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from the all-those-in-favour,-please-cough dept.
Austria has one of the highest rates of smoking and youth smoking among high income countries, and that might not be changing anytime soon:
Many Western countries have banned smoking in bars and restaurants, but Austria is bucking that trend. Under a law passed in 2015, Austria was due to bring in a total ban this May, but now its new government of the conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party have scrapped the plans.
The move was spearheaded by the leader of the Freedom Party, Austria's Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, himself a smoker, who told parliament last month that it was about freedom of choice. He said restaurants should be free to decide if they want to have smoking sections, where "a citizen has the possibility to decide perhaps to enjoy a cigarette or a pipe or a cigar with their coffee".
The move has horrified Austria's medical establishment. Dr Manfred Neuberger, professor emeritus at the Medical University of Vienna, says it is "a public health disaster".
"The decision is irresponsible. It was a victory for the tobacco industry. The new government made Austria into the ashtray of Europe."
Meanwhile, the country is considering buying more jet fighters, recruiting more police, defunding its public broadcaster, and examining its past.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday February 16 2018, @06:41PM
I'm not too far from TMB on that one either. Definitely there are plenty of people I'd rather not appear in my field of view nude *but* guaranteeing my comfort (or anyone elses) is NOT a legitimate use of force. And please, let's get away from this inane and inaccurate assumption that just because something is not illegal that there's no other way to stop it either. That's just not true.
With apologies to Dave Barry, this is fundamentally what he calls the 'sex with dogs' argument. We have to make sex with dogs illegal, you see, because otherwise people will be having sex with dogs and that's really nasty. While it is really nasty, it does not follow that it must be illegal or people will do it. I'm not going to do it! Are you? So what makes you think we need a law? To stop you from doing something you aren't going to do anyway?
I reckon making a law about something like that is going to mean it happens more often, not less. Because now people have a reason to talk about it, and people that had never thought of the possibility and likely never would have suddenly are forced to contemplate it. Most of them are going to go yuck but like with anything some small percent will have a different reaction. So it's actually the law, whether actual or proposed, that creates the very problem it's supposed to address (a very common theme when you analyze the effects of laws btw.)
If the idea is to reduce or prevent bestiality, then a better approach would be to forbid mention of it, rather than the act, but that would obviously fall afoul of the first amendment. And it wouldn't really work either. Nothing motivates people to discuss a subject like forbidding discussion of the subject.
"The point is, that government has always had laws about public conduct."
A private restaurant is not really a public space, though the state of course prefers to pretend they are. But the public square and the public roads are public in a strong sense - there's not really any reasonable way to avoid them or find alternatives. Restaurants are nothing like that at all. If you don't like one there's another, and another, and another.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?