0712 - MoralTruth

Our Staff Ethicist has waited patiently for his time to speak, and today, in the middle of a most peculiar non-hurricane Hurricane Season, he has the microphone. He starts with a common and soluble social problem: smoking. All doctors now agree that smoking is bad for you, giving the smoker cancer and heart problems, and clearly shortening the life span. More, those exposed to a smoker's smoke are also harmed. First off, there is no room for debate that it is wrong to smoke when you are harming those who are nearby and innocently breathing your fatal fumes. So far, it is simple, and more and more in the U.S. at least, it is forbidden to smoke in public places. But there are more problems. Is it morally right to smoke alone, thus in a real way taking part of your own life? Is it right to be in the business of selling tobacco, selling poison? Is it right to own a tobacco stock? And then, is it right to give free but costly Government medical care to a smoker who has caused his own condition? Well?

The answer to smoking alone and harming yourself is that while harming yourself is arguably wrong, the harm from outside interfering with a personal choice is likely worse. The practical solution is a compromise: tax cigarettes heavily. If you do not like the compromise, than what will you do about deadly obesity and selling bad fried foods?

And then there is selling tobacco. A reasonable ethical judgment is that it is wrong to sell that which harms the users. But then, if selling is forbidden, you have the social problem of prohibition, where the cure is worse than the disease – so to speak. All right, we will not prohibit sale, but then, is it right to own tobacco stocks? No, says our Staff, including the Revered Investment Guru.

If you are still with us, what is the ethical way to distribute the cost of medical care for the smoker? Do you want to see the sick smoker left on the steps of the emergency room? One argument is that the taxes on tobacco make up for the costs the smoker is imposing on society. While not sure about that unless taxes are increased, why not just increase the cost of health insurance for the smoker? That's fair, and it might well be fair for the morbidly obese, too.

We sense that some Readers are shifting uneasily in their seats, wondering whether we will move on to the very popular Anguilla Expat taste for wines and other spirituous beverages. The OO has been instructed by several of his doctors to have a drink or two a day – not more. That's because unlike tobacco, a little alcohol is good for the blood pressure. If you overdo it, your health insurance premium goes up. OK?

Driving while drunk, speeding, driving while busy talking on the cell phone or typing on a computer – these are clearly dead wrong, with emphasis on the dead. The reason is not that you are risking your life, which we can view placidly, but that you are risking the life of the innocent pedestrian, the innocent other drivers, and indeed the innocent animals on the road. That's just impermissible. If you must have the thrill of risking your life, take up one of the many popular hazardous sports. Lotsa luck.

There is currently much judging of the apparently popular practice of athletes doping themselves up or bulking themselves up with steroids or such. Our Ethicist is yawning – why should we care, says he. If you are a follower of the sport, you may well condemn the doper, but we do not advocate bureaucratic intervention.

Last, what of those who claim the Iraq invasion was good because Saddam was evil? Yes he was, but the invasion has killed several hundred thousand Iraqis and displaced four million, That is immoral on a grand scale, isn't it?

Next time: Decisions [OO #713]