A penchant for sugar
Re: “Society’s poisons,” (PostBag, Jan 18).
Joynandan Haldar, thank you for clarifying areas where I appear to have failed to write clearly. Allow me to correct my previous failure. Like the issue of sugary foods I also brought up and which you ignore in your response to my argument, alcohol was also relevant. It and unhealthy, sugary foods help illustrate the distracting irrelevance of your asking readers whether they would want their own children to be visiting casinos or smoking cannabis. That sort of populist question is no sound argument either for or against anything.
I do not cheer for alcohol, cigarettes, or any other popular drugs, as you falsely claim. Nor do I cheer for or have any desire to visit casinos. I do, however, cheer for just law. However, just law is not made by merely following the personal likes and resulting choices of either you or me, or even of a large majority’s personal prejudices. This is why a strong constitution prevents majorities making popular law that violates basic principles of individual liberty and autonomy.
All normal adults should have the right to decide for themselves how they enjoy their own life equally and impartially respected by the law, and that includes a legal right to indulge in things that other adults might think, often with very good reason, to be foolish, unproductive and even unhealthy. Just law does not treat people merely as productive units of the economy or a means to some other end of society.
However poisonous they might directly be to me, and thus indirectly to society, I continue to cheer for and to hold that the wonderfully sugary pastries and cakes in which I occasionally indulge should not be criminalised merely because they can be unhealthy. Please also leave butter alone.