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Defending assisted dying and the freedom to smoke

Liberals have faced a major issue of importance this week: The prohibition of tobacco for those born after 2009. Yet it went by with hardly any fuss at all. On the other hand, assisted dying being debated tomorrow has attracted huge attention. Interestingly, Kim Leadbeater who will introduce the private members’ bill retweeted her endorsement of a quote which read: ‘If liberal democracy means anything it is this: that every individual should be free to live their life in the way they want’. Yet Leadbeater voted for the tobacco ban. In moral reality, the reasons we have to support assisted dying and the freedom to smoke are the same. It is about time individual freedom, lifestyle pluralism and a true conception of voluntariness are defended against the misguided doctrines of paternalists and conservatives who seek to either deny the truth of these ideas or distort them out of their proper shape. 

When it comes to smoking cigarettes the central argument of its proponents is it should be banned because it is bad. This is questionable as reducing your lifespan in exchange for pleasure cannot be assumed to be bad per se. Very often, we cross the road to go to a different bakery simply because their pastries are tastier; no one argues this is irrational, but this is to concede marginal pleasure can outweigh marginal longevity. If the considered judgement of smokers, e.g., Sammy Davis Jnr., is the pleasure of smoking outweighs its costs it is very plausible their good is not really served by banning smoking. This is especially so for smokers who quit before forty which eliminates 90% of the risk of smoking-related diseases. I’m not arguing not smoking is irrational, rather, I’m claiming there is a pluralism of goods in our separate lives. And what J. S. Mill called ‘experiments in living’ are required to come to our good.  

The monism of longevity is simply far-fetched, indeed, even Streeting implicitly admits this by contending: ‘I have not yet seen evidence to persuade me that vaping is harmful enough to introduce a ban’. But this monism is the implicit theory of the good many proponents of the tobacco ban are operating on. However, when it comes to assisted dying many of the Labour MPs who will have backed the tobacco ban will suddenly switch to arguing longevity is not all that matters. So: The longevity argument must really be rejected even by its proponents. It is here where another two arguments against tobacco and assisted dying which divide liberal-leaning and conservative thinkers will be put. Many conservatives such as Jacob Rees-Mogg follow Pope John Paul II in rejecting a ‘culture of death’ on the moral basis ‘Man’s life comes from God…it is the property and gift of God’, who we wrong in taking it. A short article cannot address this argument, enough can be said against it by pointing to the fact it would have to rule out suicide too.  

The liberal-leaning argument against assisted dying and smoking is both cannot be said to be voluntary. A thick conception of voluntariness is employed which requires the person make choices not according to the pressure of others or their addiction to chemical substances, rather, the choice must be of their real selves. It is this thick conception which Kim Leadbeater is hurriedly trying to assure her colleagues her bill meets its requirement for two doctors and a judge to sign off on the sincerity of the choice. However, this thick conception of voluntariness is patently implausible. Physical processes such as addiction cannot undermine freedom as a strong wind stopping me from standing up straight outside cannot be said to undermine it either. There is an implicit admission on the part of most people that the terminally ill can voluntarily choose to die even though great pain from disease makes them do it; so why can’t the tiny pain of withdrawing from smoking be taken to not undermine their voluntary choice either?

Pressure from others, or, the sense of feeling a burden on society, does not undermine voluntary choice too. Many women have got married at the altar despite their truest wishes simply to avoid embarrassment and many more have ordered starters at restaurants just to fit in. No doubt, a few men have signed up to the army and died in battle just to not be considered a wuss. All of these choices are voluntary despite the fact they arise from pressure from others, parity of reasoning dictates then, choosing to die simply due to pressure from others is voluntary too. Voluntariness properly understood simply consists of the individual having an understanding of what he is doing and its central consequences. An opponent of assisted dying might object they don’t really care about voluntariness then but simply stopping pressure on the terminally ill to end their lives. 

Should pressure from others itself be taken as good reason to ban the pressured activity we face big problems though, because pressured activities are all pervasive in society. For starters, many of the parliamentarians who may adopt this view take no issue with people, the state and the tax system pressurising smokers to quit. I once danced with a girl pretty much solely because her friend pressured her into it: Should I have been stopped from dancing with her? No. Are people to be controlled at restaurants with brain chips to stop them from pressuring others, e.g., displaying they would be very disappointed if you didn’t choose their favourite fish? No again. If influencing people’s decisions via inflicting a form of cost on them is pressuring them there is nothing wrong with it per se. Saying ‘I won’t pick you up from the airport if you fail to wash and continue to have bad breath’ is pressuring my friend into doing those things: No wrong is done. 

Pressuring people is wrong where the threatened inflicting of cost on them is one they are morally entitled not to bear. This is why pressure in the form of threatening to violate a contract or violate their property rights is wrong, and, here, warrants forceful stopping. Reciprocity, i.e., doing unto others as you would do unto yourself, and the claim this creates on the part of most of us is why pressuring the terminally ill to die is wrong (though being outside of our domain of rights it remains a wrong which cannot be subject to enforcement). 

What many supporters of prohibiting tobacco and assisted dying really believe in is paternalism, i.e., the idea that the freedom of the individual can be limited to stop them from making bad choices. Let us just accept the truth of this moral idea for the moment. Given there will always be some people whose good is not served by paternalist policies they are immoral for riding roughshod over such people’s rights. These individual rights protect the pursuit of the ultimate good within each of us. Isaiah Berlin puts the basic idea eloquently:

‘[T]o coerce men in the name of something less ultimate than themselves--to bend them to my will, or to someone else's particular craving for (his or their) happiness or expediency or security or convenience…[is] aiming at something desired (from whatever motive, no matter how noble) by me or my group, to which I am using other men as means. But this is a contradiction of what I know men to be, namely ends in themselves.

None of us would accept state officials banning desserts in restaurants because the obese and overweight could not control themselves, or, vasectomies being made illegal because some men really regret them. Analogously, neither should most smokers who do want to quit, or, the tiny minority who would imprudently choose death be allowed to stop everyone else from choosing. None of us have the privilege of treating others as vases which can be smashed in the quick rush to our own goals. 

Finally, the paternalist idea itself must be challenged. It is an often-made point, but it warrants repeating: Where does the state’s control of our bad choices stop? Is junk food and alcohol to be rationed and exercise to be required next? Does the state have the right to choose our partners, our career and the house we live in provided it makes the best choice for us? No. A natural principle of human respect dictates we must be free to pursue our own flourishing in our own way; even if that way turns out to be the wrong way. This is the deep truth of morality; not a social convention, or, a political command, but a moral law to be adhered to as if it were gravity. 

Individuals have the right to pursue their own good in their own way, or, indeed, to go to hell in their own handcart. This is the fundamental right which opponents of assisted dying and the freedom to smoke deny. As liberals have always said, this is to deny the true respect everyone deserves in virtue of their nature and to open the door to government which has the potential to control every aspect of our lives. Although concerns about voluntariness regarding addiction and pressure from others initially appear to be of a liberal ilk, they ultimately hide an implausible idea that government should protect a particular kind of autonomy at all costs; including to freedom.  No. Freedom must stand, as it should in life, and, as it should in death too.