Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Constitutional Issues Smoking in Public and Whose Rights are they?

That is, to say the least, a penetrating analysis of the obvious!

By what sophistry does one jump from the requirement for the licensing of an establishment to sell alcohol - said licensing being primarily a revenue measure - to an implied duty to protect patrons and employees from second-hand smoke?

Setting aside for the moment the defensibility of such a claim, would the licensing to sell alcohol also imply a duty to protect patrons and employees from trans fats? No, I am serious! If smoke, why not trans fat?

The fallacy of false induction.

And, as Lord Acton so weightily notes, power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

Ouch!

No such claim was made, Irked.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Ron, just when it was going so well, too.

The alcohol licensing is for much more than revenue, to take that specific. There are all sorts of regulations of who can have one, where it is located, etc.

As for employees, the state has an absolute right to pass laws to protect workers. Now if you challenge that, we are back in the 17th century and I don't care to go there.

Your desire to distract from the topic is understandable. Neither you, Phil, nor anyone else has been able to present a principled argument as to why an owner of a property should not be the one to decide if smoking is going to be allowed by others on his property -- Phil's primary example being a bar or restuarant. As I suggested to Phil, Stereoman, it is time you presented some sort of principled reason why you think you have the right to go onto another person's property and tell him he and his guests must not smoke or you will see that they face the violence of the state. If you cannot then I guess this discussion has come to a close.
Yours,
Issodhos

P.S.

This may be why natural Rights seem more difficult for some to grasp than for others. You seem to be approaching them from the wrong direction. It is legal because it could not begin as not legal in a natural and original state. It only becomes not legal when it is made so by a political or social body which criminalizes it -- being, in your example, done by a "legislature".

posted by Issodhos

posted by Issodhos

issodhos, you cannot answer the question with "natural rights" since those exist only because you have said they exist. You ask for a "principled" reason for state regulation of what happens on private property and apparently disregard what others have said.

health and safety.

The ball is actually in your court. give us a single "principled reason" for the rights you claim. And please, exactly what are those rights? I have tried in vain to drag the answer from you to no avail.

I only see one right regarding property in the Constitution and I stated it at the beginning. There are no natural laws governing anything in the US. We have a written Constitution and that is the final word on the matter. Where is yours?

I never claimed to have such a right. Why should I be required to justify it with a "principled reason"?

Quite so. But my thinking goes well beyond that, friend. Our colleague, the good Senator from Minnesota, provided us with the example of chattel slavery, which, as you say, only became not legal when it was made so by legislation. That seems to me rather academic.

Let's see...I did not say solely for revenue, did I, but primarily for it. And nothing you have offered here dispels that, much less does it in any way illuminate your claim as to a duty to protect workers and patrons from secondary smoke. I believe that the historical record of safety laws is spotty and often ineffective - otherwise there would have been little need for OSHA/MSHA. Also, the doctrine of assumed risk has applied to defend the employer from the arbitrary and impossible burden of absolute safety.

But still you make no valid point for why a placed licensed to dispense alcohol is somehow transfigured into one that must protect people from their own knowing and presumptively willful acceptance of the risk - especially of patrons who voluntarily enter therein and who are presumptively aware that smoking is going to happen and they are going to be exposed to second-hand smoke.

To repeat what Issodhos has said before, you have yet to make a principled point in defense of your assumed arbitrary right to dictate to a bar/restaurant owner, who deals with patrons who voluntarily enter - not required, not compelled - and who offers hire to persons who knowingly seek the job and presumptively understand what goes on therein, that he may not permit/forbid the smoking of tobacco solely on his own determination.

Lastly, I would still like you to answer my previous parallel question - would that the same presumed duty under alcohol licensing to protect patrons and employees from second-hand smoke extend to protecting them from exposure to trans fats.

posted by Ron G

I was totally unaware of this! There is a movement afoot to ban the practice of forced trans fat consumption? That totally puts a knot in the VC club's practice of having all who wish to come to the meetings must consume a minimum of 50 grams of trans fat per hour.