2007-03-15

Govt That Can Ban Smoking Can Ban Raw Milk

I despise smoking; I hate smokers at the bar while I attempt to enjoy a fine stout, and I hate how smokers flick their spent butts out of their car windows, onto sidewalks, onto lawns, and never into trashcans. I love restaurants and bars that forbid smoking. But even worse, I hate laws that ban smoking. Why? Because if a government has the power to ban the CONSENSUAL behaviors that I hate, then it has the power to ban the CONSENSUAL behaviors that love; for example: the production and consumption of raw milk.

I support laws against flicking spent cigarette butts onto public spaces, because the smoker shares ownership with others, such as me, who pay to clean after pigs (pigs being people who litter, not those clean and intelligent swines). And I support laws against labeling milk as "pasteurized" if it is not, because it represents a violation of the implicit contract agreed to by the consumer. But I support the natural, universal right of one human to own a bar and in it to permit (or ban) smoking, and of one human to produce raw (or pasturized) milk and sell it to knowing customers.

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