There’s that slippery slope

The fundamental conflict is between incompatible rights – your right to smoke vs my right to not have to breathe in your effluent.

Note that Kane Co. has not enacted any legislation – it is simply studying an idea.

Once again – and I hope not to annoy you this time – the salt situation and the smoking situation are totally different. Smoking involves an activity you inflict on yourself, with a consequent effect on me, if we are in some proximity. The salt situation involves regulating how much salt a commercial enterprise can place in food stuffs for general consumption. No one is coming for your salt shaker, and salt will still be available at the grocery store. These are as different as an apple and a salt shaker – or cigarette, if you prefer.

In the Kane Co. situation, the claim is made that living conditions are such that one person’s smoke is unavoidably thrust on another. Seems a bit far-fetched, but not beyond the realm of possibility. It’s a tough, zero sum situation, and somebody will end up displeased.

I don’t know how to respond to your slippery slope challenge. The idea seems, frankly, fatuous. Smokers might be losing their freedom to smoke in more places, because other people cannot avoid their pollution in those places. Is it a slippery slope to go from clean air policy to clean water policy? Is there a right to pollute that over-rides a right to a non-toxic environment? If you live up-stream, do you have a right to dump industrial waste and raw sewage into my water supply?

OK – here’s a stab at it. I’ll say a paternalistic society could possibly be on a slippery slope when it mandates against private behavior in closed quarters that does not harm another person – and then demonstrates encroachment into more areas of private life. As it stands now, I can chain-smoke in my kitchen, drop the ashes in the pancake batter, and dump a pound of salt on my corn flakes; and I see no indication whatsoever than anyone will take these freedoms away from me.

Banning cigarette sales to minors and banning advertising hasn’t led to a ban on selling to adults.

On the other hand, though, prostitution is illegal in most places. Do you see any kind of slippery slope there? What about a marijuana ban? Presumably, that exists to counteract a different slippery slope from soft to hard drugs.

BTW, those who smoke and use excess amounts of salt do cause societal damage, since they will (probabilistically) result in the medical expenses that follow from their life style choices – and that will be born by society in some way: lost work time, higher insurance premiums, etc. Sooner or later, your smoking takes money out of my pocket.

None of this is so simple as your slippery slope idea of paternalism seems to imply.

Cheers!
JzB