Jacob Sullum Quotations

What you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, that's pretty personal. It doesn't get much more personal than that.

Like most drugs, their benefits outweigh the costs for most people. I'd rather be driving next to a truck driver on speed than a truck driver who's falling sleep.

People may very well choose to trade off years of their life, or the possibility of disease or injury, in exchange for the current pleasure, excitement, or stress relief they get (from food),

What the anti-fat activists are saying is, people don't want what they ought to want, and therefore the government has to coercively change what they want.

People should have a choice whether they want to engage in risky activities.

You're talking about protecting people from their own decisions, ... What you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, that's pretty personal.

You're talking about protecting people from their own decisions,

It's not for the government to say that's not a legitimate trade-off to make. Canadians need to question the idea that just because something implicates health that government intervention is justified.

If you ban smoking outside near a door or window, essentially you have no place to smoke except your own home - and maybe not even there. What's next? Smoking in a house with children will be considered child abuse. Smoking around pets will be cruel to animals.

If the fact that people make poor decisions is reason enough for the government to second-guess their decisions about dangerous activities such as smoking cigarettes and riding motorcycles, why on earth should the government let people make their own choices when it comes to such consequential matters as where to live, how much education to get, whom to marry, whether to have children, which job to take, or what religion to practice?

We can't depend on consumers to spend money they don't have on stuff they don't need, so the government has to do it for them

...there is no evidence that casual exposure to secondhand smoke has any impact on your life expectancy.