Why can't we totally ban smoking?

[ThomasT]

But only the drug war on marijuana. We already have a history on hard drugs.

Read these posts, "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it".

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3439958&postcount=57

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3440032&postcount=58

What's this got to do with starting a new thread to discuss drug legalization/decriminalization and the futility and collateral damage of the 'war on drugs'?

 

[Evo]

What's this got to do with starting a new thread to discuss drug legalization/decriminalization and the futility and collateral damage of the 'war on drugs'?

Because the "war on drugs" he cited was actually to do with marijuana, not hard drugs. Gary Johnson only talks about marijuana. Only Ron Paul goes off the deep end without any facts or reasoning.

We've already had a number of threads on legalizing pot, so no need to go there again, nothing's changed.

Back to cigarettes, or is this thread over?

 

[Galteeth]

I highly criticize the smoking and want that it should get ban as soon as , there should be a strict law ato oppose it.

I feel the same way about bad spelling.

But seriously, I think the crux of these issues (like a similar thread about banning music) is not one based on arguing facts but rather a philosophical and moral position. Many people today accept de facto that society is a collectivist enterprise, and that the role of government is to serve the interests of the collective. Everyone knows smoking isn't good for you, but it comes down not so much to a notion of personal freedom as general ideology. I agree with the posters that the logic for making things like marijuana or heroin illegal can be applied to cigarettes. I also agree that by the same logic, stress, or anything else bad for you, should be regulated. The division between retained freedoms and banned activities is always drawn somewhere, and economics is a big factor. Your economy can't function if you don't allow for any demand. But people arguing about something like is who are coming from different a priori moral/philosophical perspectives will always be talking around each other.

 

[drankin]

Here is the spiral I see. We create a mandatory national health care system. Then, because it effects the costs to the system, we ban your various lifestyles.

Eventually, your liberties are dictated by the healthcare system. Mountain climbing? Banned. Car racing? Banned. Extreme sports? Banned. Spending more than an hour in the sunshine? Banned. Eating a second bag of salty popcorn? Banned.

 

[Loren Booda]

Cigarettes are seductive, with short term pleasure and long term suffering.

The foremost reason they are legal is because society has tolerated them until the relatively recent scientific acknowledgment of their insidious destructiveness.

Smokers may think that they have a superior argument for their habit, but abstainers will outlive any of that convoluted logic.

(I quit marijuana 27 years ago after 12 years of heaven and hell.)

 

[arildno]

Do you want to ban ME as well, Loren, from being addicted to those banworthy cigarettes??

 

[Loren Booda]

Do you want to ban ME as well, Loren, from being addicted to those banworthy cigarettes??

To air is human.

He who is without singe, cast the first stone.

Before criticizing a man, walk defiled in his shoes.

 

[arildno]

To air is human.

He who is without singe, cast the first stone.

Before criticizing a man, walk defiled in his shoes.

 

[Meteora]

Cigarette is too integrated in to the society, advertisements, taxes, social status it brings. Plus it is a drug lots of people are addicted to, if you suddenly ban it, many smokers will become neuropaths. We also know that quitting smoking suddenly is dangerous as well. Only way smoking could be banned was when it spreaded first, which is ofcourse impossible now.

Only way to stop people from smoking is through education and that, for me, is an utopia.

 

[ForMyThunder]

At the beginning of this year, Spain placed a ban on public smoking. Which I think is fantastic since a lot of people don't want to be exposed to second hand. If you want to smoke, do it in a place where it only kills you.