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.CB WHY THE ANTI-SMOKING PETITION SHOULDN'T BE SIGNED

	The current anti-smoking movement represents a periodic
reappearance of the spirit that led to prohibition in 1918 and
has led to religious persecutions in the past.  The spirit magnifies
a real or fancied evil, and supposes that the world can be
improved by suppressing some practice.  Some practices should
be suppressed, so the error is quantitative rather than qualitative
in this case.

	I have never smoked, and I am convinced by the evidence that smoking
is ccrrelated with lung cancer and circulatory diseases.
I have my doubts about the more recent findings that claim it harms
non-smokers, because the studies are riding a wave of intolerance
and may be biased.  Besides, extrapolating the statistics on
harm to smokers down to the level of inhalation by non-smokers
in smoke-filled rooms don't lead to any such conclusion.

	The promoters of the anti-smoking petition within the AI
Lab exhibit the intolerance I fear, as evidenced by extreme statements
like the assertion by BH that smoking in a public place should be
regarded as manslaughter.

	Arguments analogous to those favoring the petition may be made
against allowing people to drive cars (which may hit someone) or
eat food in the Lab (which may be left around to attract flies that
carry disease).
In the past analogous arguments have been made against allowing swearing
(which can bring God's wrath down on all of us),
drinking alcohol (which leads to failure to support one's family),
obscene language, women's clothes regarded as provocative, or speech
that encourages subversion of the current government.
Of course, differences between these past prohibitory
excesses and the proposed crackdown on smoking can be found, but this
is a kind of intellectual gerrymandering.

	Infringements on other people's rights to behave as they please
are sometimes necessary, though I am inclined to the opinion that no new
such infringements are necessary at present.  In any case they should be done
extremely carefully.  The present initiative is written rather carelessly.
In my opinion any one of the following defects are sufficient to doom
it.

	1. It distinguishes only smokers and anti-smokers.  The class
of people who don't smoke but don't mind it is presumed to be the
null set.  Thus only smokers may be in an office that permits smoking.

	2. It would not permit smokers to establish a restaurant
or any other facility catering only to smokers.

	3. It could generate infinite fanciful litigation.  For example,
suppose I hold a party and invite people from the Lab and permit
smoking.  Suppose someone claims that while the party is not an
official Lab function, he finds attendance desirable to further his
career in the Lab.  (In some companies such a claim would be serious;
with the present atmosphere of the Lab, it would probably be frivolous).
If I express resentment at his breaking up my party, and then don't
recommend a raise that he would like, can I not be accused of taking
action against him on account of his exercising his rights under
the new law.  I claim that a suit on such grounds would not be
automatically thrown out of court, so I would have to defend myself
and so would Stanford.  This is only one of the possibilities for
litigation under the proposed law.

	Unfortunately, the proposed anti-smoking law is only one of many
manifestations of the %2bureaucratic ethic%1 that is developing these
days.  I predict that many of the signers of the petition will
find some of the others most unpleasant, but they won't see any
analogy between the prohibitions they wish to enforce and the ones
they object to.

John McCarthy