Nanny State

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The illusion that one can live entirely independently in a society that provides all sorts of social environment benefits is extremely detrimental to society. There is a huge industry and infrastructure behind the supply of cocaine and heroin and related products. Putting morality aside the money and injury to beneficial social behavior is immense. One cannot say "screw society, I want my fix". Society is deeply involved with tax money, bribed corrupted officials, great health expenditure and all citizens are penalized in one way or another. This is also true of tobacco and many other aspects of private and commercial life. Whether people like it or not, they are involved and many suffer innocently.

As much as I am wildly opposed to smoking, I do not favour smoking bans in private. There are lines beyond which society's protection of its interests becomes an excessive intrusion. Crossing the doorstep can be one of those lines.



I don't disagree with the principle, but I disagree with the limit. "Special and unreasonable hazard" is too narrow a scope. I prefer a formulation in which the risk of harm is balanced against the nature of the intrusion. Excessive intrusions (such as police using force of arms to enter your home) should be restricted to the prevention of the most egregious harms, for example, the prevention of a crime of violence.

Minimal intrusions, however, can be justified in a broader range of harms.



Whenever you use a telephone, surf the internet, ride in a car, a bus or a train, fly in an airplane, sail on a vessel, go to a hospital, buy groceries, go out in public with an expectation of personal security or any of dozens of mundane activities, you are requiring others to live for the sake of your life.

Transportation, communication and trade infrastructure; health and education services; and police and military protection are all universal services that are assured by the public sector, which, in turn, relies upon the contribution of citizens.

You have, doubtless, contributed to them--but you are entitled to use them whether you contribute or not. Your idealism cannot blind you to the reality that someone has paved or graded the road in front of your home.

Indeed. But he did not to it for ME. He did it for himself.

That is the beauty of the market and division of labor. Each works for his own sake, but all benefit.

ruveyn

Thee is no guarantee that selfish behavior will have generally universal benefits. Each instance must be individually considered.

Living with a smoker is a whole different ballgame to encountering smoke in public, nobody is disputing that long term heavy exposure like that is harmful, what we're talking about is incidental exposure from people smoking in public, and that IS more of an annoyance than anything else. That you have personal respiratory issues is not grounds for changing public policy, that's where you get to vote with your wallet about which private businesses that you choose to patronize.

Destroys people for profit? Last I checked tobacco companies were in the business of providing a legal product for which there is widespread public demand, same thing for the liquor business and fast food joints. Businesses sell these products because people want them, that's THEIR choice to make, not a bunch of busybodies who want to mind everyone else's business. Now if you want to talk about an industry that destroys people for profit, we can talk about the prison business and drug prohibition; or how about the alcohol prohibition that got that whole ball rolling?

In a different thread I might take on the idea that small government is anarchy, but this is neither the time or the place. Personally, I find smoking related ills to be preferable to the level of government control necessary to prevent them. If people want to shorten their lives through their consumption habits, that's none of your or my business. I'm not the one mentioning criminals here either, you can take up that piece of hyperbole with Sand.



And they can choose whether or not to accept a job that allows smoking, that is up to the employees and the employer, not a third party in the form of government. I don't get to join the firefighters and then complain that I have to work with fire; why does someone get to take a job at a smoky bar and then b*tch about the smoke?

Legalize drugs and the vast majority of the violence and exploitation goes away, it is not the drugs that are the problem but society's reaction to them. Make smoking difficult and costly enough and you're going to see a similar black market spring up, with all the social ills that come with it, and all the deaths and destruction of lives will be on the heads of the nannies and those who support them.

There are no guarantees --- period. So your remark is irrelevant.

ruveyn

That intemperate use of drugs(which includes tobacco) is bad for the individual and economically a heavy burden on society is indisputable. The current methods of discouraging the use is brutal and stupid and probably causes as much or more misery than the drugs themselves. It is an unsolved problem and ignoring it does nothing to help anybody.

Given the current track record of government's "paying attention", ignoring what people do to themselves does in fact seem to be the more helpful option.

Your obvious distrust of any joint social efforts is basically a step towards chaos. I am not satisfied with many government programs which are admittedly subject to waste and corruption and oppression but if humans are determined to live in a social context then these problems must be solved socially in some way.

There are pretty tough laws on public drunkness, drinking and driving as well as selling poisoned food to unwitting costumers. The problem with analogies to "junk food" is that the junk food harms you and - at worst - causes psychological distress to your close circle of friends and family. Public smoking can harm anyone - indiscriminantly and without their consent.

I don't distrust joint social efforts per se, what I have a problem with is people claiming that simply being in a majority gives them some sort of authority over others. It is not my experience that people in groups make better decisions than individuals, and I feel that it's better to accept the evils that come from individualism than the evils of bureaucratic overreach. I'll emphasize it again, especially where controlling things like drugs and alcohol is concerned it has been pretty well established that the attempts of society to "solve" these "problems" are in fact far worse for everyone than the original "problems" themselves. Alcohol prohibition killed untold numbers of people and fueled gangsterism for decades, millions dead or destroyed can be laid at the feet of drug prohibition. The way I see it, it would be better for everyone if society kept it's solutions to itself.

Since drug use of any kind and especially for recreational purposes inevitably leads to excesses and great personal tragedies that are taken advantage of by rather vicious organizations. If there is not some sort of oversight and assuredly social and medical support for afflicted individuals, antisocial behavior and crime can be a huge problem. I agree that the present operations are probably more detrimental socially and financially than legalization of drugs. The prison system is overflowing with people caught with a few grains of some narcotic to a totally insane result. But I doubt a total hands off policy would work either. But even the legalization of the rather innocent marijuana is proving almost impossible while the harder drugs look totally unlikely to be legalized.

So the hands off policy employed by many EU countries has absolutely nothing to do with their generally low crime rates?

Or how about Portugal, which eliminated all criminal penalties for drug possession and use back in 2001, care to comment?

Here's a few articles on that, in case you hadn't heard:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nalization



http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 46,00.html



Bold is mine.



See the articles on Portugal above about total legalization.

The situation in the US is changing rapidly as far as the perception of drug legalization goes, we may not be quite there yet but the political sands are shifting in that direction, as much because the states are out of money as for any other reason. My own state had several ballot initiatives this year not quite make it that would have not only legalized marijuana but would have had the state selling it out of their liquor store monopoly. We even had it come up in our state congress, so someone from one of the mainstream parties has to have endorsed the idea. The greater point though, is that regardless of the political reality legalization or at least decriminalizing is the right thing to do, and hopefully happens sooner than later.