Not surprised
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
As a libertarian with terrible asthma and cigarette smoke allergies I am torn on this issue. There's places I literally cannot go because people smoke in public. I can't keep my window or patio door open in my apartment because if one of my 20 neighbors within wind distance is smoking, it comes into my apartment.
I'm 42 and grew up when smoking was legal in restaurants. I don't remember this but I could not go and my parents told me I would cry and throw tantrums as an infant / toddler when they'd take me out. Not a tantrum of the emotional my feelings are hurt kind, but of "I feel like I am going to die and I can't breathe"
There seems to be a distinction between things like shooting heroin, drinking alcohol, owning guns as a whole versus cigarettes where as long as you follow gun safety rules, you can fill your body with fentanyl, drink until your jauncided or own a full auto belt fed and I'm not impacted in the slightest. But if you smoke a cigarette on your adjacent patio, inside a restaurant, on an airplane, or even standing outside the entrance of the supermarket then I have no choice but to leave because I can't not breathe.
I'm not saying I support a ban of smoking in private residences. I am saying that people's actions can hurt others and even as a libertarian, those actions seem in need of some kind of regulation.
Maybe I'm the problem and my genes are to blame that I'm too sensitive and I should go live on a farm in a rural area with no neighbors so that the 10% of Americans who want to smoke can do so without limits.
An analogy would be if 10% of americans wanted to put peanut dust into straws and blow it around the air as they walked in public. Well, most people wouldn't have too much of a problem. Back to the specific topic here of smoking in residences, the article specifically mentions apartments, condos, two family houses.
I've always lived in apartments and I've never once been able to enjoy it because one of my neighbors is always smoking on their patio or in the common areas on the way between my car and my door. Frequently, I can't even take the elevator because it's filled with smoke. From a philosophical perspective, whose right to enjoy themselves are more important? Because my desire to enjoy clean air infringes on the desire of the 10% of my neighbors to smoke. It's mutually exclusive and one of us has to lose.
I've been saving up to buy a small single family house to live in and I am worried that I'll never be able to use my yard. There will be a minimum of 5 adjacent yards. One to each side and three on the back. If one person in any of those 5 houses smokes, and statistically they will if 2 people per house, that's 10 neighbors, and 10% of Americans smoke. Then I can never use my own yard. My contingency plan there is to drop a few hundred dollars on outdoor high power fans to blow the air back. And, I'm okay with that. The obvious slippery slope of tyranny of banning smoking in a person's home outweighs the few hundred dollars of outdoor fans I will need to buy.
But for condos, apartments, I do support a ban of smoking there. Or at the very least, make sure the legal system allows an apartment/condo to specifically ban smoking everywhere, including inside the units, and allow for eviction if this is violated. Then the free market will allow the 10% of smokers to all live in one apartment complex to themselves, and the other 90% of us can live in a smoke-free location. As the article mentions, air does transfer between units. The main reason I've never bought a condo is because of numerous complaints online of shared air handlers pushing cigarette smoke between one condo unit into another. It's common enough that you'll find many posts on various internet forums about it. And the condos generally do nothing because they can't prevent someone from smoking in their own unit.
For those of you who oppose tyranny, please consider a free market solution that allows apartments and condos to enforce a smoking ban to results in immediate eviction. Then there's no tyranny. You choose to lease an apartment or buy a condo there, you agree to those rules. The government wouldnt be involved except for the force associated with an eviction.
Also, those of you who either smoke or are ambivalent to smoking, please recognize that there are negative reprocussions to people around the smoker that are completely unavoidable. Own a gun, be safe, it bothers no one else. Shoot heroin, don't drive a car or operate heavy machinery while doing it, it bothers no one else. Download porn and masturbate at home, no one is bothered. Most "sins" that people dislike actually don't impact anyone else unless you're really careless or reckless. With smoking, it's 100% impossible not to negatively impact people around you. It's just a matter of scale. To me, I'm bothered to the point of feeling naustious, getting a headache, coughing, and not breathing well. To someone else, it might "only" cause them to have a marginal 1 in 100k chance of increased cancer from the second hand smoke exposure or to make their clothes smell and make them slightly uncomfortable. But it's impossible not to negatively impact others while smoking to some extent. Whereas it's completely possible to avoid negatively impacting others with other vices.
To be clear, I think people should be able to own full auto belt fed guns without a background check, drink as much soda as you want, should be able to buy any opiate over the counter without a prescription, should be able to have edible marijuana, buy cocaine over the counter, etc. But cigarette smoking is something that can't be done without hurting others. Even in your own home unless you have some kind of special filtration system. Most of the things liberals rally against are things that only hurt the person doing them. Smoking is an exception where it can't not hurt everyone around the smoker.
Maybe that's the answer. If you want to shoot in your backyard and have enough land, you build up a berm for safety of your neighbors. Maybe if you smoke inside your house you install a special air filtration system so the smoke doesn't leave your residence.
For those who think I'm a libertarian except when it suits me, I concede that may be the case. It's a philosophical struggle for me my entire life. Please answer this: should people be able to play loud music inside their home as loud as they want even if it exits their shared walls of a condo/apartment, or if it's a single family house but the music is so loud it goes into everyone else's house? Because the argument of "it's my damn home, I should be able to do any damned thing I please" should also apply to loud music. Arguably, if your neighbor plays loud music all of the time, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on special noise proofing materials, double pane windows, or walk around with ear plugs. But it's your neighbor infringing on your right to enjoy quiet peace of your home, so shouldn't it be the neighbor who has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to sound proof their unit/home so that their loud music that they choose to play and enjoy doesn't escape and negatively impact other people?
And if you think smoking should be okay but loud music is a nuisance, then consider what alternatives the infringed upon neighbor has. For loud music, you could simply wear ear plugs. For cigarette smoking, you need a respirator. The respirator is significantly more inconvenient than ear plugs to try to live a normal life. Thus, I'd argue if you support smoking you also need to support loud music.
Last edited by Sanch; 02-23-2020 at 09:59 PM.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
I'm glad I do not live there anymore. I was born and raised in Huntington. I used to miss it. I got over it.
Banning it in private residences is insane, but I have much sympathy for the poster above with severe issues with it.
As an ex-tobacco user myself, I mostly feel vaping is a better descision for many, many reasons.
Plus cigarettes have been terrible since they made them go out if you don't inhale on them. They just don't hit right, or taste right, anymore.
Random thought: I once lit up a Turkish cigarette inside the Trump Tower lobby and passed it among friends like a joint. Those suckers were strong and tasty.
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
Meat and smoking now. Vaping tomorrow. Alcohol after that?
I’m convinced that part of the secret agenda to legalize weed and make it extremely accessible is to make it easier to ban booze again.
There are many jurisdictions that allow a ban on smoking in apartments and condos that can result in eviction. I’ve had no smoking clauses in at least three leases. It’s especially common in high rise buildings here in Chicago, which by law have sprinklers and monitored smoke systems. There isn’t even an ordnance here, in the land of legal protections for everybody, that requires buildings to provide an outdoor “smoking area”, though most do.
As for an immediate eviction, there is really no such thing in the United States. The 1968 Fair Housing Act has effectively eliminated the ability to evict an individual immediately for violations of a lease agreement, without review by a judge or court. At least that’s how it is enforced in most states. Additional state laws requiring eviction notices and timelines all make most evictions a 90+ day affair from first filing.
Last edited by RevolverRob; 02-23-2020 at 10:38 PM.
In terms of constitutional law, he's probably 100% correct. Even if there's a valid constitutional objection to a private home use ban, I don't see why they couldn't pass a law making tobacco illegal. I can't possess cannabis or coca leaf (bizarrely enough, opium poppy is a grey area) and I don't think anyone has got those laws overthrown.
Still worrying.
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
When all public health matters become the domain of the state, watch how many things become public health matters.
As the T-Shirt reads, I truly hope we can someday make Orwell fiction again.