The Abuse of Rights in Tobacco Control Debates

Jurgen De Wispelaere, Trinity College Dublin

Abstract

Recent debates on tobacco control illustrate how contemporary political argument abuses rights discourse, substituting claims of rights to reasoned argument in the policy process. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which this strategy is successful. I suggest first that although smokers may be said to have certain entitlements that could fit the paradigm conception of a moral right, this paradoxically does not include a right to smoke as argued by the pro-smoking lobby. Next I want to argue that a similar problem affects the rights discourse of the anti-smoking lobby: the right to breathe clean air too faces considerable conceptual and normative challenges. Consequently I believe that the tobacco control debate cannot properly be conducted in terms of rights. In fact, perhaps both advocates and critics of tobacco control would do well to leave political rhetoric where it works best – in the political domain – without allowing such claims to corrupt the systematic ethical assessment of competing values and policies.