The ethics of tolerance and the evolution of smoking and gambling as public policy issues

Since 1964, there has been an expansion in the amount and the variety of state-sponsored and state-sanctioned gambling opportunities throughout the US. At the same time, the number of laws prohibiting cigarette smoking have grown enormously. It is striking how one of these activities is tolerated even encouraged by public policy makers while the other is rapidly being prohibited by them. This paper will examine this phenomenon in three parts: (1) defining what is meant by the ethics of tolerance and contrasting it with the ethics of sacrifice; (2) giving a brief historical synopsis of how the gambling and smoking issues have evolved over time; (3) drawing the implications of a shift to an ethics of tolerance on future public policy issues.