Spinko Tournament - Conservative Showdown - Smoking Rights

Thanks to Pro for intiating this debate. It gets to he fundamentals of what government should regulate.The ResolutionThe meaning of the resolution is usually determined with respect to the context of the argument presented with the resolution. In this case, there was no argument presented with the resolution, so I see no alternative but to rely upon the comments prior to my accepting the challenge. I stated that I would only debate the question of whether government should regulate people who voluntarily subject themselves to tobacco smoke. I'm still not sure exactly what we are debating, but if it is the regulation of people who voluntarily subject themselves to smoke, then that is a semantic argument relying upon somehow invading the intended meaning of the resolution. By Pro's Rule 1, if it is a semantic argument that concedes the debate.I think that Pro is not making that semantic argument, but rather argues that because any amount of tobacco smoke is harmful and because anyone putting smoke into the air necessarily subjects non-smokers to smoke, smokers are therefore subject to regulation under all circumstances. Pro can clarify if I have it wrong, but I'll proceed on that basis.C1: HarmsI concede that substantial smoking harms the health of the smoker. The "harm" question is whether there is practical lower limit of smoke exposure below which the harm caused by tobacco smoke is so small that regulation of voluntary smokers cannot be justified in terms of the public good. Keep in mind that harm is posed in terms of risk. Some people smoke like a chimney and never get cancer or any other illness that reduces their life span. Many of us know such a person, but they are reported in news stories. [1. http://www.thesun.co.uk...] Those people beat the odds, but the harm was not inevitable. As exposure to smoke drops, the risk drops. That's a premise of regulating smoking.Smoking lowers health costs overall, because the savings from smokers dying younger is greater than that of treating their acute illnesseses. [1a. http://www.nytimes.com...] The harm is only in health.Let's consider a similar low-probability risks. When a person goes to any public place with many people, a park, school, or concert hall, there is finite risk of contracting a dangerous disease from one of the other attendees. Under a broad principle that government should regulate anything that poses harm to the public, there would be grounds for preventing public assembly altogether.There might be a special circumstance where the risks are so high that such regulation is justified. Suppose there is information that a carrier of a highly contagious disease is on the loose in a major city, Public assembly might then be temporarily prohibited while there is high risk. However, under ordinary circumstances we rely upon the public to assess the risk of going to the park, or whatever, and to use reasonable judgement in assessing risks. If a dictatorial regime banned assembly for supposed health reasons, with no acute risk, we would be rightly suspicious that it was no more than a cover for imposing a separate agenda.Consider another case. Is inhaling gasoline fumes in any amount good for a person? I seems reasonable that it is always harmful. Keep in mind that low-level risks are rarely measured. There are imputed from high level exposure. If gasoline fumes in any amount are harmful, can we conclude that the government should ban filling stations? Some states do require gas fume recovery systems to lower overall air pollution. It's reasonable only if it can be shown that (a) overall air quality is improved as a result of the regulation and (b) that public health is thereby improved as a consequence. What is missing from Pro's case for harm is a showing that the incidental smoke with reasonably regulated voluntary smoking causes measurable public harm. Wood smoke is about as dangerous as tobacco smoke. [2. http://www.ehhi.org...] It is reasonable to have some regulation of wood smoke, as when communities ban using fireplaces on still evenings. Nonetheless, a forest fire in Arizona just put the smoke from 750 square miles of trees into the atmosphere. There will always be some wood smoke in the atmosphere. At the very least, it would be unreasonable to regulate wood smoke --or tobacco smoke-- to levels that are below the natural ambient levels.California decided to ban smoking during the peak of the cigar craze in 1997. The government said that they had to protect employees from second-hand smoke, even though the employees were working voluntarily. Silicon Valley knows all about air filtering. The clean rooms used in semiconductor manufacturing require the removal of microscopic dust particles. It turns out that not only is it possible to apply clean room technology to public spaces, it is cheap enough to be entirely practical. The design involves having the air flow from the floor up to the ceiling where it is sucked in and electrostatically filtered. The design is such that the air in a cigar bar full of heavy puffers had air substantially cleaner than the air outdoors. A non-smoker two feet from a smoker could not smell the smoke. The operators of these places offered to meet any standard the state wanted to impose. They also offered to have employees wear gas masks.(Tobacco smoke particles are about 0.3 microns. [3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...] Commercial air filters remove 99.99% of 0.3 micron particles. [4. http://www.filtrationtechnology.com..., scroll to the Ultra-cell model] Clean room technology is more elaborate and includes design of the airflow patterns in the room.)The offers to ensure ultra-pure air were rejected by the State. They used Pro's argument precisely: any amount of tobacco smoke is harmful, period. Never mind that a non-smoker's health would improve compared to the outdoor air, The justification for regulation is that the air isn't perfect. That's the way California law stands today: no level of air quality is good enough. I claim government should not impose such regulations because they are unreasonable and cannot be linked to a significant health hazard.C2: Solvency and DeterrenceYes, regulation is a deterrent. One can go further and threaten people with life imprisonment for lighting up, and that would be even more effective. However, that does not justify banning smoking in public places. Pro cites statistics on health improvements after smoking bans are imposed on public places. That is an argument for regulating the behavior of people who voluntarily choose to be in those places. Voluntary exposure is not the subject of this debate, and snaking it in indirectly is a violation of the rule against semantic arguments.However, for the sake of debate I will consider the hypothetical that people do not voluntarily enter smoky places. One remedy is that they can be provided with gas masks, or better yet, bring their own. Another possibility, perhaps more appealing, is to require air filtration to reduce the levels of second hand smoke. In either case the resolution fails because Pro is, if I understand him correctly, arguing that any risk of harm justifies any amount of regulation.We should be concerned about the principle that any amount of harm implies that government should impose regulation to prevent it. The principle provides cover for imposing irrational ideological believes upon a free people. Anti-smoking extremism is a part of a modern ideology that wants to impose religious-like concepts of what behavior is acceptible and what is not. It should not be enough that a majority agree that something is bad in order to ban it, there must be a substantial harm to the public that is not voluntarily participating. The resolution is negated.