I appreciate that - but the thing is, if we are talking about bringing in a law to prohibit smoking in public, we need to bear in mind that laws are obeyed by law abiding people.
People who illegally smack complete strangers on the nose because they have been asked not to smoke are the same people that will ignore a law on smoking in the street.
People who respond positively to a politely phrased request are the ones who are most likely to obey the law, thus making the law simply another way of criminalising some poor sod who stops behind a bush for a furtive fag, while having little impact on the real bastards whom nobody dares to reprove.
If you make so many laws that most of your citizens are tempted to break at least some of them,then respect for the rule of law is undermined. I think that's important.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-21 08:57 pm (UTC)People who illegally smack complete strangers on the nose because they have been asked not to smoke are the same people that will ignore a law on smoking in the street.
People who respond positively to a politely phrased request are the ones who are most likely to obey the law, thus making the law simply another way of criminalising some poor sod who stops behind a bush for a furtive fag, while having little impact on the real bastards whom nobody dares to reprove.
If you make so many laws that most of your citizens are tempted to break at least some of them,then respect for the rule of law is undermined. I think that's important.