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From: rh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: "Natural rights" and smoking
Message-ID: <619@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Aug-83 10:14:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.619
Posted: Wed Aug 17 10:14:53 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Aug-83 19:35:34 EDT
References: <425@ariel.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

Tom Skrobala (ariel!tas) brings up some valid points, however, there
are some I feel should be refuted.

he writes: 

>      One thing that strikes me is that people are *born*
>      with a distaste for smoke (I think), whereas smoking is
>      a *learned* (and chosen) pleasure.  In a clash, I would
>      tend to favor the native desires of the nonsmoker.  Of
>      course, this isn't completely clean: one could perhaps
>      argue that once a body has been smoking for ten years,
>      the craving for tobacco is as natural for him as is the
>      craving for food in a normal person.  Is one
>      responsible now for a decision he made ten years ago?
>      I don't know absolutely, but society seems to say yes.
>      Contracts are considered binding, after all.  So it may
>      be argued that the smoker took upon himself the
>      responsibility of dealing with the occasional
>      discomfort caused by smoking restrictions when he
>      decided to smoke.

A craving for tobacco is NOT as natural as a craving for food!!
If you don't eat, you die.  If you don't smoke, you live (longer).
Throughout evolutionary (bug-off if you don't like that word) history,
man and other animals have craved food.  It's what kept them alive.
Craving food has a tradition millions of years old.

I'm uneasy about the prospect of too many laws also.  How about a
that says you can murder someone and use as a defense the fact
that you repeatedly asked him to stop smoking and warned him that
you were going to kill him if he didn't  ?  I think a law like that
would tend to make smokers more courteous.  ( 1/2 * :-)  )


-- 
Randwulf
 (Randy Haskins);  Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh   or... rh@mit-ee (via mit-mc)