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To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (11237)	4/28/2002 9:45:21 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) of 21057

How much of this is coming out of my pocket? Very hard to calculate; you can't simply divide the total cost by the population. Much of the cost is borne by the smokers themselves, and their insurance providers. Last time I looked we didn't have socialized medicine in the US. I do think that smokers should pay significantly higher premiums for life and health insurance than non-smokers, if they don't already. In any event it is a poor argument for regulation, simply because it is open-ended to a ridiculous degree. The public health costs associated with obesity, lack of exercise and poor dietary habits probably exceed those associated with smoking or high-risk sexual habits by a huge margin. Do we ban fried foods? Require daily exercise? Force obese individuals to restrict their junk-food intake? Absurd. All you can do is educate to the greatest extent possible and do all that you can to shift the cost onto those who choose to place themselves at risk. If smoking imposes public costs the answer is not to ban smoking, the answer is to place an additional tax on cigarettes and use it to defray the public costs associated with smoking. If you see no connection to the article from Time that I posted to you about the incidence of STDs directly attributable to behavior in the the gay community... Obviously sexual behaviour has a great deal to do with STD incidence, a fact which is by no means confined to the gay community. This is not a reasonable argument for regulation of sexual behaviour. If we start allowing "society" or Government to intrude on basic personal freedoms because some individuals place themselves at risk by exercising those freedoms irresponsibly we lose far more than we gain.

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