Consumer Reports, Hookahs, and Legal Positivism

Consumer Reports reports that hookahs are not as healthy as many people seem to think. I’m not surprised. What I find interesting and disturbing is the view about law and the state that is expressed by the CR employee’s kid Daniel at the end of the article. What is this guy teaching his kid, huh? “They wouldn’t make something legal if it were so unsafe.” As if everything is naturally illegal by default, and it is the job of wise state’smen to choose what to make legal (allow us to do).

Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Libertarian political philosopher, writer, editor, and web designer. He is the founder of the Libertarian Fiction Authors Association. His academic work has appeared in Libertarian Papers, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and Transformers and Philosophy. He lives in Greenville, NC.