Re: Project 21 of the National Center for Public Policy Research New Visions – 3/29/2008 – “Property Rights Going Up in Smoke” – Sean Turner

Turner says “A property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used - whether its' a car, house, business or any other resource of which one is the owner.  Additionally, private property rights confer an exclusive right to the services of the resource - as well as the right to delegate, sell or rent any portion of the rights by exchange or gift based on mutually agreeable terms“. If this is an accurate description of what property rights are, property rights never have existed (and hopefully never will exist).

Property rights are only one class of rights among many. Other rights classes include the right to life and the right to pursue happiness--- at least that’s what our Founding Fathers thought. In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers said “to secure these rights [including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] Governments are instituted among Men”. In the Preamble to the Constitution, our Founding Fathers said “in order to … secure the blessings of liberty … do ordain and establish this Constitution” and then proceeded to establish the structure of government which, among other things, provides a structure for arbitrating the conflict of rights between its citizens.

Can gun ownership, for example, really provide the “exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used” for the gun owner? That would include the right to shoot people for any reason including no reason what-so-ever! Of course not; that particular “property right” conflicts with another right (right to life) of others. Thus the exercise of any “right” can never be an exclusive right if it interferes with the rights of others. That is why property and all other civil rights can not be “absolute” in the physical sense but only exist within the reasonable constraints of law.

Even if you have the right to fire guns on your own property, do you have the right to fire them in such a manner that the bullet crosses your property boundary and kills a neighbor on their own property? Do you have the right to shoot someone on your property without warning after you invite them onto it? Do you have the right to shoot someone on your property who is there without your permission but with authorization of law, such as a policeman (with warrant) responding to a suspected criminal activity, or a fireman trying to put out a fire? What about the right to shoot a postman because you are upset with the mail he/she delivered yesterday? What about the right to shoot your spouse because he/she cooked a lousy dinner or left the dishes dirty? I’d say offhand that nobody’s property rights entitles them to take any of the above-listed actions.

The question of property rights vs smoking at home may be addressed in only one logical way. Does smoking in your home cause sufficient harm to others to warrant the abridgement of your right to smoke? If it does not, you have the right to smoke on your own property. If it does, you do not have the right to smoke on your own property.

In my opinion, the harm smoking on your own property does to others does not merit the interfering with your right to smoke provided the smoke is sufficiently diluted by the time it leaves your property and that your property is not used to provide public conveniences incompatible with smoking. I’d also question the right of to smoke on “your” own property when that property is jointly (which would require the concurrence of the other owners so you wouldn’t be interfering with their right to forbid smoking on their property), or if a legal resident on the property (especially a minor for whom one of the property owners is a guardian) is likely to suffer from the smoking.

The right to smoke at home cannot not justified on a purely property rights argument.