?
Reattempting parsing:
I get the syntax of the independent clause on the inside, but the containing clauses surrounding it seem to need at least one more predicate than they’ve got.
Grammar problem noted. 
My point is that all of these things give a person who uses them enjoyment. They create far more social problems than the mild enjoyment one may get from them. If a person says “OMG, NO! Don’t make tobacco/marijuana/sweet foods/alcohol illegal!” then that person likely has an unhealthy obsession with the product.
? Does it, though? AFAICT from the OP and subsequent posts, New Zealand’s legislation is phasing out the sale of cigarettes to younger people.
I don’t see any indication that they’re trying to make it illegal to actually consume a cigarette that you happen to have access to if you’re not in public. Am I missing something in the fine print?
Respectfully, I think that is an absurd distinction. If the sale of tobacco is illegal, and we can assume that it will be illegal at some point in the future for a 43 year old to give or sell tobacco to a 42 year old, then any acquisition of tobacco requires a violation of the law.
ETA: I guess unless you live on a NZ tobacco farm, which again, would likely be covered under a law unless the law is an absurdity.
You could say that about anything including cheese, cars or keeping pets.
Which makes it kind of useless as a yardstick for comparing different degrees of personal-enjoyment-vs-social-problems imbalance. The fact that tobacco consumption produces a disproportionately high ratio of social problems to personal enjoyment, compared to, say, cheese consumption or chocolate consumption, is a valid issue to take into account when considering why it would be more reasonable to ban sales of the former but not the latter.
Trying to lump a whole bunch of quantitatively different things into the same category based on a qualitative difference is specious.
“Give”? Where’s the projected ban on one consenting adult giving another consenting adult a (legally obtained) cigarette? I looked through the news articles again and I’m still not seeing that.
I get that a sales ban in many cases has the same practical effect as a consumption ban, but I don’t think the former should be explicitly mis-stated as the latter if that’s not in fact the case.
What are the social benefits of chocolate consumption? I see your point about cheese and that starts down the road of silliness. Dairy is a necessary part of the diet, and in most cases provides health benefits. I don’t have the data, but I’ll bet that a guy who weighs 600 lbs didn’t get there by too many provolone slices.
But I think that for anything we can say about the mild benefits of having a beer or a smoke, or a slice of pie together, we can point out that we could have had the same social interaction without those things and how they contribute to huge social problems.
That makes the law even more unenforceable and not suited for its purpose. In the future, at 74 year old man cannot sell cigarettes to the 73 year old a year behind him in school, but can give them to him, possibly in exchange for services. How would such a law be enforced?
Why ever not? Yesterday, walking down the sidewalk, I was downwind of a smoker. My option was (1) endure or (2) wait until they cleared the area. Now, I am not claiming that I suffered or that my health was damaged. I’m just pointing out that their choice was forced on me from 50 feet away. My neighbours on both sides smoke in their yards, and I have no option but to smell it.
Some of this is just life in an urban environment: people also use lights, sound, and all sorts of other things that I have to put up with if I want in on the social contract, which I do. But I do think it’s relevant in a conversation about something that we, as a society, are contemplating removing from the social contract.
It’s not the most important and certainly not the only factor in the discussion, but the antisocial aspects of tobacco use (primarily secondhand smoke and litter) are definitely relevant, alongside the health aspects.
Aren’t you now mixing up the social vs. personal distinction that you yourself introduced back in post #188? What I said was that the different substances had different ratios of social problems to personal enjoyment.
And, I repeat, lumping together different phenomena because of a qualitative similarity without considering their quantitative differences is pointless from the point of view of evaluating social policy.
By your reasoning we could equally well argue for banning anything that was even slightly socially counterproductive while not being necessary for survival: high-heeled shoes, video games, red meat, etc. The point is not to merely identify unnecessary things that are socially counterproductive, the point is to determine how socially counterproductive they are compared to the enjoyment they provide.
And nobody considering the problem with even half a brain can deny that cigarette smoking is disproportionately high in its social-problems-to-personal-enjoyment ratio. Comparatively few people smoke at all; most people who do smoke want to give it up; and the level of social problems that cigarette smoking is almost solely responsible for is catastrophically destructive.
It would be idiotic to try to pretend that, say, chocolate consumption is anywhere near as problematic as cigarette smoking in its social-problems-to-personal-enjoyment ratio. The only way you can make them look even superficially comparable is by carefully avoiding any comparison of their quantitative impacts.
How you figure? Several US states, for example, have laws allowing adults to give under-21 adults alcohol in specific circumstances, even though the under-21’s aren’t allowed to purchase alcohol for themselves. That doesn’t mean that banning the sale of alcohol to the under-21’s doesn’t do anything to reduce underage drinking.
ISTM that you’re kind of obsessing about potential loopholes in the law that won’t necessarily have much effect on its overall impact. I have no doubt that some older individuals will give cigarettes on the sly to some younger ones, and some older individuals will illegally sell cigarettes on the sly to some younger ones, and law enforcement won’t catch them at it. (Nor would they get caught even if the giving as well as the selling were made illegal, AFAICT: I have no idea why you think that distinction would make a significant practical difference in the law’s enforceability. Haven’t you heard of a black market?)
But that doesn’t mean that the legal ban on sales can’t have significant results in reducing the prevalence of cigarette smoking. The purpose of the law, AFAICT, is not to make it functionally impossible for any underage New Zealander ever to smoke a cigarette, which would doubtless be an unrealistic expectation in terms of enforceability. The purpose is simply to make it much less easy and tempting for underage New Zealanders to smoke cigarettes.
I can’t say whether such a law will really succeed over time in leading to the actual eradication of the practice of cigarette smoking in New Zealand. But certainly none of your arguments so far against the proposed law have been at all plausible or persuasive.
When we had these debates twenty years ago, people on our side were told that we were engaging in the slippery slope fallacy and that this was not about absolute smoking bans. Nobody, we were told, was prohibited from smoking in their homes or outside. These bans, we were told, were only for indoor enclosed areas open to the public, and to protect the employees who were forced (not directly but by fear of unemployment and poverty) to work around second hand smoke endangering their health.
When we said that the next step would be that you would want to ban your neighbor from smoking on his porch because you don’t like the smoke. We were reminded of the slippery slope fallacy and how nobody was proposing that. But now that is exactly what you are proposing. I don’t dispute the data that second hand smoke is unhealthy, but I don’t believe that the occasional whiff of smoke from a distance of 50 feet harms your health in any appreciable way.
I don’t disagree with this, but you haven’t seriously engaged in why tobacco vs. sweet foods are appreciably different (except with the side argument of second hand smoke which I still contend is not relevant to this debate). And unlike tobacco, if I drink too many beers, I might run over someone if I drive, a problem that is not present with tobacco as it is a non-intoxicating substance.
How many times do I have to repeat my point about the importance of considering quantitative differences in impact along with qualitative similarity before you understand that I am in fact “seriously engaging” that question? Do you know what is meant by the terms “qualitative” and “quantitative”?
Yes, I understand those words and what they mean.
But you still have not engaged in that question because all of the above fall on the wrong side of the line. Look at the public benefits of chocolate. We enjoy it. Eating it gives us a mild boost of endorphins and caffeine.
On the flip side many people gorge themselves on it, are obese, have a litany of illnesses, heart attacks, strokes, and die young from it and other sweet foods.
When you compare that to cigarettes, it is strikingly very much the same: a little enjoyment, but kills a bunch of people. If you are arguing for cigarettes to be outlawed, then I see the same argument as being just as important for alcohol and sweet/fatty foods.
The one thing I have seen pointed out is that unlike tobacco, people can use alcohol or fatty foods in moderation and cause no appreciable health problems to anyone, even themselves. But even accepting that proposition, is it worth having those things legal when it causes so many problems to so many people?
Evidently you don’t actually understand those terms, then. “All of the above” fall on the “wrong side” of the same qualitative line, true. Meaning that they all provide some personal enjoyment while also causing some social problems. I have not denied that in the least.
But my point is that the different substances are quantitatively different in their impacts, because their relative levels of social problems compared to personal enjoyment are so different. That’s what I’ve been calling the “social-problems-to-personal-enjoyment ratio”.
If you still don’t understand that and go on repeating “yeah but all these things provide some personal enjoyment but also cause some social problems so they’re all on the wrong side of the line so you haven’t explained why we should treat them differently”, then I will just have to give up on trying to explain it to you. I really don’t see how I can explain it any more clearly.
I do understand the words and because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I don’t understand them. You want a ratio and that makes no sense. If a billion people get mild enjoyment from X, is that offset by 50,000 early deaths? I suggest you are not engaging in the argument because you haven’t stated nor have you “explained it” “clearly” or otherwise, how tobacco is different.
You seem to want to diminish the personal enjoyment of tobacco because I am just going to throw out a wild guess in that you don’t use tobacco so the personal enjoyment factor is very low, but you enjoy a slice of cake here and there, so the personal enjoyment factor is increased in your analysis. I’ll also venture a guess that you don’t eat cake three meals per day and only eat cake in a moderate and responsible matter, so you view the social harm as low, assuming people are responsible with their cake intake—so we shouldn’t outlaw cake so much as try to control/possibly outlaw the overeating.
My position is clear. Freedom dictates that we don’t have to be models of health and that irresponsible choices are a part of being free. If I smoke (which I don’t) and die at age 54 from a massive heart attack, we’ll that was my life to lose. If I overeat fatty and sweet foods and die at the same age, again, my free choice. We start to lose the plot when we bring in second hand smoke because as I still contend, they relate to different issues.
If you want to have a debate about smoking in bars, or with kids under 18 in a car, or in a house with a spouse who begrudgingly puts up with it, then we can have that down the hall, third door on the right. This law is not about keeping smoking out of the public sphere and not subjecting employees or fellow customers to smoke; it is a complete ban.
So, I think the “impacts” are a point of confusion between us as I’m viewing this ban from only a personal health perspective, much like overeating or drinking whiskey for breakfast (but not driving after a whiskey breakfast because that is a different law apart from alcohol prohibition). We allow people to do those things because we respect personal freedom. Even if you enjoy your slice of cake once a month which causes you no personal health issues, the fact that cake is legal kills others. And obesity and alcoholism are huge causes of early death, just like smoking, and are not quantitatively different. If anything, recent attitudes towards smoking have decreased that, while obesity and alcoholism remain high. If we are talking about the risk ratio, fatty foods and alcohol should be considered for a ban before smoking is.
I missed this part, and I’ve always argued against these types of laws. The upshot is that nobody should worry because they won’t seriously be enforced in the way I’m describing, unless you are poor or a minority. If so, then why pass a law that will admittedly not be enforced? If tobacco is to be outlawed, then outlaw it, don’t pass this jerry-rigged system that does what it clearly does.
Contrary to your assertion, it does not prevent “underage” New Zealanders from getting smokes. I assume there is already a law there that attempts to prevent it. It prevents people who are unquestionably adults from smoking with each increasing year being more absurd than the last. And just because one might be able to violate the law and get away with it, as a feature of the law, illustrates how bad the law is.
Smoking kills about EIGHT MILLION people a year, and about 10% of that is due to second hand smoke. Although excess chocolate certainly can lead to heart disease, there is no such thing as “second hand chocolate”.
As long as smokers continues to murder hundreds of thousands of people a year, we have to put a stop to it.
That being said, I would not outlaw vaping, patches, or even snuff or chew. Disgusting and unhealthful, but only to oneself.
Second hand smoke is murder. It is entirely relevant.
We’re back to something all too familiar:
- The idea of being against mandatory motorcycle helmets is one kind of argument. Generally, a motorcycle crash – particularly when the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet – overwhelmingly results in (catastrophic) harm to the rider (only) – harm that we all inevitably subsidize through health care costs (an economic harm that should be considered in the MHL (Mandatory Helmet Law) discussion)
- Not taking reasonable COVID precautions (eg, mask, vaccination) is far more like driving drunk: the direct risk of significant harm accrues to endless numbers of other people who aren’t asked to opt in or allowed to opt out.
That’s also the difference between dietary choices and cigarette smoke. Trying to exclude it from the discussion is facile, Counselor, and would definitely benefit your position.
But it’s not logical.
Understanding similarities and differences – a nuanced perspective – matters in nearly every single argument that we have around here.
And should.
I’m just not seeing it. Your first objection is that we all pay for poor lifestyle choices because of a public healthcare system or through private insurance. First, that is the reason us recalcitrant conservatives don’t want such a thing: it restricts basic freedom by saying that because we all pay for your (general your) healthcare then we can tell you how to live your life. That isn’t consistent with freedom.
Second, and not to get into a Covid debate, the analogy you make is akin to DUI or smoking in public which is not a part of allowing alcohol or cigarette smoking in private. It would be akin to saying that to prevent Covid you have to wear a mask while alone in your own home.
But even taking the debate on your terms, if I need a liver transplant or have to have gastric bypass surgery because I drink too much or eat a case of Zagnut bars each day, then how have I not contributed to an increase in health care costs? The argument suggests that those things should be outlawed in the interests of conserving health care resources.
The second argument is applicable to alcohol. Because of its legality, I might drive drunk, or with legal marijuana drive high. Tobacco doesn’t have that because it is not intoxicating, but your argument seems to be about second hand smoke, an argument not discussed with an absolute ban on tobacco and not in a debate about smoking bans in public places.
I think there’s a fairly simple answer that addresses pretty much everything you say: externalities
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/external.htm
“Freedom” is a pretty empty term. It’s a symbol. It’s an idol. It’s a totem. It’s almost what one says rather than consider the details of a particular issue.
It’s one thing to call it an over-arching value – one to be erred toward whenever possible, but there are billions of us on this planet, and “one’s fist” is constantly meeting up with “another’s face.”
Libertarian principles are as charmingly untenable as most other ideologies that are overly-tenaciously clung to.
Actions have consequences.
“Freedom” has pretty much come to mean “Whatever I want. Screw everybody else.”
While no producer wants any ‘taxes’ on their product, maybe a much better – and fairer – way to address these things is to do our level best to determine the true cost of these choices on other people, and then allocate those costs to the products.
A case of Zagnuts a day – across a large sample size of people – has deleterious health effects. We can get @puzzlegal and her comrades to analyze the costs, and then allocate them back to each Zagnut sold.
Recreational users wouldn’t be hit anywhere near as hard as hard core gluttons like your hypothetical self 
“Freedom” cannot be license to do whatever you wish with absolutely zero thought to how it impacts others. That’s pretty much anarchy – an adolescent’s version of ‘freedom.’
If NZ wanted to fund societal costs of cigarettes through well-conceived and carefully computed taxation that considers externalities, they’d have that right.
But it still brings unwitting parties (ie, victims of secondhand smoke) into the equation (in the same way that COVIDiots and drunk drivers do), and I support NZ’s right to say that money is profoundly inadequate to compensate those unwitting victims.
“Because freedom” just isn’t a substantive engagement of the issue at hand.
And the many quite often have to pay for the sins of the few. That’s life in a heavily-populated world.
Sure it does: we compare the extent of the problems with the extent of the benefits, rather than just throwing up our hands and saying “well they all produce both problems and benefits so how can we possibly determine whether they should be treated differently”.
Sure they are. As I noted, most people who smoke want not to smoke. And the vast majority of people who smoke don’t smoke in anything like healthy moderation. And unlike the use of sweet or fatty foods or alcohol, there is no health benefit to any level of tobacco use.
Conversely, billions of people enjoy occasional use of alcohol and/or rich foods with no adverse health impacts at all. Almost no tobacco users fall into that category.
If we were talking about a situation where a huge percentage of tobacco users enjoy a smoke, say, once a month without harming their health, you’d be in a much better position to make a case in favor of not banning tobacco on the merits of its quantitative comparison to other substances. But that’s not the situation that exists.
You’re really going off the rails again here. I don’t think anybody is arguing that such a ban on tobacco sales won’t be enforced at all, or won’t be enforced enough to make a significant difference in tobacco use. You seem to be trying to argue that a situation where the law is imperfectly enforced, e.g., where a 43-year-old occasionally illegally sells a cigarette to a 42-year-old, is functionally the same thing as not effectively enforcing the law at all. Which is nonsense.
More nonsense. By your reasoning, laws against running red lights are bad because sometimes drivers can violate them and get away with it. Similarly for pretty much any other law whose enforcement isn’t 100% perfect.
This law has now been passed: