A penchant for sugar

re: "Society's poisons" (BP, PostBag, January 18, 2023) 

Dear editor,

Joynandan Haldar, thank you for clarifying areas where I appear to have failed to write clearly. Allow me to correct my previous failure. Like the issue of sugary foods I also brought up and which you ignore in your response to my argument, alcohol was also relevant. It and unhealthy, sugary foods help illustrate the distracting irrelevance of your asking readers whether they would want their own children to be visiting casinos or smoking cannabis. That sort of populist question is no sound argument either for or against anything.  

I do not cheer for alcohol, cigarettes, or any other popular drugs as you falsely claim. Nor do I cheer for or have any desire to visit casinos. I do, however, cheer for just law.  Whilst I am glad to hear that neither you nor any one else in your family use alcohol, cannabis or cigarettes, you did not mention whether you also also abstain from unhealthy sugary foods. Your right to choose to enjoy such things or not according to your personal likes and dislikes should be respected by the law. Lest this be misunderstood, I think just law also requires due regulation of their availability to children.

However, just law is not made by merely following the personal likes and resulting choices of either you or me, or even of a large majority's personal prejudices. This is why a strong constitution prevents majorities making popular law that violates basic principles of individual liberty and autonomy. This also makes my, your and our families' choices regarding drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes or cannabis, visiting casinos or otherwise gambling, and consuming vast amounts of high-sugar foods irrelevant to just law. All normal adults should have their right to decide for themselves how they enjoy their own life equally and impartially respected by the law, and that includes a legal right to indulge in things that other adults might think, often with very good reason, to be foolish, unproductive and even unhealthy. Just law does not treat people merely as productive units of the economy or a means to some other end of society. 

However poisonous they might directly be to me, and thus indirectly to society, I continue to cheer for and to hold that the wonderfully sugary pastries and cakes in which I occasionally indulge should not be criminalized merely because they can be unhealthy. Please also leave butter alone. 

 Felix Qui 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on January 21, 2023, under the title "A penchant for sugar" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2487644/labour-laws-outdated