What level should the threshold be placed for taking away freedoms?
I’m just wondering where people think the line should be drawn with respect to laws being made, or keeping old laws.
For example many people believe that smoking should be illegal because it is a product proven to cause death.
And others believe that it should be their right to smoke and if the law were to make tobacco illegal they would consider that unfair.
But recently in California, Proposition 19 received with 54% of California voters voting “No”, and 46% voting “Yes”.
This implies that in California the freedom to chose to smoke marijuana has been taken from 46% of residents there.
Do you think that the 50% threshold is sufficient to balance laws that remove individual freedom?
See I believe that there are many instances were many people believe that something should be made illegal but the end result is removal of individual freedom and responsibility.
People’s rights should not be put up to a vote. If what you are doing is not harming anyone (except possibly yourself), then it should not be illegal, regardless of how many people want it to be illegal.
“Right to smoke”?
First thing people need to do is to learn the difference between rights and privileges and then learn the definition of responsibilities.
No where does it outline that people have the right to smoke, the right to drink themselves stupid drunk, the right to drive….. Many of those so called rights are actually privileges that society can and does take away in situations where someone is jailed or when it is deemed that they are detrimental to the public safety or health.
At the same time, people have responsibilities to themselves, their families and their communities and when they cannot or will not act responsibly they lose privileges and even rights if their transgressions are serious enough.