What we have here is a variant of the second-hand smoke problem.

You, as an individual, are free to decide if you want to smoke. Unfortunately, doing so in a enclosed space can infringe upon the rights and choices and health of everyone else around you.

Hence society as a whole has rules in place about just where and how a smoker may indulge themselves.

Or as stated by Thomas Jefferson, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”

Freedom and rights are always in tension, your rights verses those of others.

The Declaration of Independence states: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But note that Jefferson was careful to put these inalienable rights in a specific order: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Again, he wanted to show that no individual’s pursuit of liberty or happiness should come at the expense of endangering someone else’s life.

I have no problem with people who think differently… but I would like them to at least consider the fact that their actions could — quite literally — kill someone.

And that that person just might not be some random stranger.