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Dear Socrates
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
Dear Socrates,
I am concerned by the behaviour of certain minors, mostly young girls, who pass the bottom of my garden on their way to school trailing clouds of cigarette smoke and foul invective. Putting aside the offence element, I wonder about parental responsibility when I see children clearly under twelve years of age puffing away on cigarettes.
A large sign in my local pub informs us that it is illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of sixteen. Does it also follow then that a child under sixteen is engaged in a criminal act if it is in possession of cigarettes or seen to be smoking them – or is the child immune to criminal prosecution because of age?
Since our present-day law clearly draws on Mill’s Harm Principle [J.S.
…