Smoking Bans

It bothers you that I'm agreeing with certain principles of your morality, Barkey? Like the fact that people who make stupid decisions should pay the price for those decisions, given reasonable measures to provide them with an alternative that is not as stupid?

Oh no, I'm fine with the opinion, I just feel that eventually I'm going to call you out as a hypocrite when the time comes to discuss a group that I feel is worthless and you do not.

Hey, I never considered smokers worthless, I just don't like smoke (in general, not just from smoked things).

@Barkey: Okay, but let's talk apples and apples. It can be demonstrated objectively that smoking is a poor decision, because it leads to serious health consequences and addiction, which further degrades decision-making capabilities. A person who voluntarily degrades their own decision making capabilities and makes a dumb choice as a result is culpable, both morally and legally, for that choice.

So either a smoker chooses to smoke and become addicted and therefore does stupid things in service of that addiction, or a smoker is the victim of unforeseen consequences of choices made in ignorance and their impaired judgement is not their fault. If the former, negative liberty would suggest we do nothing to stop them from exercising their free will. If the latter, they need to be protected from the consequences of their actions until they become capable of exercising unimpaired judgement.

So which is it? You can't claim that your smoking is a voluntary decision and then claim protection from the consequences of your actions because "you're addicted and can't stop". That's illogical.

edited 30th Aug '12 11:16:21 AM by Fighteer

I'm not disagreeing with you on that, I feel people should be responsible for their decisions.

It's just that I could see some controversial topic come up where, say, we start sterilizing drug addicts that keep giving birth to crack babies and say it's a consequence of their decisions and then people get all outraged about taking away rights and such.

I never said anything to the tone of "Addicted and can't stop". My defense is personal freedom and taking responsibility for my own actions. I smoke because I want to. I try to be polite in my habit to keep it from impacting others, and I won't feel sorry for myself if I reap consequences for it.

edited 30th Aug '12 11:22:21 AM by Barkey

Careful, you might find me agreeing with you on some of those in principle, if not in practice. I won't say more about it unless one of those topics actually comes up, and a topic on "sterilizing crack addicted women" would get nuked on sight.

But back on point, if you assert that your smoking is a choice and acknowledge all the corollaries of that position, then package labeling wouldn't seem to be a concern if you buy cigarettes at full price from a reputable store. It seems that the desire to avoid taxes and other surcharges in order to satisfy your habit more cheaply is also a choice and, aside from basic regulation and prosecuting offenders, there's not much more that we can reasonably do to protect you from harmful knockoffs.

Buying reservation cigarettes and reselling them in the U.S. is a crime, after all, isn't it?

edited 30th Aug '12 11:28:50 AM by Fighteer

Only if you operate such a practice for a profit...

Yes it is.

I don't resell them, obviously, but it's a common practice and extremely hard to track.

It's kind of like how because of Steam I don't pirate games anymore. They offer goods at a reasonable price of sufficient quality, thus I don't go through torrenting or other means to acquire those shitty goods for a low(free) price.

If they weren't charging me 6 fucking dollars for a pack of smokes, I wouldn't buy them for 3 at the Chumash reservation. If they were, say, 4.50 or something, I'd just go to the gas station and be more legit about it.

@Fighteer: I don't smoke, so this is all from outside observation. I would argue that for many smokers, it's not as much as a choice as they think. This is quite nicely illustrated by the abysmally high failure rate for smoking cessation.

Ergo, treating it like a choice and not an addiction is a terrible way to do things.

edited 30th Aug '12 11:44:44 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

So we treat it as an addiction and remove their professed desires from the decision-making process. That's consistent with my point. But Barkey wouldn't agree.

I don't agree either, because cutting someone off cold-turkey is the absolute worst way to break an addiction.

Nowhere in my statement did I say that it logically led to cold turkey quitting. I said that we remove their desires from the decision-making process. That doesn't axiomatically lead to cold turkey as a solution, but it does mean that we don't allow their desire to smoke influence our decisions regarding how to stop people from smoking.

When I tell my son to wear his seatbelt, "I don't wanna" is not an argument that I allow to influence my decision, because he is not a rational decision maker.

edited 30th Aug '12 11:53:48 AM by Fighteer

Except that still leads to "you can't have a say in this because you smoke", which is somewhat ridiculous.

Most smokers can tell you how their cravings work. Most of them probably have a pretty good idea as to what's effective and what isn't when it comes to not smoking. Completely disregarding that leads to things that are pretty much ineffective, because addictions aren't logical in the slightest. Addictions make people do irrational things.

Riding in a car without a seatbelt isn't addictive. Once again, going back to the heroin metaphor. Every heroin junkie knows that shooting up with dirty needles is a bad idea. But they do it anyways, because addictions don't follow logic. It's not about "want", it's about "need".

edited 30th Aug '12 12:03:20 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

I'm not your kid, I'm an adult. How about we go off and start making decisions for you that you disagree with, because it's "for your own good". I can make my own decisions, and I can live with the consequences, and all of that is none of anyones fucking business.

That's been my entire point. The reason I'm pissed about all this is because it's a liberties issue. I'm going to fucking laugh when people start targeting things that are sacred to you, and when they say "Your feelings and desires on the matter are no longer relevant." I'm going to hope you get just as pissed.

Letting all the people who don't care about an issue be the people deciding an issue is a no-go. It isn't democracy to say "All the people who are directly involved with X issue don't matter, opinion wise. Only the people who are not involved matter." makes no sense. Smokers opinions and votes still matter on the issue of smoking, and you can't just make the judgement to void their decisions, you have no right.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:07:34 PM by Barkey

I can understand not wanting the manufacturers to have a say in it, but I don't understand the notion of not letting the smokers themselves have a say in it. It'd be like talking about raising taxes on property, and arguing that homeowners shouldn't have a say in it, when they're the ones being directly affected the most.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:12:30 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

I can't help but observe the contrast between these positions. Barkey asserts that, despite being addictive, smoking is a choice that he exercises freely and responsibly (although I'd disagree that smoking can ever be considered responsible) and therefore telling him he can't do it is none of our business. Drunk Girlfriend asserts that smoking is an addiction that robs its victims of the ability to make rational choices.

The two arguments are not compatible. Maybe you should argue with each other rather than me?

Anyway, DG, if you concede that smokers are slaves to their addiction to the point where they cannot make rational decisions, then why should we allow them any say in setting smoking policies? We don't let meth addicts set drug policy, do we? Your statement about homeowners is not relevant: home ownership is a rational decision and people who choose to do it are not presumed to have impaired judgement as a result.

Barkey, I fundamentally disagree with your premises: I believe that, while smoking may at one point have been a voluntary choice for you, that it is no longer such a choice. I think you're deluding yourself.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:14:37 PM by Fighteer

And I disagree with you on the basis that it's fundamentally wrong for you to go off and decide someone else is no longer capable of decision making in something that only concerns them and not you. You've no right or qualifications for such statements.

There is a principle here that I'm trying to impress here, that if what I'm doing isn't messing with anyone but me, that you should fuck off. It's a principle worth fighting for.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:16:34 PM by Barkey

You say this despite scientific evidence that smoking is addictive and empirical evidence that it robs people of decision-making ability. Such as my father, who lived on a fixed income yet spent what had to be at least $50/week on cigarettes — close to half of his disposable income!

I can prove that it harms you, I can prove that it is harmful to society both directly (through secondhand smoke) and indirectly (through medical costs and lost productivity). What more do you want?

edited 30th Aug '12 12:18:21 PM by Fighteer

I support legalizing pot. Or is that something that we should keep illegal because the majority of people who want it legalized are stoners? Also, in regards to meth, we have methadone clinics because we talked to a bunch of people that did meth, and found out that it negates their cravings and ultimately helps them kick the habit. Or should we not have done that either?

Point being, you can't use rational countermeasures when it comes to addiction. Like you said, there are studies that show it degrades your decision-making skills when it comes to quitting. You have to work with them to find a way to quit that works for them. As your father shows, the rational countermeasure of "make it too expensive to smoke" isn't effective.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:22:03 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

@DG: You are arguing against a strawman. I never said we should not seek to treat and succor victims of drug addiction. This whole debate came about because an argument was made that forcing cigarette labels to be bland and generic would increase the rates of people being duped by black market cigarette sales and being harmed thereby. While I concede the possibility that this might happen, I argue that it is a predictable consequence of the decision to start smoking in the first place, and our focus should be on getting people to stop (or not start) smoking, not make it easier for them to find safe black market cigarettes.

As for people like my father, may he rest in peace, but he walked with eyes wide open into his fate. C'est la vie.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:24:14 PM by Fighteer

Okay, so in which case we've been arguing about nothing this entire time. I'm saying that bland packaging is detrimental because it reduces the ability to avoid black market smokes, not that brand packaging helps people find safe counterfeit cigs.

Edit: I also believe that bland packaging is another one of those "logical countermeasures" that won't do diddly to get people to stop.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:28:07 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Bland packaging isn't intended to get people to stop smoking. It's intended to stop people from starting.

I certainly never made any such assertion.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:46:10 PM by Fighteer

Then why the heck are people talking about it like it's supposed to get people to stop?

I also don't think that flashy packaging is a problem anyways, because (around here at least) they keep them behind the register where you can't see them until you ask for one. Unless you're in a smoke shop, in which case drab packaging isn't going to matter anyways, because people who go to smoke shops are there to buy tobacco.

I don't think anyone has ever looked at a pack of Malboros and thought "Man, that packaging sure looks cool. I should totally smoke!'

The evidence strongly contradicts you, Barkey. Packaging is just one of many tricks specifically designed by the tobacco industry to make their products appeal to kids. They've spent hundreds of millions on this research. It's not any one thing by itself but the entirety of the approach.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:51:17 PM by Fighteer