The Glade 4.0

As far as smokers go Lydiaa, you're the top of the pyramid.

I don't think smoking around children is a good thing. I find it disgusting, callous and damaging to the children. I just can't see the use in legislating that someone cannot do a perfectly legal activity in the privacy of their own home. Its pretty much not enforceable, and I would rather eliminate the product and destroy the crops. This dancing around of you can't smoke here, but you can smoke there and you can't smoke at home if your children are around dance to be ridiculous.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

And this is positive, how?



Which, again, advocates for it's regulation.



The natural consequences of smoking for the smoker are one thing. The consequences for everyone else around them are quite another. We treat people that develop repetitive stress injuries because of their work, and don't bat an eyelash. We treat people that get food poisoning as well, despite them having caused the condition they happen to be enduring. We treat people for illness, even when they are self inflicted, because we are human beings.




Im sorry, but your assertions here are entirely unsupported. Smoking bans, for example, not only reduce the cancer rates for employees, but also increase the profits for businesses that deal with them, over the long term. Less people with cancer means less spending on health care. More profits for business means more jobs and growth, which translates into more revenue overall. It's not a burden to tax payers in the least to ban smoking in public places. It doesn't cost them a dime.



The Obama administration regulated greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants, yes. No, that doesn't mean he declared it a poison. CO2 *is* a pollutant, and should be controlled by the EPA. It's harmful to our environment in the amounts we produce it. That's the key point about global warming you continue to willfully ignore, Khross. It's not about naturally occuring CO2. It's about the amount we produce in excess of what our planet can handle. But don't let me get in the way of more anti-Obama irrational hatred on your part.

You still have not answered my key question - do parents have the right to poison their children? If so, where do they derive that right from? And where do the rights of their children come into play.

When a factory down the road produces carcinogens that are harmful to the people who live nearby, government has the obligation to step in and regulate that pollutant. It's the only entity that has the power to stand against a major corporation and their funding. Government has the force of law, and our government is decided via a democratic process. More and more I see your hostility towards that process come to the surface. You'd rather see vigilantism than due process.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I don't usually get involved in this forum, but I just have to point out that this is straight up false. There have been multiple times in the earth's history that CO2 levels were far higher than what there is now, levels far higher than anything we'll produce in the next few decades or more even. Just because the CO2 doesn't disappear magically doesn't mean the Earth can't handle it.

I've never understood the CO2 hate, given the fact that while it is a greenhouse gas, it's an extremely weak one. If people supporting HIGCC would go after say, the amount of H2O vapor we put into the atmosphere, it'd probably be far more appropriate, seeing how water vapor is only about 100x (yes, exageration, I don't remember the exact number off hand) more effective of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Imo, the CC uproar is realy about one thing: selfishness. It's about how it affects us, as a species. The earth getting a little warmer (or colder as the case may be) won't harm it. It will just make things a little more difficult on us until we adapt to the new temperature ranges.

I'm all for making a smaller environmental impact, but the "we're killing the earth and if you don't agree you're a retard" approach to getting that environmental impact change isn't the way to go about getting it accomplished. Unfortunately, that well has already been poisoned.

Of course he hasn't. Answering false dilemmas is stupid.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Because it's always cheaper to bury someone than treat chronic, slow killing disease? Because the more smokers that die very visceral and observable deaths, the less other people will engage in that behavior?So, because we've already failed to properly regulate smoking, we must regulate more? What kind of logic is that, Montegue? The solution to failed government intrusion is more intrusion? Why not just create an effective tax paradigm in the first placeHumanity has little to do with treating smokers for self-inflicted lung disease. Of course, I'm talking about allowing the smoker to suffer the consequences of their actions, while you're simultaneously saying we should regulate smoking and do everything we can do to treat the smoker for the damage they've caused? That's a bit of a Catch-22, Montegue. You complain about the damage smokers cause other people, but you insist on mandatory intervening health care because "we're human beings"? Isn't that a bit problematic? Instead of letting a "poison" source remove itself from the environment, we must preserve it to continue producing poison? You're being inconsistent.I really don't think you quite understand the situation. I'm not talking about local ordinances or the few state level bans on smoking in "open to the public" locations. I'm talking about the whole FSC Regulation. I'm talking about multi-tiered taxation that redirects funds all over the place. I'm talking about nearly every state in the nation with multiple "cigarette law suit" settlements misspending the money and mishandling the trusts. I'm talking about a government that, as Michael points out, simultaneously subsidizes the production and then taxes the targeted consumer segment.Wow, talk about an ad hominem on your part. That said, let's play this game.

1. What's the naturally occurring homeostatic population point for Human Beings? How many human beings past that point are we?

2. How many human beings need to remove from the population to ensure that we are within the normal and safe population limits for our species with regard to the ecosystem?

3. The EPA did in fact declare CO2 a poison/pollutant. So, let me do some basic math here. 12 respirations per minute at .75l per respiration yields 12960l of CO2 a day per adult person. 24 respirations per minute at .25l per respiration yields 8640l per day of CO2 per 5 year old. Now, there are roughly 5 trillion adult human beings on the planet. Which is 6.48x10^13 liters per day of CO2 produced by just the adult population of the planet.Well, that sort of depends on a lot of things you really don't want to consider.

1. How should we construct the rights of children? What rights do they possess within the social contract before the age of majority? Who is the executor of their rights?

2. What rights do parents possess? What obligations do they possess with regard to their children? What are the parental responsibilities?

As a general rule, the legal system in the United States holds that the parents are both holder and executor of the child's rights until the age of majority. In extreme cases, generally murder or some other violent crime, children are emancipated and awarded the full battery of rights and responsibilities of any citizen for the sole purpose of standing trial. However, for the most part, there's really no mechanism for making this determination except an arbitrary age of majority.

So, in all probability, as executor of child's rights, the parents can technically make the decision to smoke around their children in current U.S. society. Is it right? Well, that requires a discussion on morality and ethics.No, it really doesn't have that obligation. And I have no hostility toward due process. I have great hostility over the mentality that we need government to solve our problems. The U.S. Federal Government is not this grandiose collective bargaining tool you happen to think it is. It is not the Labor Union of the American People. If it were, I'd ask for real return on my dues.

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Can you provide a source for that claim SG?

I just scanned through the COPD guidelines for Canada and didn't see any references to a once only approach due to things like smoking or other self induced illnesses. I am highly skeptical that doctors anywhere are going to refuse care to a patient, regardless of reason.

http://www.copdguidelines.ca/pdf/2003-C ... elines.pdf

Medical guidelines have almost nothing to do with approved payment procedures.



Then you should probably do more reading on the history of medicine, modern physicians, triage, and the treatment protocols of numerous "developed" countries.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Well, I for one am not interested in deciding to simply let people die because it's cheaper. You may feel that's a good place to sit, ethically, morally, and/or politically. Me, not so much. It's always easier to wish that death on the amorphous "other", who is easily constructed as the foolish, lazy person without value who deserves to die. But that person is a citizen just like anyone else. They are also a human being.



So, every time someone fails at something, they should never try to get it right? I don't know about you, but when I attempt something, and fail, I attempt it again, and I attempt to do it better than before. First, we don't know if our current regulation of tobacco has failed. In fact, there's lots of evidence that smoking bans are very successful. However, let's assume all efforts have failed. That does not mean it's a bad idea to regulate tobacco. It only means we haven't found the best way to do it.




Again, your argument presumes failure, which is not clear. In fact, it's probably simply wrong. Regulation efforts combined with public education efforts, the legal settlements with tobacco companies, etc, are all having a profound effect on smoking rates, which translates over time to a profound effect on cancer rates. However, even if you are correct, you are constructing a straw man. No one argued that simply *more* intrusion was a solution. My position is that the correct regulation, the most efficient and effective, is a solution.



No it isn't. Plenty of countries treat addiction like public health problems, and do so with great success. If you become addicted to a substance in many countries, they treat you for your addiction. This costs less in the long run, and is significantly more humane. Again, we do this because even smokers are human beings.





What about the people who are poisoned by the source? Where do their rights come into play?



No, I am not.




Which has nothing to do with the viability of regulation, and everything to do with holding individuals accountable for their choices in government, via the vote.



I certainly agree that our government should not be subsidizing the tobacco industry.




Both of these questions are entirely irrelevant. We aren't going to go about killing untold millions. It's not even worth mentioning. We can, however, regulate the kinds of pollutants our industrial society creates. This is a more reasonable, rational approach.




So now it's a poison/pollutant? First it was just a poison? Which is it?




So, we finally agree that we construct rights, and that they aren't an inherent quality of man, then?



Also great questions, and absolutely key in this discussion.



That's not entirely accurate. According to US Law, children are citizens (due to the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment). For example, children have the same rights to legal due process as an adult. They have the right to free speech, the right to not incriminate themselves, etc.




Yes, currently, parents can smoke around their children. However, we would all object to a parent feeding their child Arsenic in their chocolate milk. But for some reason, we aren't willing to go after a parent who blows Arsenic into the air their child is breathing. I honestly think you are making the issue much more complicated than it is.

Are parents allowed to poison their child? No. I don't think any reasonable reading of the law would uphold a paren't right to lace their children's food with arsenic.

Is cigarette smoke a poison? Yes. By any rational study of the definition of a pioson, and the chemicals in second hand smoke, cigarette smoke is definitely a poison.

Therefore, we can conclude that smoking around your kids is really no different than lacing their food with arsenic, and that it would be reasonable to treat it in the same light.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Um... no.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Why not? We would arrest and lock up a parent that was slowly killing their children by slipping arsenic into their food. Second hand smoke *contains arsenic*. I don't see much of a difference, really.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

But you are fine with letting people who choose not to poison their bodies (to put it in your words) have to pay of the medical liabilities of those that do? That's where you sit ethically, morally and/or politically? The person may not be lazy, foolish and without value, but they do deserve the consequences of their own voluntary actions without anyone else having to bear that burden. And don't say they are marketed and preyed on by tobacco ... tobacco can only make adds and make an appealing product - they can't coerce or force anyone to do anything. The fact is, anyone who ever picked up and smoked a cigarette did so voluntarily. Do you contest this is not the case? Do you contest that the sins of their health habits are being borne in part by those who have chosen not to put poison in their own bodies?



Or, let tobacco regulate itself. It's a health risk. The people who smoke know it. The best way to make that risk real and present is to fully make these people responsible for their own actions: make them pay for the medical costs associated with this risk. You are basically asking we subsidize their medical costs, but then asking that we regulate smoking so it becomes unattractive. But you removed the element that made it unattractive to begin with - the healthcare costs associated with the risks borne by the activity.




You are just repeating the same tired and rehased words over and over. The most profound effect on smoking you can have is to let the natural consequences of smoking be borne by those who choose to do it.





When they are the pruveyor of the property on which the activity is taking place. For example, you cannot go to a smoker's house, and claim because his second hand smoke is causing you harm, he cannot smoke in his own house.



How about starting by holding the individual accountable for his own actions by making him bear the health care costs associated by the activity he voluntarily chose to partake in.



Then for **** sake, stop advocating we pay for the medical expenditures associated with the health risks of smoking. Did you ever take an econ course? Even a high school level student can tell you about "complementary goods". Health care and smoking are undoubtly a good example. By subsidizing health care for smoking, you are putting more money into tobacco companies' pockets.

What do you think would happen to car sales, car repair revenues, gas and petroleum prices etc. if the government mandated a tax on the wealthiest 5% and used it to pay for everyone's auto insurance??




This is the most inane argument of all. Fatty foods are obtensibly linked to heart disease. Should we jail parents who give their kids fast food on the basis they are inducing heart disease in their children?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Here you are just poisoning the well. I made no such statement or inference. I said that if we're really interested in people suffering the consequences of their decisions, then they should suffer the consequences of their decisions. Moreover, I have not othered anyone in this thread. I have pointed out that, by all accounts, the real result of smoking for the majority of smokers is their own precipitous demise. Instead of attempting to prolong the time to that demise, a greater deterrent to future smokers would be the reality of its consequences without intervention. As for what is ethical, moral, or political, it matters very little when one simultaneously possesses the freedom to destroy their capacity to live and demand the extension of their own life from the government and care providers who have limited resources.I do not have to assume failure to know that the consequences of your position is increased regulation. You have at no point advocated scrapping existent regulations and restrictions. Rather, in point of fact, you simply argue for adding more restrictions and regulations to the current body. I do not have to assume failure to use the comparative "more". If, what you suggest here is true--Then this is the first time you have ever even tangentially suggesting reworking current regulation. However, you are simultaneously defending current policy while suggesting further policy in addition. This means that my observation of "more regulation" and "more intrusion" is accurate.Yes, plenty of countries treat addiction as a public health issue, including the United States. However, that the addictive substance is only marginally regulated for availability suggests one of two things: either the government implicitly sanction the use of the substance or the government has little interest in actually addressing the public health issue. If we assume everything you state about cigarette smoke to be true, then most effective and efficient regulation would be prohibition.Indeed, you are. You are simultaneously trying to preserve the "rights" of the smoker while promoting the "rights" of their "victims".Actually, it has everything to do with the viability of regulation. If the regulation and rulings are mishandled and misused, then yes, there is something problematic in the nature of that regulation.Both of those questions absolutely do matter. If CO2 warrants regulation, then one must consider biologic sources of the toxin. If CO2 represents a threat to the world and human survival, then why not consider human sources? Why don't these questions matter to you?Both? You just don't like the idea that your breathing falls pray to the same logic you're using in this thread. You produce approximately 12960L of CO2 a day. You, by yourself. That's the start of your carbon footprint. It contributes to global warming, if we accept your position on that matter to be true. So, why are you allowed to "poison/pollute" the environment and air I breathe with your exhalations?I believe you have me confused with someone else. Rights are an inherent quality in your argumentation more than mine. You can tell, as I generally ask, "From what authority do you derive the right to do X?" So, no, we don't agree because I'm not the person you're asking to agree with you. After all, I tend to argue that everything is a construct and that reality is fundamentally unknowable to the human being. Perceptual limitations and all of that. Whatever objective reality exists is beyond our ability to perceive.So answer them? You're not adding anything to the discussion by calling my questions "great". Answer them so I know how to respond and engage you in dialogue.Children do not legally possess all of those things in the United States. They do not, in fact, have the right to free speech in most places; nor, for that matter, do adults. Likewise, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment doesn't really help your case. Due process of law includes the passage of valid legislation.And since CO2 is a poison and polluting, breathing around your children is really no different. And, thus, we have a failure of regulation on two fronts now.

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You forgot methane emissions Khross... poor kids don't stand a chance at home.

The source of fundamental rights is a very difficult question, as is authority. I will argue some more philosophy here. Everything you perceive follows logical patterns, and from these patterns you can construct a physical nature of reality. This is known as science. Our perception of reality is not white noise. The roof above your head doesn't collapse because physical laws maintain their position. These physical laws are reinforced every second you are awake. You sit in your chair because the physical neurons in your physical brain keep you there. If you agree that your perception of reality follows patterns, then you must accept that your decisions do too. Physical neurons control your actions. You know these neurons exist and function because you believe in patterns.

Now, where does authority play in? You have the potential to a large variety of action. If you are in the wilderness, you can do anything you want and get away with it. But it's much more complicated in the presence of other people. Rights are based on the balance of power structures of intelligent beings. If you know that Joe will shoot you when you walk on his lawn, and you avoid walking on his lawn, then you have essentially ceded the right to do so. Who owns your brain, and decides what's best for it and the body it controls? Your brain and body are no more pieces of property than a computer. In a society, the authority is shared. So anything goes. It's a power struggle.

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"The map is not the territory."

And arguing to let smokers simply die from cancer isn't?



The social stigma against smoking born of regulation and public information and education campaigns achieves the same results without the necessity of simply denying health care to people with lung cancer.



And again, I have to ask, why is that a bad thing? You have not established that regulating poisons like cigarette smoke is a bad thing for the country.



And that's because it's an entirely seperate conversation. The conversation we are having right now is specific. It centers around weather or not it's ok for the government to say "it's illegal for you to smoke around children, yours or otherwise". At the heart of that debate lies the very question I am asking, and DFK is refusing to answer. Do parents have the right to poison their children?



You have in no way established that the current policy is in any way failed.



And yet, we discovered during our own period of prohibition that such regulation did not achieve the intended goal. And so, we can see that countries that no only sensibly regulate substances and also treat the results of the abuse of such substances actually wind up with a more cost effective solution than a country that simply let people perish. There are costs in that, too.



no, I am not.



This is not something I see as inherently conflicted. For example, while I have the right to smoke, I may not have the right to smoke in the presence of my children. So, I must smoke someplace that is safely away from them or other people. I still have the right to smoke, but I do not have the right to poison others around me with my smoke.




That's not logical at all. That's like blaming a hammer for the failings of the carpenter.



Yes. However, that doesn't mean we have to regulate the number of human beings on the planet, whom we would have to murder to see your argument through. Laws are meant to serve human society and preserve it. laws are meant to protect *all* people, not just some people. Therefore, it is significantly more rational for us to regulate the pollutants that the few produce than it is for us to simply kill a whole lot of people in order to preserve the right of the few to pollute the air that belongs to all of us.

Remember, CO2 when naturally balanced isn't a problem. It's only when we produce too much Co2 for the planet to handle, through our emissions, where it becomes an issue.




Because the question is, on it's face, silly. Yes, we exhale carbon dioxide. We don't have to murder anyone to re-establish a natural balance. The least amount of harm to the least amount of people to achieve the greatest amount of good. It's a pretty simple way to deal with things.



It's not that I don't like the idea. It's that the idea is foolish. Yes, we produce Co2. That doesn't invalidate attempts to control the CO2 we produce artificially.



You and I both know the answer. To live, I must breathe, and so must you. We don't need to drive an SUV to survive. We don't need to burn coal to survive. We don't need everyone to own a gas guzzler to survive. You are trying to compare a life-necessary function with industrial pollution because one of the gasses is shared between the two. You intentionally ignore that the planet has a mechanism for dealing with naturally occuring Co2. In fact, the greenhouse effect is key in our planet's ability to support life when it's in balance.



Not really. Children have legally established rights, both under domestic and international law.



According to the Supreme Court, they are protected under the 14th, because they are citizens.



/eyeroll



You continue to refuse to see the difference between naturally occuring Co2 and the CO2 we put into the atmosphere through our technology.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

Now you're simply asserting you are right with no statements or logic to support that point. That said, your own logic defeats your argumentation on CO2. Since you do not know the natural homeostatic human population limit, you cannot assume that all CO2 produced through respiration is indeed natural. If human beings exceed the population limit at which they would exist sans technology, then human beings are in fact a contributor to global warming. Also, you've sort of shot yourself in the foot: you cannot claim I am an opponent of due process in one thread and in the next dismiss the notion that valid legislation actually constitutes due process. After all, you made that very claim.

As for why regulation is bad? Our government has proven itself incompetent in all attempts at regulation over the last 100 years.

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Freedom sucks, because it's too hard. You have to take responsibiliy for your own choices and live with them. At least if your government is in control you can ***** at them.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have no problem with personal responsibility and self inflicted illness. However when you (the collective you) talk about accepting responsibility, how much equality are you willing to put into that statement?

Setting aside life style choice illness like type 2 diabetes, heart disease etc. Would you deny medical care to someone who was in a car accident cause he was DUI? Would you deny medical care to someone who over dosed on legal and/or illegal substance? Would you deny medical care to a guy with physical injuries cause he started a fight and lost? These are all personal choices which we currently have no problem with paying for…

Or, if you’re willing to argue that there is a time frame you’d put on willingly stupidly killing yourself, what would you place? Keep in mind that once you put the degree of stupidity into the equation rather than the binary test, someone out there needs to also regulate that.

I’m with SG, let the person responsible pay. However I also know people won’t like that and there will be the whole “rich hate” argument…

@ Monty:

I'm not refusing to answer you, I'm asking you to provide evidence to support your statements, which you haven't.

Demonstrate that second-hand smoke is considered a poison.

If you can do that (which you evidently can't, as you haven't yet), demonstrate that second-hand smoke is somehow a worse poison than other common household items.

It isn't a poison, so there is no reason I should respond to your false dilemma. You're simply trained to create an intellectual trap; the problem is that it's transparent.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Specifically, Monty, the definition of "poison" you used is so broad that even water can fit into it. Something that is a poison according to, say, the Poison Control Center would be more fitting. If secondhand smoke isn't a poison according to them, why would we care if it is according to another definition?

It's fairly obvious where you want to go with this. You want people to say "it's ok to poison your kids with secondhand smoke but not with turpentine" and you can then start screaming "but they're both poisons! You're just drawing an arbirary line based on what you like!"

The reason you want to do this is because it's been done to you, or at least you perceive that it has. People have claimed (regardless of whether it's accurate) that Obama is a socialist, for example. Of course, that has bad connotations because people like Stalin, Lenin and Mao were also. If Obama is a socialist and so are they, then someone could claim"they're exactly the same!".

Of course, it wouldn't really be accurate to claim that Obama is just like Mao in his views (please no one go off on some tangent to prove that he is; Mao was perfectly willing to suffer nuclear attack on his country and viewed it as a small problem. That in and of itself puts the two worlds apart in outlook) and it's equally inaccurate to claim that secondhand smoke is a poison in the same way as turpentine is. Just because they meet some broad definition used in the dictionary designed to avoid excluding anything does not mean they meet more useful definitions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Midgen:

I understand the scientific evidence.

My point is that 1) it isn't a "poison" in the sense that Monty is claiming, and 2) understanding medical risk is apparently not within his scope.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Just gonna clear the idea of poison up for you guys slightly. Poison is actually a concentration of something rather than a binary yes/no to a substance.

All substances have a dosage limit, that when met becomes poison to the human body. Take turpentine as an example in trace amounts may not cause a person to be sick (or even aware they’ve been ingested). It is when it is taken in large enough amounts does it becomes poison. Another good example is arsenic (which is another example Monty used, correct me if I’m wrong) which when in trace amounts does not harm, however if taken over prolonged period of time could kill (this is also known for acetaminophen a common OTC).

I actually agree with Monty on this matter in theory. If a personal knowingly subjected a minor (or someone in their care) to prolonged second hand smoke, it should be considered poison. (Think 2packs a day in a closed room without sufficient ventilation) However in practice, I do not believe I trust the government enough currently to regulate such things, thus I’m torn.

You! Out!

Quit being sensible in here! This isn't the place for it!

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Holy shitsnacks!