Sunak wants to phase out legal smoking

[Boo Radley75]

While I am opposed to the proposed smoking ban in beer gardens, there is at least one positive of it, were it to be made law...

 

[frogwoman]

While I am opposed to the proposed smoking ban in beer gardens, there is at least one positive of it, were it to be made law...
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Is it me or does the way he's holding that cigarette look really weird?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Is it me or does the way he's holding that cigarette look really weird?

A non-weird person’s thumb would be below the snout.

 

[dshl]

Why not close all the pubs and shops and every other <expletive> thing and we can all sit in a room with a neural link to World Wide Web.

I vibe with this sentiment somewhat. There seems to be 3 issues here to my mind:

1. Where does this stop? Aren't there more deaths from alcohol so lets stop that then, no?

2. Some don't seem to make the distinction between dying from something like being murdered and something that was an automonous choice like drinking/smoking, cave-diving or whatever. Like numbers are just thrown together with false equivalence.

3. I know that we can harm ourselves through smoking/etc as a reaction to life stresses, etc. But - at the risk of stating the obvious - isn't it part of being a human being in an imperfect world that we get to make our own decisions, lifestyle choices, etc? Isn't that what the human experience is all about? What's the alternative? Sitting in a corner with a neural link?

 

[kabbes]

To me, this is an inevitable part of the chain that started with Hayek and the idea of perfect markets being the answer to all life’s problems. The failure of that idea led to the idea that externalities can be priced into the market. The failure of that led to the attempt to build hedonic “well-being” measures that could be maximised as part of the market perfectability, and positive psychology as a way of aligning behaviours. And that leads us to this — anything that fails to conform with rational maximisation according to those measures needs to be nudged out of existence. No recognising of the need to allow people to build their own lives and communities, autonomously and meaningfully. No social justice, just individual perfection.