oj-

If the anti-smoking hysteria and the ham handed enforcement that goes along with it can be justified as a more efficient way to control government entitlements we are in deep trouble.

Ever hear of prohibition?

Tom:

Yes. Prohibition was a worthwhile experiment that succeeded fairly well--in terms of reducing alcohol associated disease and social pathologies, like spousal abuse--however there is an important social component to drinking that made trying to ban it entirely unwise and it ultimately failed.

oj-

The ant-smoking crusade will have effects that I believe will disapoint even the most zealous puritans, namely the further weakening of private property rights and, ultimately, the freedom of contract. Anything that diminishes the liberty of the individual for some abstract or hoped for good, especially in light of tradition and custom should be acted upon with caution and restraint.

The social component you speak about regarding alcohol is a feeble excuse.

It's worth noting that in David Brin's near-future novel one of the main characters makes her living digitally removing all traces of smoking from the great movies of the twentieth century.

Abstract? You deny the health-effects of smoking?

Abstract as any utopian regulation in the sense of engineering some hoped for "smoke-free world". Alcohol has health effects, fast food, salt, internal-combustion engines, fossil fuels, too much sun, high taxes, etc., etc.

Americans have used tobacco for 300 years. Nobody forces it on you. It is a personal decision and so it should remain.

No one has a right to destroy their own health--we're still responsible for each other.

You'll have noted we limit all, or nearly all, of the things you listed and use social pressure on the others.

oj-

Social pressure and the state's power of coercion are two different things. You have avoided the question regarding property rights. What do you say?

Yesterdays NY Post (I believe) ran a story describing the death of three cigarette smugglers/bootleggers in Brooklyn. Smuggling is a traditional American response to high taxes. Tax them as high as you want but be ready for the black market and the economic response. Deal with the reality or make them illegal. The answer is ordered liberty.

Tom:

Property rights are secondary to life itself.

The number of things you can't do with or on your own property is nearly infinite.

We all would also be better off if we made the wearing of safety helmets at all times mandatory. No one has the right to inccur a head injury that could be avoided by the minor inconvenience of wearing a helmet - we're still responsible for each other. On a tangential note, can you name five great writers who didn't smoke?

Mr. Judd;

I think Tom C. makes excellent points, with regard to which, when you call for banning baseball, which is responsible for the for the largest number of sports-related fatalities in children ages, 5 to 14 years old then I'll take this tirade seriously.

oj-

When you restrict the free, lawful and voluntary transactions between free and independent citizens within a place of business (and which may have taken place for years, i.e. Fraunces Tavern) under the guise of protecting them from themselves or minimizing the cost of some entitlement to the state, the idea of or reason for a limited government becomes nonsense and the justification for restrictions on individual freedom are without limit. You have become dependent on the benevolance of those in power.

Carter:

Which is why we require seatbelts, safety seats for kids, and bike helmets.

AOG:

But baseball is not intrinsically dangerous and has redeeming social value. All cigarettes do is kill people and make them and their environs stink.

Tom:

Which is the same argument for whorehouses, crack dens, etc. We don't allow them though becauise they add nothing to our society and do harmm people.

Safety is the highest good? Man, I'm glad I grew up before all of this silliness overtook our common sense. My brothers and I would have been on clonidine and ritalin and we just thought we were having fun.

oj-

Then make tobacco illegal, OK?

oj-

If baseball is the largest cause of sports realted deaths amonf 5-14 year olds it is by definition an intrinsically dangerous sport, at least for 5-14 year olds. What boys that age learn from playing is worth the danger.

Tom:

I'd have no objections to making cigarettes and chewing tobacco illegal, though I think its preferable to tax them heavily, forbid it in public, allow discrimination--especially in employment, insurance coverage and health treatment--and other such measures.

Tom:

In re baseball: for American boys 5-14 there is no significant cause of death. That Baseball may rank highest among the sports deaths means very little--kind of like North Vietnam being the most dangerous nation for the US because it won a war--though we should obviously examine why. One thing we've done is require helmets--even for major leaguers. Another interesting problem is that when boys get hit in the chest with a ball it can stop their heartbeat. This would seem eminently avoidable--perhaps via a chest protector of some kind.

Orrin:

"All cigarettes do is kill people and make them and their environs stink."

I am going to go out on a very shaky limb here.

I don't think it is that simple. Nicotine is a bowel relaxant and I was once told by my fiercely anti-smokong doctor that few smokers contract bowel cancer. I believe the effect of smoking on concentration and creativity is well-documented. As to smoking and weight:

"To much fat offends the eye,
And lead to heart attack and stroke,
Doctors tell the overweight,
"You'd be better off to smoke.""

I believe stats show lifetime smokers live an average of about five-seven years less than non-smokers. Not quite the Black Plague the anti-asmoking activists (who all vote Democrat)would have us believe.

Peter B. I'm an anti smoking activist in that I've walked out of many a restaraunt because of smoking and haven't voted Democratic since last year; I often vote a split ticket, "all politics are local."

That said, all the posturing above is inconsequential. The position must be that medical conditions caused by the abuse of drugs,tobacco, gluttonny or alcohol should not be covered by public safety nets or recompensed by those providing the opportunities for choice.

And that said I'll have another drink and fully accept the consequences of my choice.

I'd have no objections to making religon illegal, though I think its preferable to tax it heavily, forbid it in public, allow discrimination--especially in employment, insurance coverage and health treatment--and other such measures.

Tyranny is fun, isn't it?

Carter:

Religion obviously has redeeming qualities, while cigarettes have none. But if the majority wishhes to do away with religion they will. Instead they wish to be rid of cigarettes. Democracy is fun.

Peter:

Nearly all lung cancer is caused by cigarette smoking. I can't find statistics handy, but assume your 5-7 years difference is right and the average age of someone dies of smoking-related causes is in their late 60's, early 70s. They lost 10% of their life by smoking, an activity with no redeeming values of any kind but one which is highly addictive. How can a society that doesn't try to intervene between them and the instruments of their intentional deaths be considered decent?

OJ:

You make it sound all so compassionate, but how can you at the same time talk about how highly addictive it is and then talk about intentional deaths? Vice is vice, and I agree a decent society must control and cajole, but what arguments justify punitive zero tolerance for smoking, but not alcohol or gambling? No one ever smoked a pack of cigarettes and then hopped into a car and ran down a child for it. Despite the expense, kids don't go without food or the rent money because of it. Not all smokers die young, some enjoy it and some limit it to relatively "safe" intake levels. Is it smoke you object to or the idea of smoking?

Genecis:

So would you deny a hero of Iwo Jima assisted medical care because he smoked? I understand the basic rationale of your position, but you are inviting a bureauctatic tyranny when you suggest the cost of medical care should be based upon a review of lifestyle. What about the obese, the lazy, the problem drinker, the extreme sport participant? Smoking is beyond the pale today, but part of that is reactive fad, not dispassionate analysis. There will be something else in twenty years.

And seriously, are you sure that the cost argument holds when you consider the medical costs of all those super healthy octogenarians with Alzeimer's, knee replacements, cataracts, etc. Are you confident your argument on cost is sound and isn't just a cover for moral punishment?

I think your position is a sound argument for general personal responsibility for medical care(as opposed to ex post facto assessments of what medical conditions could have been avoided), but even then, that is more moral than economic. Up here, under medicare, the anti-smoking, pro health ethos is at least as strong as in the States. Indeed, we are perhaps the first generation in history bound and determined to die in perfect health.

Peter:

I'd ban gambling too.

Orrin:

Ok, can we ban extra-marital sex while we are at it?(all that expensive counselling). And jogging over 40? (knee replacements and back surgery). Please tell me we can ban jogging. Can we ban Harry?(headache tablets).

Hey, this could be a lot of fun.

Peter:

Yes, extramarital sex should be recriminalized.

How about birth control?

After all, my point in the essay that started all this fine controversy was that the Puritans of the seventeenth century had a much better handle on what is sinful and dangerous to the lives and souls of men then us.

Paul:

Modern man does not have a soul, only a body. Sin can only be defined as against the body.

Paul:

Agreed. But why does their banning more make it wrong for us to ban some?

Smoking is not a sin.

Paul:

Of course it is. Any activity which serves no useful purpose and leads intentionally to your own death is a sin. Your life is not yours to waste.

Orrin:

If I didn't know you better, I'd say that first sentence was the statement of a radical Darwinist. Couldn't I say the same about climbing Mount Everest? (which Petrarch saw as a sin)

Peter:

I'm the most radical kind of Darwinist--I take him seriously. Smoking, for example, which reduces fertility, life span, etc., is a behavior that's inexplicable from a Darwinist perspective, although the deracinated Darwinist of our day will manufacture an argument about how it enhances survivability..