Author Topic: Is this freedom? (Read 3118 times)

Airhead · « **Reply #30 on:** December 31, 2002, 11:32:35 AM »

The smoking ban in public places was put into place under the guise of protecting the rights of workers from hazardous working conditions. Basically it's just like requiring guards or safety switches on machinery and has nothing to do with individual rights.

The problem with "allowing" people to waive their workers' rights and work in places that allow smoking is that "waiving" rights would become an unspoken condition for employment.

As far as second hand smoke goes, babies of women who smoke during pregnacy have lower birth weight babies and children where smoking is allowed in the home suffer from more respatory ailments than children who are raised in non smoking homes.

miko2d · « **Reply #31 on:** December 31, 2002, 11:34:44 AM »

Wlfgng: actually our laws say a restaraunt IS a public place owned by a private person. big difference.

Right - depriving a person from free use of his property means depriving him of his freedom. Freedom by definition is unrestricted disposal of one's domain and ability to transfer that domain voluntarily.
We are not discussing the legality of the act in this thread - the smoking ban was as certainly legal according to our laws as gassing the jews was in nazi germany. Or declaring women public property in some communist experiments. Majority wish and such.

Toad: You're free to smoke. You're just not free to cause someone else to smoke your cig with you.

Absolutely, so preventing a people from voluntarily congregaring on private property for smoking but allowing them to smoke on public property like street violates freedoms of property owners and pedestrians.

Suave: Stupid people pass stupid laws.

Not that simple. The people are not stupid. They just have different values. And respect for freedom or life free form despotism is not one of them. In fact, most of them just believe that society is a primary entity consisting of insignificant cogs ratehr than collection of individuals with their needs and desires. So they act in the interests of such society - as they see them.

miko

davidpt40 · « **Reply #32 on:** December 31, 2002, 11:40:06 AM »

Second hand smoke causes 100,000 cases of cancer each year. I'm all for smoking, just as long as I don't have to breathe the putrid, cancer-causing smoking that smokers force upon other people.

AKIron · « **Reply #33 on:** December 31, 2002, 11:43:49 AM »

To extrapolate a bit on Toad's analogy, (or maybe distort is a better word) I'd be satisfied if it was legal to punch a smoker in the nose everytime I was assaulted by his foul stench.

miko2d · « **Reply #34 on:** December 31, 2002, 11:58:06 AM »

davidpt40: Second hand smoke causes 100,000 cases of cancer each year.

Obviously, making anyone inhale other people's smoke against their will is a violation and intrusion. We should really stop it.
As a consolation for now, look at the benefits you get. Those people who die from cancer - a majority of them - die relatively inexpensively when their productive years are over and from benefit to society they become a burden.

You do not have to subcidise their extremely expensive old-age healthcare, social security/pension benefits, share overcrowded roads with them - and smoke fumes from their cars. Let alone risk accident caused by senile people. Their children can work productively and/or have more grandchildren rather than wasting time/resources/sanity overseing slow decay of their senile parents.
Also, this way the people less resistant to addition tend to remove themselves from the gene-pool this way - reducing the chance that your grand-grand child will inherit their genes and will more likely be an addict, alcoholic, etc.

Oh, and the sheer amount of smoking-related cancer cases makes cost-effective the cancer research that benefits the rest of us who can get other cases of cancer - too rare to be worth a research by themselves.

As long as it's voluntary and non-intrusive, smoking is fine with me.

miko

Eagler · « **Reply #35 on:** December 31, 2002, 12:00:33 PM »

last Nov election we passed a no smokin law too

cept in stand alone bars

I & anyone I know voted for it

miko2d · « **Reply #36 on:** December 31, 2002, 12:01:55 PM »

AKIron: To extrapolate a bit on Toad's analogy, (or maybe distort is a better word) I'd be satisfied if it was legal to punch a smoker in the nose everytime I was assaulted by his foul stench.

More productive would be to design some harmless gaseous compound that would turn into vile skunky intolerable stuff after passing through the burning sigarette into the smoker's mouth.
Any chemist's out there?

miko

AKIron · « **Reply #37 on:** December 31, 2002, 12:05:13 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by miko2d
[B As a consolation for now, look at the benefits you get. Those people who die from cancer - a majority of them - die relatively inexpensively when their productive years are over and from benefit to society they become a burden.
[/B]

You're kidding right?!? Health care costs for diseases such as heart disease and lung cancer can cost more than the idividual may have paid in taxes his whole life. Who pays for that?

Wlfgng · « **Reply #38 on:** December 31, 2002, 12:49:04 PM »

Quote

the smoking ban was as certainly legal according to our laws as gassing the jews was in nazi germany.

yeah that's comparable... NOT

Curval · « **Reply #39 on:** December 31, 2002, 12:58:06 PM »

Again...it isn't smoking that is the point here.

I have read all about Americans having the right to bear firearms..ad nauseum. I have also seen those same gun owners snipe at Beet1e's home country laws that were put in place to try to protect the community from gun crime. Mr. Toad, as already mentioned, suggested that knives should be banned as they are just as dangerous somehow. These snipes were all in an effort to show up Britain as trying to nanny or "coddle" its citizenship.

Now we have a law being passed in New York...and countrywide by the sounds of it...which is nothing but a great big nanny job.

..and those same gun owners are here in support of it.

Consistancy in your arguments would be nice..that's all.

...oh, and by the way...they tried this anti-smoking law thingy in Toronto a few years back. The drop in bar and restaurant patronage forced a repeal of those laws.

I give it a year in New York.

Wlfgng · « **Reply #40 on:** December 31, 2002, 01:03:07 PM »

Quote

I give it a year in New York.

I agree.. it (smoking ban) only really works well where the people want it (I.E. here).
there are probably more atheletes here per capita than most places.. and more people that do not smoke than average. (in the US)
so it's supported by most that live here

now the New Yorkers that visit squeak a bit.. but they soon get the hint

Airhead · « **Reply #41 on:** December 31, 2002, 01:45:16 PM »

Curval, a couple of points tho if I may- The smoking ban is not a ban on posession of cigarettes, it's simply a ban on endangering the health of workers in a workplace. People will still have the right to smoke, just will no longer have the right to endanger the health of workers in restaurants, bars, whatever.

A gun ban seeks to remove guns entirely from a society. For a smoking ban to be comperable to a gun ban we would have to ban the sale and posession of cigarettes entirely.

A better example of a "nannying" law might be helmet laws, assuming a "nannying" law is imposed because "it's for our own good." Personally I don't run while carrying scissors in my house and I don't need "Big Mama," the successor to "Big Brother," reminding me not to.

Curval · « **Reply #42 on:** December 31, 2002, 01:57:20 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Airhead
A better example of a "nannying" law might be helmet laws, assuming a "nannying" law is imposed because "it's for our own good."

I agree, but unfortunately Yahoo didn't have an article on that topic today.

JimBear · « **Reply #43 on:** December 31, 2002, 02:02:06 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by AKIron
To extrapolate a bit on Toad's analogy, (or maybe distort is a better word) I'd be satisfied if it was legal to punch a smoker in the nose everytime I was assaulted by his foul stench.

If I am in your house, your car or an inclosed space that you have no option in which to be, I could agree.

Outside, in a public space or a consensual meeting spot where such activity is allowed.... well, ya welcome to try

lazs2 · « **Reply #44 on:** December 31, 2002, 02:08:04 PM »

agree with airhead... a better example would be helmet laws.. Federal government strongarmed the states into passing those laws... same for seatbelt laws.

smoking... well... I think private property should be... private property but... if it is a workmans comp issue then I can see some point to banning smoking in a private place.... I had not heard what MT said about if you have no employees then the ban does not apply... this seems very sensible.
lazs