I have to admit that I finally gave up smoking after attending a cricket test at the Sydney Cricket Ground only to find that in an outdoor stadium you could only smoke in a designated area where you couldn’t see the game. I bumped into legendary Australian cricketer and smoker Doug Walters having a smoke during his break in commentary and knew that smoking was on its last legs.
A few weeks ago I dropped in to a pub to have a bet on the football. The new smoke free environment legislation had just come in and this pub only has two large bar areas. One is now, by law, smoke free and totally empty, the last time I had been there about 60 people were in the room. Everyone was crowded into the smoking room. Since next year only 25% of the place can be smoking they will have to add in more walls and make 75% of their floorspace useless.
:rolleyes: Well if you’re going to start picking and choosing your contexts… naturally it can be shown to be wrong in some.
However, in the OP is not about drivers in certain contexts, and it’s not about smokers in certain contexts. It’s about drivers, in control of a vehicle in motion, while smoking. Personally, it doesn’t come top of my list of concerns, but I can see an argument for saying that smoking is not conducive to safe driving and performing the two at the same time, in this context, should not be permitted.
What we are saying, IF you stop and listen, is that the government has no right to tell us what is best for us, no business in any aspect of our private lives and activities if it harms no one else. NONE. Whether it is the right to smoke, or the right to be gay. They are both the SAME basic right, the right to live as you see fit without interference or “punishment”. Why died the Nazis set up death camps? Because other people did nothing. It didn’t directly affect them, or they pretended to not know about it, or they believed their government’s lies about knowing what is best for everyone. It was Nanny Government in the extreme, taken to its ultimate conclusion.
Of course it’s hyperbole, but it’s not ridiculous. I don’t even smoke, so this law wouldn’t affect me directly. However, I recognize the insidiousness of giving the government power to regulate every aspect of our lives at the whims of whomever is in office. Why have we given the government power to put people in jail for smoking a joint? Hell, the 1937 Tax Act didn’t make marijuana illegal per se, it just set harsh fines and jail sentences for anyone not paying the tax and getting the proper license, a license the government refused to issue, making it impossible to sell or posess legally. Now that we’ve given them that power, what is to stop them from doing the same for a cigarette which is every bit as harmful? Taxes for cigarettes and liquor are already set high to discourage use. It’s not much of a step for the agencies in charge of issuing licenses to simply stop doing so and rendering alcohol and tobacco possession effectively illegal. The precedent is there.
But this is about far more than Sin Taxes. It’s about how we view ourselves in relation to government. It seems that people have accepted that Government grants rights to us and we only have those given us. That is dangerous because it allows majorities to impose their will on minorities. It’s not a slippery slope fallacy. It’s a mindset that gives the government the power to randomly search bags in the subway. How far is that removed from the idea that they can conduct random searches anywhere? This is the mindset that allows the Patriot Act to pass and provides for “sneek and peek” searches under the guise of fighting terrorism, Fourth Amendment be damned. Will it go as far as Kristallnacht? I hope not. But unless we start standing up NOW to the little things, it will someday be too late.
(I hate the way when you quote a post that has quotes the original quoats vanish.)
I didn’t flip a coin. If a person wants to smoke in their car, let them. If they throw their butt out the window, fine them for littering. I see a huge difference between this sort of law and a smoking in bars and restaurants ban.
Your house and your welcome mat are obviously different than a bar or restaurant. You know that. I am for having laws that tell a restaurant or bar owner how to run their business. I am not for laws that tell us how to run our lives. For example: Sodomy laws? Unless it “no sodomy in public”, then it’s a bad law.
It’s not a coin flip. It is not a question of should there be laws or not. Are you a Libertarian or an Anarchist?
And what I am saying, IF you stop and listen, is that smoking on a public street while operating a motor vehicle is not a private life activity. If this were a proposal to ban smoking in private homes, I would be yelling as loud as anyone else. A motor vehicle on a public road is not a private home. Neither for that matter is a restaurant or nightclub. A ban on public smoking has nothing to do with a ban on private smoking, and there is no “right” to public smoking.
And that is tragic. It is also rather irrelevant to this discussion, as neither public smoking nor driving are rights.
Look, I’m not saying don’t oppose this proposed ban. I find the proposal to be rather silly and I don’t believe that any great threat to public safety would be prevented by its passage. That in itself is reason enough to oppose it without dragging in images of the Reichstag in flames.
My objection to this proposal is an objection, in general, to government interference in my life. You’re proving my point. You assume that something isn’t a right unless it is specifically granted to you. That’s what tyrants want you to believe. It’s not about the right to smoke. It’s about the right to do as you please without government interference in an area it hasn’t specifically been given the power to legislate. All things are my right unless abridged.
This bill is not about public safety or he’d be more concerned with banning radio and CD players or outlawing passengers talking to drivers. It is another in a continued drive to eliminate smoking. Perhaps the people of New Jersey have given the government power to be their nanny in their state constitution; but I don’t trust my government with that much power. Tyranny starts with the small things and grows.
“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1816.
The states have been given the power to regulate driving pretty much since there have been motor vehicles. The states and the federal government have all had power to regulate public conduct (such as smoking) pretty much since they came into existence.
Which I supose would matter to our discussion, if I had raised the issue of public safety.
Heh. Smokescreen.
Assuming arguendo this is true, so what? Do you really think, if this frippery passes, that a single Jerseyite will give up cigarettes as a result? Hell, very few Jerseyites will probably give up smoking in their cars as a result.
Yes, and you do not have the right to come into MY restaurant while I have the right to deny YOU service because I think you are a sheeple. I also have the right to call you a sheeple if that is my opinion. If I want to allow MY cliental to smoke and I want to prohibit non-smoking busybody assholes from entering MY restaurant, who the fuck are you or the government to say I can’t. As long as I am not discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion, political affiliation, etc… I can refuse service to anyone I want. It is MY restaurant and my clientele are adults that have willingly come to me because they value my services. I did not force them to come in the door and they could turn around when they open it and see all the smoke coming out.
Yeesh. If I go out and find someone willing to provide me with the service of letting me smoke on their private property while they feed me and enter into a contract with them where I pay for these services, then that is my and their business. Not yours and not the governments. I am not hurting anyone with my behavior and neither are they. If you don’t want to sit in a smoky room when you get fed go to a different restaurant or stay home. I am sure that if a non-smoking establishment is popular enough they will be able to lure customers by advertising their non-smoking nature. Similarly, bars that allow smoking will lure smoking clientele. Vote with your damn wallet but don’t force me or mine to live your damn life just because you don’t approve of mine.
BTW I am a non-smoker not that it makes any difference.
Yes. Well, actually, I am cabable of inductive reasoning.
Regulation of driving laws and such is common sense and necessary. Banning smoking the cars is absurd and crosses the line of what the government has power to do. We’ve let them go too far in the past. Will we never stop allowing them to go further?
Really? In post#41
I think this is where you’re missing my whole POV. The Constitution cannot possibly list all of my rights. It can only grant specific powers to government. Unless there is some provision in the Constitution granting the power to the government to regulate my smoking, then it can shove off. The same goes for every other regulation. Unless it can plausibly be tied to the Constitution duties, many of our laws have serve to extend the government’s power beyond what they should have. It is time to say “no more”.
Because you say so? And what of the person who says regulating driving is absurd and crosses the line of what the government has power to do?
Really? The government lacks the power to promote the general welfare by regulating the conduct of drivers?
Poorly worded on my part; I should have said if I had argued public safety. I make no argument here over whether this ban would be an effective public safety measure, just that a public safety argument by New Jersey would likely pass Constitutional muster.
This isn’t a smoking regulation; it’s a driving regulation. You’ve already acknowledged that driving regulations are common sense and necessary; I take that to mean that you acknowledge that regulating driving is a power reserved to the States.
State-based regulations of matters that fall outside the designated powers of the federal government can’t plausibly be tied to the Constitution?!
An infringment of rights must be balanced against the potential good that a proposal seeks. Less than half of all accidents are caused by distracted drivers. Smoking contributes to less than 1% of those accidents. So regulating smoking while driving potentially affects less than .5% of all accidents. I think the benefit is too small to give up any more freedom. The miniscule number of accidents that could prevent belies the driving aspect and further the particular legislator’s zeal for a smoking ban.
And should this pass, and should you be ticketed under its provisions, I look forward to seeing how well this argument turns out for you. it does not, however, change the fact that you’ve already acknowledged that regulating driving is a power of the state government. And since driving is not a right but is instead a privilege, I’m not sure that a balancing test is even required.
Can you cite me a provision of the New Jersey constitution which places regulating driving outside the power of the state? Or smoking, for that matter.
Let’s not forget that HUD has banned smoking in retirement homes for the elderly. Not nursing homes. Not state or government owned homes. We’re talking about apartment buildings owned, funded and operated by religious (and other) organizations for elderly retirees. That’s right. If Grandpa’s living at the Lutheran Towers in your home town, the federal government forbids him, a responsible adult, to smoke tobacco in the privacy of his own home.
