plenty of room for debate.

*("true libertarian" not to be confused with a "capital-L" member of the Libertarian Party, nor with the hardcore capitalist pro-corporation right-libertarians that most people seem to think of these days, but rather, "libertarian" in its original French sense roughly synonymous with "anarchist" - someone in favor of maximal liberty and highly skeptical of all claims to authority).

Edit: "I cast a Level 7 Wall of Text! I... I'm attacking the darkness!"
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Boss Out of Town »

Good elaboration on Libertarianism. The three-fold division of rights is fascinating stuff. Another way of detailing the argument and make people think out the arguments they are expounding.

The best use of the legal/moral division I posted is to separate the rational arguments from the shouting. State and local governments have the legal right to regulate behavior in public places, subject only to the legal limits on such laws expressed in state and federal constitutions.

In general, behavior that is not a fundamental and necessary expression of speech, privacy, property, or commerce is almost always subject to regulation. A ban on an activity because it creates a public hazard is almost always constitutional, regardless of how popular the activity is (consider fireworks and "driving under the influence" as examples) which is why the "second-hand smoke" argument is always foremost in any discussion of smoking restrictions.

A ban on activity because it creates a public nuisance is almost always questionable because it depends on a blurry notion of what range of behavior is considered acceptable by the local citizenry. Back in 1950, for instance, when 70% of the adult population smoked, claiming that smoking was obnoxious behavior in a bar could not have stood up as a legal argument. Now that 70% of the adult population is non-smoking, they can legitimately claim they represent popular opinion. Deciding how much accommodation the non-smoking majority should provide the smoking minority is something for the legislature to debate, but should not be settled in court. On that point I am a Libertarian: there is too much law-making going on in courts. Unfortunately, any attempt to cut back on illigitimate adjudication is invariably taken up by people who want to banish some kind of legitimate adjudication. These days, that often involves suits involving freedom of religion, freedom to sue businesses for legitimate damages of various kinds, and attempts by courts to force governments to enforce laws already passed, such as those protecting the environment, those allowing the organization of unions, those restricting the bribing of public officials, and those specifying limits on government spying.
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Shteven
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Shteven »

As a former restaurant worker in New York state, I was very happy when they implemented the smoking ban.

I'm no longer working there as I've managed to complete my degree since then; and as my wall of text spell failed, that's all I'll add for now ;)
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Re: Smoking Bans

Post by Graybeard »

I had a completely unplanned pass back through this thread, as a result of something else I was writing, and it struck me that a lot of what's in these discussions is relevant to social behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic. Anybody left here who wants to chew on that a little, possibly in a new thread? Or have the thoughtful participants of days yore all succumbed to the virus or something?
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