Or, if smoking becomes banned in public places, exceptions would be made for small neighborhood bars where not much food is served.

Is that true? Do people in this country have the right to knowingly harm themselves to the point of causing their own death? Smokers, also jockeying for a compromise, promise they will only do so in “special places” where other like-minded persons are also harming/killing themselves. Since the willful taking of one’s own life is not legal, why are cigarettes legal? Non-smokers, trying to “compromise”, argue that the smoker has a right to “harm himself if he wants”, but has no right to harm other people. Simply put, if occasional exposure to second-hand smoke is harmful enough to cause significant risk to a person’s health, then first-hand usage by the smoker must be deadly. While this strategy might succeed up to a certain point, carrying it past that point just produces confusion and a battery of unenforceable laws. We think if we compromise enough, we might even find a way to make most everyone happy. But since we can’t seem to accept these inevitable shortcomings, we erroneously reason that if we pepper our laws with enough exceptions, if we “loosen” our definitions and “broaden our perspective” we can limit the injustice of our system. Since we are only human, the laws we enact will never be worded or crafted perfectly enough to mete out justice for all people all of the time. Nope, it’s perfectly legal, and as such, it’s no wonder we’re having a hard time banning its use. It is not contraband, it is not even regulated by physician prescription. The plain and simple truth is that at this time tobacco is a legal substance. These complications exist because we’ve allowed our legal definitions to become muddy and the application of our laws to become anything but consistent. “Basics” in this case would appear to be pretty darned basic: Should people be exposed to a harmful substance against their will?Īh, such a seemingly simple, straight-forward question in reality fraught with all sorts of complications. If we are to make any sense of this smoking conundrum, we’re going to have to get back to basics. I’m not surprised by this legal seesaw I’m actually amazed it hasn’t happened before now. Allegheny County’s smoking ban has been on-again, off-again so many times we’ve all lost count.

Tunesmith murphy