Ok this is not another legalization thread. More of a criminalization/de-criminalization thread.
Connecticut Legislators just passed the Bill to ban smoking in All restaurants and Bar’s. It goes to the House today I believe. California is starting a precident, that landed in the least likely place, conservative Connecticut.
Is it only me or has anyone else seen more bids to ban Tobacco lately and an increase in the decriminalization bids of Marijuana? Maybe they are just making the news more lately, but it seems tobacco is gaining more attention as a lurid killer, and marijuana is losing some of it’s stigma at the same time.
The major discriminations against medicinal use of Marijuana are well documented, and the major downfalls of tobacco are well documented too, I personally believe it comes down to which one is the lesser of two evils. If there is such a thing in this situation.
What are your opinions about baning cigaretts in restaurants and pubs? And how do you feel about the decriminalization of marijuana for medicinal or personal uses?
I’m for both for the same reasons: what you do in the privacy of your own home should be legal if it causes no harm to others. But if my smoking causes you harm, then I shouldn’t do it. And I do consider it harmful when I’m about to take a bite out of a great meal and as I’m inhaling the aroma of food I suck down a lungful of smoke and cough. Blech!
Unfortunately this sorta conflicts my my libertarian leanings when it comes to legislating everything under the sun. I would have thought that basic supply and demand would have started to swing in the favor of smoke-free restaurants over the last 10 years, which would solve the problem of cigarettes.
-Tcat
What are you supposed to use to keep your joints burning if they outlaw tobacco? Have your legislators thought of that?
refusal, I think it’s time for the American legislators to undertake a serious study to examine those sort of problems.
You’ll see in the next budget:
$1 000 000 - Doritos
$5 000 000 - Salsa
I’m for legalizing of both.
I’ve never seen anybody argue that tobacco should be illegal. Nobody would support that. There’s a strong drive - probably stronger nowhere than here in New York, where you can’t smoke in public places now, period (I’m on Wall Street now, and there are always flocks of people smoking right outside their doors) - to get smoke out of the faces of people who don’t want to smell it or smell like it. I support that, though it’s getting silly perhaps.
But I’ve never seen anyone try to ban tobacco, it wouldn’t make any sense. Millions of people are doing it, so criminalizing it would make it as difficult to deal with as drugs: there’d be a black market, purity and safety and privacy issues, etc.
Some say that if pot is illegal, cigarettes should be as well. I think that makes sense, but that argument usually means “just legalize both.” Your post sort of implies it’s one or the other, and it’s not. Plenty of people who do one will do the other. I think cigarettes are more dangerous in a lot of ways, and the industry has rightly been taken to task for what it’s done over the years, but that’s not the same as criminalization. Cigarette taxes are very high right now, that’s as close to banning as you’re likely to get. If it doesn’t make sense to criminalize pot and legalize cigarettes, the opposite can’t be said to make much sense either.
I go to a lot of concerts, although this kind of stuff isn’t very strongly enforced at shows. Not worth the trouble. I think smoking sections are ridiculous and pretty ineffective, and I’m used to it not being an issue since NY has been at the forefront of the ‘get it out of my face’ movement. I hate smelling smoke and too much of it makes me nuts. I sometimes have trouble breathing later, and it sometimes upsets my stomach. So I don’t miss it.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never taken a puff of anything and I don’t plan to.
Marijuana. More dangerous to the national debt than we all thought.
I am not sure that a flip-flop is quite what is happening. After all I don’t think many people are proposing mandatory minimum jail time for tobacco distribution; and the various attempts by state governments to repeal Marijuana laws, even if passed, would still leave the federal laws on the books.