Social Engineering

Social Engineering 2

Social Engineering

This paper will discuss how social engineering and the law influence a persons’ right to smoke cigarettes. There are currently no laws preventing a person from smoking cigarettes. One would have to wonder if that is where the legislators are heading. There are a pletera of bans on smoking in certain places and smoking is only allowed in certain other designated areas. I will also discuss my desire to bring back yesterday by permitting parents to publicly discipline their children with spankings.

A smoker is free to smoke inside his home and his car. Beyond those places a level of social engineering influences a smoker’s ability to “light one up”. In a government building: no smoking is allowed and if the smoker desires to smoke outside of the building, the smoker must walk at least twenty-five feet from the building’s entrance. In most cases, there are no pavilions or special structures erected for inclement weather. In some instances, even in the designated smoking area, a nonsmoker’s right prevails. By this I mean, if a smoker and a nonsmoker are located in the “designated” smoking area, the smoker is not granted an absolute right or privilege to “light one up” if the nonsmoker request the smoker to not smoke until he departs. In a restaurant: the restaurant owner does not have absolute right to govern the privileges of his patrons. A restaurant may (by law) designate a petitioned-off, well ventilated, twenty-five percent of its capacity to smokers. Some cities ban smoking in all public places. In the public transportation industry (airlines, buses, trains): smoking is not authorized. Advertising: cigarette companies are required to include a health warning on its packages. Whatever happened to the Marlboro man or the ladies of Virginia Slim? In the seventies, cigarette advertising was widespread. Today, with all the restrictions and “engineering” television advertisement has virtually disappeared. All of the various venues designated as unauthorized smoking areas are an attempt (by legislature)

Social Engineering 3

to protect the nonsmoking public for the dangers of secondhand smoke created from the smoking public. The legislators are not merely trying to protect the general public from the perils of

second-hand smoke; they are attempting to influence a healthier lifestyle for the public. The second-hand smoke argument is simply a smoke screen for the legislature’s efforts of social engineering.

If I were in position to create and pass laws, the type of social engineering I might enact is the authorization of parents to spank their children when and where the parent deems it necessary. During my childhood, a parent publicly disciplining a child was considered to be a social norm and universally acceptable. Today, it is taboo and considered