Wrong.

fwiw sam harris explains this knee jerk reaction to oppose someone despite using logic as it relates to your personal competitiveness and allows you to essentially tunnel through logic and just oppose. maybe try taking a step back and work through the logic before allowing your own compulsion to disagree get in the way.

ok let me try and be civil

The OP posed a question of should smoking be illegal. let's esablish some premises here:

1 - I am referring to law in the USA
2 - The Declaration of independence states that "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is one of the "unalienable rights" of Americans.
3 - Personal liberty is a subset of the Liberty demanded in the DoI
4 - Smoking tobacco has been allowed for a very long time
5 - smoking tobacco is bad for your health
6 - Ingesting second hand smoke is also bad for your health, but to a much less degree as habitually smoking
7 - In the US laws are created to enforce what Congress wants
8 - Forcing another human to ingest second hand smoke against their will is immoral
9 - in a public area you are entitled to pursue your own personal liberties so long as it is not illegal

I don't see how there is a case to make smoking illegal here. I do think there is a very strong case that where you can smoke in public should be regulated. I also think that when you chose to go in public you have to share space with others who will inevitably behave/do things you do not like to do. It is your own responsibility to determine how much of others subjectively unpleasant behavior you are willing to deal with.

I also see no part where personal preference enters into the argument of "should smoking be illegal"


for the record, i smoked from 14-32, but have been vaping 99% of the time for the last 8 months.

I have a very hard time getting behind local/federal governments determining where you can smoke. I think the government should deal with the public areas and businesses should be left to decide whether or not they will allow smoking on their property.

The Harrah's in NOLA is non-smoking, and even as a smoker i preferred that policy in casino's. I still think that should be up to the casino though and not the government

you are entitled to try, and you will have to get your designated congressional representative to try and get this passed. This will be very difficult as the tobacco lobbyists have a lot of money and therefore influence. You also have to consider that smoking is not currently illegal so the onus is on the proverbial "you" to prove why this should be

this makes sense to me

i don't think this is even worth responding to, but i will bite.

I know you are but what am I

that is not making cars illegal buddy, just a subset of cars that burn gasoline.

The majority of electricity in the US comes from non renewable resources so using electricity still pollutes the earth.

that argument fails sir.

In the US we are allowed to do things that can harm other people. The car analogy points this out.

it can be hard to notice just how bad the stink is as a smoker as you are greatly desensitized to it. Every time i quit i found the smell to be appalling within a few days.

At least in Chicago it is illegal to smoke within 15 of the entrance of a business (if this was enforced that would make it almost impossible to legally walk down a sidewalk in downtown without repeatedly breaking the law).

Huh? I could still walk down any sidewalk in Chicago without breaking the law even once.

Wrong.

And it's not about MY personal preference. I would vote for smoking to remain legal if it were up to a vote. That's not because I like smoking, I hate it. But I FEEL some sympathy for the DESIRE of a minority to do something annoying, even harmful to innocent people, within certain bounds.

Logic is only a tool to use once you figure out the reasons for the problem in the first place which are entirely subjective and emotional and should never be lost sight of.

i was referring to the pov of a smoker, as you would pass within 15 feet of numerous store entrances while walking down a downtown sidewalk

lol

I guess we disagree here, and we are pretty off topic imo, but here we go.

in your opinion, what are the reasons for the problem and what is the problem here?

Some people don't want to be around smoke and some people want to smoke.

I know you were, but the fact that you didn't specifically say "while smoking" shows that you somehow don't get that smokers could just NOT SMOKE while walking down the street.

I'm going to go ahead and out myself here... I'm a masturbator. I love masturbating. It's one of the simple pleasures in life, I have been doing it since puberty, and I have no plans to stop.

However, I can easily refrain from masturbating while walking down the sidewalks of Chicago. In fact, I can easily refrain from doing it when in any public place. I don't even mind that there is no "masturbating area" in my local restaurant, bar, or casino. Because I realize that being exposed to my masturbating activity would be offensive to most of the general public.

Smokers, get over yourselves. Your smoking bothers other people. I don't whack off in your face, so don't expect to be able to blow your smoke in mine. You don't have a right to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Sure, in the past, many more people smoked, and smoking in public was generally allowed. Things change, deal with it.

umm, smoking in public is not analogous to public masturbation.

Says who?

Oops, you're right, it's not totally analogous, because public masturbation in no way actually physically harms innocent bystanders, while public second hand smoke has been scientifically shown to harm bystanders.

By all logic, public masturbation should be legal, while public smoking should not.

There was no ad hominem attack in my previous post. Your post made a point which was entirely incorrect (that a smoker can't walk the streets of Chicago without breaking the law), because you inherently assumed that not smoking for awhile is impossible for smokers, when it certainly is not.

Not yet.

try watching this and see if it changes your views. Sam Harris' part is only 15 minutes I think. Then there is ~5 minutes of Q and A

https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris...ssion#t-556278

Great, Islamophobia philosophy. Aside from that, still, no, it does not change my views, but it wasn't likely to as I've heard hours of Sam Harris already.

Here's something you should read on the origin of moral thought.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8240.html

The point is not that there is no basis for morality. It's just that it comes from emotion and not logic. And nothing Sam Harris said in those 15 minutes is an argument against that anyway.

Consider the dude's masturbation analogy. If literally no one was bothered by masturbation in public, would it or should it be illegal? Obviously not. The entire point about smoking, masturbating, or wearing a burka in public and whether they should be allowed or required or whatever is how it makes people feel and trying to come to some way of reconciling and differences while weighing the intensity of how much people are affected and hopefully tolerating some discomfort for the sake of others' freedom.

Just because he points out some phenomenally absurd practices in Islam does not make him Islamophobic

He is just saying science (analogous to logic) can be used to solve moral decisions. There is another lecture he gives that i am looking for but cannot find.

It is very clear we fundamentally disagree on this point. I tend to view morality from the viewpoint of maximizing the greatest amount of good and minimizing human suffering, this allows us to use logic to solve moral issues.

Masturbating is not analogous to smoking, and I couldn't give a flying **** about how you feel, when/if I light up a smoke. I care about whether it is right or wrong.


saying that virtuous behavior can be described by nature, if true, does not negate the fact we can use rational choice to determine what is virtuous. Obv only read the intro and not the whole book, but i don't see how that argument negates my view.

I love Sam Harris and agree that science can lead to moral decision making. SCIENCE is what shows that public smoking is much more harmful than public masturbation, and is why I think public smoking should be illegal. No idea how you use that philosophy to think the opposite.

Feel free to explain how allowing public smoking minimizes human suffering.

Why do you do that?

There is a divergence between morality and law in my country. In the US we don't use law to enforce morality, we use it to carry out what congress wants and to protect the constitution/bill of rights. I already quoted an excerpt from the declaration of independence that is salient to the question of "should smoking be illegal". I think that is a very easy no.

I have also stated that I think it is immoral to force another human to ingest second hand smoke against their will. There is a conflict here with the right to personal liberty, which is paramount in my country, and making a self fulfilling act illegal.

There is also a responsibility to share public areas with your fellow man, and a part of that is dealing with some things you may not be too keen on bc all of our personal experiences are subjective.

Additionally, it is everyone's own responsibility to take care of themselves regardless of what others are doing. So if there is a designated smoking spot, in public, and you don't like smoke then don't go by there, but the smokers should be able to enjoy their smoke in those areas.

I do think it should be regulated (i.e. designated smoking areas) and those regulations should be enforced. I also think throwing a cigarette butt on the street is littering and should be ticketed every time.

Because my emotions and urges often compel me to do things that are morally and ethically wrong. So i choose to use my logic and reasoning abilities to determine what I should or should not be doing.

Sure, but science influences morality, and morality should influence the law. So why should a harmless activity like public masturbation be immoral and illegal, but a proven harmful one like public smoking be considered moral and legal?

Anyway, you're the one who brought morality into the argument here, right? Now you're saying it's not relevant?

not always, re the bolded statement, which i believe is evident in you qualifier of "should".

I have already taken the position that PM is not analogous to PS. I have already taken the position that forcing another human to ingest second hand smoke is immoral, which is different from legal.

Wrong.

You do it because you feel like it.

Maybe check out Antonio Damasio. He's a neuroscientist who did research on the role of emotions in decision making, reason and morality. Some of it, like Oliver Sachs, comes from studying people with damage to certain areas in their brains. I haven't read Descartes' Error, but it looks relevant. I'll put it on my reading list.

This is fantastic.

there is "no" nicotine addiction, you can compare it to caffaine or chocolate.
its a joke from the pharma companies to sell overprices substitutes.

read this for example:
http://www.formindep.org/The-myth-of...addiction.html

people are addicted a) to the behaviour (especially sucking on something) and the ritual and b) to hundreds of chemicals that are not present in substitutes.

vape: PG, VG, Nicotine, Aroma
Cigarette: Tobacco, hundreds of chemical additives, nicotine, tar etc.
gum: nicotine
plaster: nicotine

with vaping you have the nicotine covered and also the behavioral addiction.
but none of the additives.

there is no nicotine rush, it's a very mild stimulant.
try vaping 18mg e-liquid (strongest e-liquid available on the market) until you get nauseous. there will be no rush. only nausea.

there is ammonia in cigarettes, which boosts the effect of nicotine.

also:
by burning tobacco, many additional chemical compounds are created.
also not happening with substitutes and vaping.