ka@spanky.UUCP (08/09/83)
Over in net.flame, Laura lists three arguments against smoking with which she disagrees. 1: people who smoke are killing themselves with lung cancer. the government should do something about this. Laura replies that it's not the business of government to prevent people from making mistakes. I'm agree in this particular case. 2: smoking is harmful to others. Laura argues that the evidence supporting this claim is inconclusive, and that therefore there is no justification for banning public smoking. I am willing to accept Laura's evaluation of the evidence, but I don't agree with her conclusion. Laura states the basic issue quite well: Of course there are conflicts.... Smokers restrict other people's freedom for clean air. Militant non-smokers restrict a smoker's freedom to smoke. Therein lies the problem. I cannot accept Laura's resolution of this conflict. I believe that she would agree that, if my health is harmed by an individual or corporation which knowingly emits harmful substances into the air, that my rights (freedoms) have been curtailed. I assume that she would go farther and argue that the government may pass laws to protect my rights, even if these laws impinge upon some else's freedom to pollute. The gist of her argument seems to be that this reasoning doesn't apply when it is not known for certain that the substances are harmful. But surely if I am harmed, my freedom has been curtailed regardless of whether it was known in advance that I would be harmed. If the government can prohibit certain violations if my rights, why can't it prohibit possible or probable vio- lations of those rights? The only interpretation of Laura's argument that I can accept is that, when balancing the rights of smokers vs. nonsmokers, less weight should be given to the potential health hazards posed to non- smokers that would be given if we were sure such hazards actually existed. This leaves us with the task of actually balancing these rights or freedoms. One rule I use for resolving such conflicts is: People have the right to do anything they want to as long as they don't interfere with the rights (freedoms) of anybody else. This rule can be viewed as the supremacy of the status quo. That is, in the normal course of events I will have a certain amount of good health; if someone performs an action which interferes with my health then that person is interfering with the status quo. By the rule, my right to be healthy should take precedence over somebody else's right to interfere with my health. In the case of smoking I agreed that the right to be healthy should be discounted before being compared to the rights of smokers because the threat to health was uncertain. Never the less, assuming the probability that nonsmokers are harmed by ambient smoke is reasonably good (say 50%), I still have to come down on the side of the nonsmoker. The right to health is rather fundamental since curtailment of it can have such a drastic effect upon other freedoms. 3: Smoking stinks. i don't care whether it is harmful or not, I hate it. I mailed my comments on this one rather than posting because I didn't understand much of what she was trying to say. It did seem however, that she recognized some right not to have obnoxous people blow smoke in your face; she just didn't believe that that right should be enforced by the law. Kenneth Almquist
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (08/10/83)
The reply to Kenneth Almquist, who was commenting on an article I posted to net.flame will probably be intelligable only to those who caught the original article. Therefore I am posting my reply in net.flame. People who are interested in 'societal consensus as a basis for law' (or merely wonder how my brain works) may find it relavant. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura