shuggy's blog
All this claptrap about Liberal philosophy etc etc
is a bit tedious and ignorant.
The smoking ban is the work of the World Health Organization who wants to replace tobacco --the best antidepressant known to man--with prescription drugs at ten prices. It's part of an evil conspiracy to set up a worldwide medical dictatorship--not for anybody's health but the power and profits of the Medical Establishment.
They don't care whether you like it or not and they damn sure don't care whether your clothes stink or not.
Ummmm, ok - whatever.
I've never been that bothered by the smoking ban itself - it's really only a hassle in winter.
What does annoy me is the giant torrents of bullshit about it - as if we'll all spend our time in the pub running half-marathons around the bar and the taps in the toilets will dispense pink champagne.
Without a doubt though, the worst thing is listening to non-smokers telling me how good it is for everyone's health and how I should love it.
Seriously, you've won, you've got your ban. Now, please shut up.
I'm delighted with the smoking ban to be honest. I've managed to give up
going out completely and have consequently managed to smoke a lot more at home with my mate Jamie. With the money I'm saving on cheaper booze, I can now smoke Camel instead of Winston too.
I know it's not healthy, but peoples bodies belong to them and they should be entitled to smoke, roll themselves in barbed wire, wear flares and tank tops, whatever.
Like minded individuals should be able to smoke in pubs and private clubs. People who don't want to smoke don't have to work there. People who do want to smoke at work could work there instead.
Without a doubt though, the worst thing is listening to non-smokers telling me how good it is for everyone's health and how I should love it.
My commiserations - that sounds really annoying. I don't get this. I get, "I think it's great - I can wear my cardy/dress/or even - would you believe it? - bra to the pub and it's still fresh enough to wear the next day". Clearly I know people who are more concerned with their laundry than their lungs. Don't know if that's a good thing or not.
I must be a complete and utter bastard then - the smoking ban will be seen as one of the best and most significant public health reforms since mass vacinations and smoke control orders.
Exactly the same obtuse, illogical, sociopathic arguments were made against those earlier reforms as are being used now against the smoking bans.
A wee bit of self-awreness and humilioty is needeed from some of these pro-smoking zealots. If they smoke, they thereby demonstrate one or more of a range of shortcomings in their social and cognative abilities - take your choice from being a physical addict, weak-minded and self-destructive, anti-social (especially in places where other non-addicts gather to drink and eat,)uncaring and even having a lethal effect on your own family and friends etc. etc. etc.
It really is getting tedious hearing smoking addicts come out with their pretended and suddenly 'discovered' arguments about freedom of choice etc. One of the most inane and self-excusing arguments I have heard recently from smoking addicts is that in Scotland 'we' are responsible for 'their' children suffering higher levels of smoke intake because 'we' are forcing 'them' to smoke more at home!
Just mature a little guys and gals, realise you are physical addicts that need help, accept the help and get off the weed -you really are nice people underneath it all and just have to discover that. The bad guys are neither you nor us non-smokers - they are the drug pushing tobacco companies (get in there and sue 'em for what they have done!)
I must be a complete and utter bastard then
Well, certainly lacking a sense of humour, on this occasion at least. You haven't even attempted to engage with any point I made so there's no point in responding to anything else you've said here.
Might I just add, in full-on pedant mode, that there is no ban on smoking in public places, as Clark puts it, but a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. The way some people are going on about it, you'd think you could be arrested for smoking whilst walking down the street.
"there is indeed no liberal case whatsoever that can be made for disallowing smoking in public places where only consenting adults may be affected, so I entirely agree."
Is there really not a single liberal argument for making particular harmful, highly addictive substnaces (like opium and tobacco) illegal? Is there not a single liberal argument for making a potentially hazardous working environment impossible? Is that true? Or am I not sufficiently sensitive to your sarcasm?
May I add that, as a New Yorker, the smoking ban (and tax increase) here made it very easy for me to quit smoking. Part shame, part inconvenience, part logical choice, part financial. Dare I say it? I am SO MUCH HAPPIER! And I am also less of a burden on my (non existent) health system. (Is that a liberal argument?) What some of you fail to notice, is that practically, these measures have the effect of getting people to quit. Which is good.
Of course, now that I've revealed myself to be a zealous convert, my general position is weakened.
Of course, now that I've revealed myself to be a zealous convert, my general position is weakened.
Ah, the zeal of the convert. My purpose wasn't to deny it has some advantages; in a previous post I said so. It's just that these are public health/welfare arguments, not liberal ones - although I'm bearing in mind 'liberal' means something rather different in the States.
”The way some people are going on about it, you'd think you could be arrested for smoking whilst walking down the street.”
Shhh… What are you Katherine! A digruntled government whistle blower?
Just because you didn’t get offered a place in the cabinet - That info isn’t supposed to come out for ages yet.
Do I detect an impending capitulation? You will find that the terms on which I will accept your surrender are very lenient Shuggy, so don't hesitate...
Seriously tho, your point... "relax - it isn't that bad, and I say this as a hardcore smoker..." is the one I'd agree with most.
While I'm generally ambivalent on banning smoking (I really don't care that much either way) there are other 'other regarding actions' among my neighbours that I'd like to ban - ones that no-one else would agree with me on probably. And this is the point - the way that some latterday liberal saints portray this stuff as though it were the end of a thousand years of history.
Magna Carta - did she die in vain? Etc.
Really, it's just a negotiation that ends in a vote. I can't find it now, but there's a nice Isaiah Berlin quote about how the important liberties are the ones that keep you out of slavery, imprisonment or being brutalised. His notion of 'positive liberty'.
He argued that the rest of the things that we call liberties are illustrative metaphors (I wish I could find his quote because he said it much better.)
It seems to me that the right of elected politicians to occasionally impose annoying restrictions upon us is one that is worth defending. We can vote them out, and sometimes, you want a government to remove other people's liberties to improve upon your own. The smoking ban creates other welcome possibilities.
All of that said, I think that the mealy-mouthed 'health and safety' argument for banning smoking is a sign of a bigger sickness in the way that politicians behave. There are enough of them that want to ban it in encloses spaces to make the argument in principle, and not on this technicality.
I find a parallel here with the Iraq war. I would have probably been more supportive of it if TB had said "we are sending our army in to put a mass-murderer's head on a spike."
Elections would be a lot more meaningful if you thought that the people you vote for could actually exercise their prejudices, instead of having to mince around the heavily-lawyered pressure groups that oppose them.
PS - Re-reading the above comment, it looks like I'm defining Berlin's 'Positive Liberty' in that way. This is poor drafting on my part, but that half-remembered quote is a consequence that he drew from his notion of positive liberty.
Sorry about that now.
What about this. Would you prevent private companies from making work in coal mines safer for employees (limiting toxic gas fumes for example) because those employees were "adults" and therefore not compelled to work there?
What's the difference between those coal miners and the employees at your hypothetical private smoke clubs?
Is that not a liberal argument for a smoke ban in restaurants? I.e. making work conditions safer.
Shmuel,
Can we ban cars as well then?
"Can we ban cars as well then?"
Please respond to the coal mining analogy before making a new one.
Shmuel,
Like I said, I'm not that bothered about smoking either way. You can, of course, make the case for legislation to limit personal risk in any workplace, and ultimately, I suppose, we could all be working in spacesuits. Should schoolteachers be exposed to the bug-factory that is the junior-school classroom?
I'd just rather that the case were made without having to pussyfoot around the legalistic demands of pressure groups. For instance, I suspect that many of the MPs that have endorsed the smoking ban were less concerned with the heath & saftey arguments and more concerned with society's desire to positively influence society.
In this case, I think that a lot of politians think that this country would be a better place if fewer people smoked. A lot of smokers feel the same way, and many welcome the ban as a way of helping them give up.
I AM worried that it is no longer fashionable - or even acceptable under some liberal interpretations of democratic propriety - for people who are elected to exercise their prejudices.
Do the anti-smoke ban folk often sound a lot like the anti-gay marriage folk?
("Next we'll be sanctioning bestiality/incest/bigomy.")
You're comparing apples with oranges here Shmuel.
I want to vote for the kind of people who will not really get worked up about smoking bans but who will support liberal reform of marriage legislation.
And you may wish to vote differently on the smoking ban - good luck to you.
But it would be better if people who beleive in smoking bans get elected, push through the legislation on the grounds that they are in favour of smoking bans - and not on the slightly dishonest grounds that "it's nuffink to do with me guvnor - I had to vote for it - health and safety, y'see..."
i think the ban is silly!
because: 16 and 18 is not much of an age difference, you're still smoking no matter what age you start smoking at!
Mwah!xx
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