One quick note on BMI regulations and employers. BMI is a bogus measure of health as it can be affected by diseases the employee has no control over. For instance, I have a hypoactive thyroid and run about 50 pounds over weight despite trying to keep the weight off and taking my Levothyroxine. The good news is my condition is protected by the ADA and if any potential employer refused to hire me on the grounds of my BMI, they would be sued unless they reversed the policy and gave me the job. Not that I'd want to work for a nutjob company like that, but BMI is far different from smoking; a purely voluntary habit.

"Employer do what they do for the bottom line....regardless of your personal liberty. We have safer working conditions now then 100 years ago because it is cheaper to be safe than be sued." - on a side note and just to agree with you; Brisith child labour laws were pushed through by coal mine owners, who saw that children who grew up working in the mines became stunted and were not good adult employees, so the banned the practice (even though those tiny hands could get in places other miners just couldn't reach) to protect their own livelyhoods!

Haha Stukus. Funny analogy. However, I will tell you that I would not support a government ban on pooping in bars. If a bar for whatever reason decides that it is ok with people pooping on their counters then I certainly wouldn't be a patron, and I can't think of anybody who would, and that's their loss, but if there is somehow a niche market for people who like to leave stools on stools, then I would not support taking that away from them.

There are an enormous number of factors that can contribute to something as simple as a larger risk of automobile accidents which do harm other people, but I think it's absurd to call for legislation that lets police stop you on a highway and after giving you a breathalyzer test, proceeds to test your mental alertness if he suspects you haven't had adequate sleep or caffeine, or take away your license because you've had a really bad day and are more prone to road rage.

I mean, these are real factors that can affect the probability of harming others and this is just in the context of driving. Use your imagination. I'm sure you can think of other examples as well. Or I can give you more if you are going to try to find exceptions in the ones I've already given to show that smoking is different. The fact that smoking is given special treatment, to me, implies that smoking has been made a special moral issue.

The difference between all your examples and smoking is that, in your examples, the action itself (driving the car) isn't dangerous. The danger is in losing control of the car due to whatever factors. Whereas, with smoking, the risk to others is not within the smoker's control. If you reduced it down to unforeseeable causes behind the accident, I believe you would find the risk of getting cancer from second hand smoke to be much higher. Oh, and don't list blowout or brake failure as these are generally negated through proper automotive maintenance. Most accidents are avoidable, but invisible carcinogens are not, which is why more and more bans are going into effect on interiors and within X feet of the entries to public/commercial buildings.

"BMI is a bogus measure of health as it can be affected by diseases the employee has no control over. "

But, you ARE less healthy than you would be with out the disease, right? It isn't your fault, but that doesn't make you healthy.

A particularly muscular person would have a high BMI, it doesn't mean they're unhealthy.

@Hereward

I agree. I just think Draug's argument is a bit suspect.

some Red Lobster restaurants banned smoking anywhere on the property too.

Driving a car isn't dangerous? Only losing control of it is? Whereas with smoking the risk is not within the smoker's control? Using the word 'control' in both scenarios was probably not the best idea... I mean, if the driver loses control of the car, then by definition the risk of hurting someone else is not within the driver's control. When you choose to drive a car, I think you accept some inherent risk of danger to yourself and to people around you. This isn't even mentioning the 'invisible carcinogens' that are present in the exhaust fumes of cars.

It's really not difficult to come up with more examples. What about people who have the flu? Would you bar them from bars because they are spreading influenza virus? Estimates of death from second hand smoke are roughly 50,000 though it depends on how you causally link the two. Deaths due to influenza and pneumonia are nearly as high. Eating at a KFC while you've got the flu probably does more harm than smoking a cigarette in a KFC.

Shit, I'm not trying to downplay the dangers of smoking. There's a reason I'm not a smoker after all. I just think that it's really become a matter of morality now, and not one of consistency. Yes, there is an underlying harm to others aspect, but that aspect is present in so many human activities which are just, by and large, socially acceptable. Sure you can pick at the small differences between my examples and smoking, but do they really justify the huge disparity in legislative treatment? You can say that there's one extra step in causality between driving a car and crashing it, as though inhaling second hand smoke now is much more easily causally attributed to your death by cancer 30 years down the road. I just don't see the consistency.

"If the insurance companies have centered their policies around smokers and non-smokers, there are definitely some health issues there."

Just as a technical note, that is not a valid argument.

"I can hear it now when laws are passed that ban smoking in public areas. My rights are being violated! Never mind what happens to the none smokers rights to not inhale the poison."

I do not drive a car. For those of you who choose to drive cars, I would prefer not to breathe your benzine.

"Einstein also was a very poor spouse."

The Einstein thing was knocked down already, but still this statement kind of bothers me. I do not believe that matrimony is a good institution. I think that we have not evolved to be monogamous. So, being a "poor spouse" is in my view a reaction to a faulty life choice.

"so you can estimate that every cigarette causes 2-5 mutations in some cell in your lungs"

I've heard different statistics... maybe I'll look them up, but they were roughly about 1 mutation per ten cigarettes, and the rate of these mutations being cancerous is pretty high.

Actually you could say monogamy is not a rational choice since it goes against the principles of nature. All kind of male animals share the same target. to share as much sperm and offspring as they can.

"If you reduced it down to unforeseeable causes behind the accident, I believe you would find the risk of getting cancer from second hand smoke to be much higher."

To the degree that I can make sense of this sentence, I'm pretty sure that your belief is entirely wrong.

hellalt, the goal isn't just to have as many offspring as possible, but to have as many offspring reach reproductive age. So yes, that does represent a reproductive strategy, but another one exists, where the father nurtures a smaller number of offspring to increase their offspring's chance of survival and future reproductive success. Compared to say, snakes or rodents, humans fall very much in the quality of offspring category of reproductive strategy than the quantity strategy.