Funny you didn’t respond to the drunk driving post…
Yes I have been listening to, er, reading all the words your saying, er, typing.
Your case boils down to…
I don’t like smoking.
Your arguments range from…
It will kill me <- so will drunk drivers, and too much sugar
It annoys me <- so will drunk drivers
It’s rude <- same with drunk drivers and people that up your medical insurance
If you start legistlating behavior you don’t like, what will happen when someone else passes some legislation against behavior YOU don’t like?
And you know your arguments are invalid as you only quote the portion of a post that you feel you can rebutt instead of rebutting all the arguments of an entire post, vis-a-vie, attacking the sugar related arguments, but not responding to the alcohol related arguments.
You can’t have it both ways.
Actually, it’s not more common than i thought. I’m not surprised at all at the figures you quoted. The figures i gave were merely for illustrative purposes.
And your figures really don’t address the argument that i was making. You ask at what point we recognise “that alcohol is an inherently unhealthy drug which adversely affects many non drinker,” but you precisely miss the point. The actual, physical act of taking alcohol does not adversely affect non-drinkers. It is only the behavior of certain drinkers, after taking alcohol, that affects others. With smoking, on the other hand, the very act of taking the drug has unpleasant and unhealthy consequences for non-users. So, with a smoker in a bar, the very first puff and every subsequent puff has detrimental effects on other people. With alcohol, on the other hand, plenty of people can spend time drinking in a bar and have no adverse consequences for those around them.
The difference is that, with smoking, the effect is a direct result of simply being exposed to the habit. With alcohol, the effect is a result of being exposed to the unsocial behavior of someone who cannot control the habit. With alcohol, we can legislate against such behavior and punish things like drunk driving and familial abuse. But with smoking, the behavior of puffing away is, in and of itself, enough to make the atmosphere unpleasant for non-smokers.
I’ll repeat, AGAIN, that i’m really not a strong supporter of banning smoking in bars etc. But there is a qualitative difference between smoking and drinking and their effects on non-participants that simply citing alcohol-abuse statistics does not erase.
The logic DOES apply to drinking. In case you haven’t noticed, there have been some very tough laws passed against driving drunk. Since you bring it up, let’s apply the pro-smoking arguments (that have been made in this thread) to the situation of drinking alcohol. Ostensibly, by “smoker’s logic”, I should have the right to drive drunk, because it’s my own “private” car, and the gummint don’t have no business telling me what to do. And if you don’t like it, you can open up your own private “non-drinker’s” road for non-drinkers to drive on. Nobody’s forcing you to drive a car on the same road as the drunk people. If there are enough people who don’t drink and drive, “supply and demand” should take care of the problem automatically. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
We learned via prohibition that it’s a mistake to have an outright ban on drinking. So, yes - I am allowed to drink. But my right to drink ENDS where YOUR right not to have me crash into your car begins. See the connection yet?
Here’s the connection: you ARE allowed to smoke. But your right to smoke ends where MY right to not have to breathe YOUR smoke begins. Smoking is only regulated to the extent that it affects other people. I agree that nobody should ever come to your home and tell you not to smoke. But when you hurt OTHER people, then we should be able to selectively regulate such actions, just as we SELECTIVELY regulate when and where you can drink alcohol.
The main reason that the smoking/drinking analogy doesn’t work is that we are not discussing laws to ban the ingestion of nicotine; rather we are discussing laws to control the smoke that comes out of the cigarette. The only way the analogy would make sense would be if I took my drink and poured it down YOUR throat.
It took me a minute to find the flaw in your argument. You are merely pointing to a temporal anomaly. As the effects of sugar and drunk people tend to have an impact on your life at some amount of time after their consumption, as opposed to the exact moment of consumption then they are okay.
So now your argument is, I don’t mind if people do things that may harm me in the future, as long as they don’t harm me immediately.
No, you miss the point entirely. Look at my post, right above blowero’s, where i explain what the issue is.
The fact is, smoke in the air is a natural and unavoidable by-product of smoking. Drunk-driving, violence, etc. are not inevitable consequences of drinking, however. It is possible to drink without having any effect on those around you, but it is NOT possible to smoke in a bar without affecting non-smokers.
Those who drink and then drive or commit acts of violence should be punished for those acts. But, the unpleasantness caused by smoking occurs whether the smoker is a “good” person or a “bad” one, a considerate person or a non-considerate one, a light smoker or a heavy one. The actual act of drinking has no direct and inevitable by-product that is placed in the atmosphere to the detriment of those in the surrounding area. The only analogy i can think of is if we allow drinkers to urinate in the bar, instead of using the toilet. Would you support such a move?
Y’know, that is the second time you have accused me of trolling. I am not trolling. I am merely trying to understand why you take the position of legistlating behavior instead of accepting personal responsibility.
My view point is that smoking in bars should not be banned. Your view point is that smoking in bars should be made illegal.
I try to show how silly it is to create legislation to control a particular behavior when, if carried to it’s (to me) logical conclusion, you will end up with a whole series of nonsense laws outlawing the consumption of alcohol and possibly sugar.
Mehendo says that there is no direct effect from the consumption of alcohol, but I argue that your insurance rates (life and vehicle) will go up whenever a drunk driver causes damage or loss of life.
I don’t think you’re a troll, but you demonstrate a distinct lack of reading comprehension if you truly think that i say “there is no direct effect from the consumption of alcohol.” If you return to my posts on this thread, you’ll see that i say nothing of the sort, and that i very explicitly state my belief that drinking can be the cause of social problems such as drunk-driving, violence, familial neglect, etc., etc. I also concede that drinking can have secondary effects, such as rising insurance premiums.
I’m not sure whether you’re wilfully misrepresenting my position, or if you just do not understand the logical reasoning behind my argument.
If you look back over my posts, you’ll see that i do not advocate banning smoking in bars. However, the position i take is that there IS, in fact, a qualitative difference between smoking and drinking.
The difference is that THE VERY ACT OF SMOKING, the physical act of sucking on a cigarette and blowing out the smoke, is detrimental to the health of non-smokers in the immediate vicinity. By contrast, the physical act of drinking, the lifting of a glass and swallowing some alcohol, has no direct adverse effect on anyone but the drinker. The negative effects of drinking on non-drinkers are caused only by a relatively small sub-set of the drinking population, and we have laws in place to curb the behavior of these people (anti-drunk driving laws; laws regarding abuse, etc.)
A smoker has an adverse effect on those around him or her from the very first puff, and a smoker can do very little to reduce the effect that his or her habit has on others if they are in an enclosed space like a bar. A drinker, on the other hand, can take his or her first (and second and third) drink without having any effect at all on others in the bar.
Is this too difficult a concept? The notion that the actual ACT of taking each of these drugs (nicotine vs. alcohol) has different direct results on non-participants. I’ll repeat AGAIN, this is not saying that alcohol has no effect on non-drinkers, but when it does have such an effect, this is the result of behavioral problems on the part of drinkers rather than a direct by-product of the ACT itself, as in the case of smoking.
Well, if you’re basing your position on the ridiculous belief that second-hand smoke has no adverse health effects, then i see little point in debating with you any further.
And the thread on peanuts is relevant to this debate HOW?
But this has never been the issue for me. You know, you complained about being called a troll earlier when you felt that it wasn’t warranted. Well, i now complain about you (again) misrepresenting my position. I’m not sure if you fail to read my posts properly, or if you’re just as thick as two short planks. In my last post i said, not for the first time,
Do you get it? I don’t advocate passing a law to deal with the situation, despite your constant attempts to attribute such an argument to me. As i said before, your reading comprehension skills need quite a bit of work.
