In our country, people who are over a certain age, regardless of who and what they are, they can drink, smoke, and gamble. It is legal. A group of people are trying to legalize marijuana. In our society there are various laws that grant people the rights of self-defence, gun ownership, freedom of expression, abortion (in certain cases), to be transgendered, religious freedom to believe, the right of silence in court, even to go topless in public areas and many others things. All these are legal and lawful. And anyone and everyone is eligible to do them if that is what they want and like. It is each one's own choice. Our society is becoming more generous and more accepting of new social trends.
Historically a social trend has been changed from time to time depending on people's acceptance and response to the results of it. For an example, a primitive society allowed polygamy, which is a man or a woman having two or more wives or husbands at the same time. Polygamy was allowed due to social demands and conveniences that were required to have more population in order to produce enough food and defend from the invasions of other tribes. This custom gradually evolved to be considered to be bigamy. One husband and one wife at the same time is now the social custom. Now it has become the law. Canada has changed the law of marriage from one male and one female to one person and one person at the same time. The law, which has been made according to a social trend, will be changed sooner or later when the social trend is no longer supported or accepted by the majority of the people. That is a weakness of the law.
Yes, it is legal to drink, smoke, gamble and other things. It is illegal to force anyone stop any of these things. Why, because they are lawful, legal and forcing someone to stop is against each one's freedoms and rights. Then why have so many new laws been made to restrict, limit and avoid these kinds of acts? Especially, why is the government so sensitive about the smoking issue? Someone told me that the tax revenues from the tobacco companies used to be substantially more than the expenditures for the treatments from the side effects of smoking. Then the government was tolerant and generous to smokers even though they knew that smoking is harmful and dangerous to people's health. Now it has become quite the reverse, there are significantly more expenditures for treatment than revenue. Therefore all laws are not always good. Some laws are outdated, inconvenient, uncomfortable, nonsense, foolish, and bad. Some laws are even dangerous, harmful, unjust, favouring one side and are either unenforceable or are too easily ignored.
Indeed we are living in a very strange, confusing and unsafe time period. So many things challenge and tempt us to do and to be whatever we feel like. Many things are legal and lawful too. But when something is not right, then the results of all these things, legal or not, the individual freedoms of choice become social and communal issues. All tax payers have to pay the price of expenses to fix the damages and take care of the results. So each one must be smart and wise to prevent being involved with these unnecessary things which could eventually ruin one's whole life, or make it difficult to turn one's life around. St. Paul advises, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful (good). All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any" (1 Corinthians 6:12). Truly everyone needs a guardian angel, the Holy Spirit, who leads each of us into the best way of living in given circumstances.
