WHEN MY RIGHT CONFLICTS WITH YOURS

One of the most frequently cited categories of ethical dilemmas that face us today are those situations where the rights one person claims seem to conflict directly with those rights claimed by another person.

Thus, if I have, under law, the right to the pursuit of health, then clearly I have the right to be protected from someone else's cigarette smoke. There is ample medical and scientific evidence to support the belief that second-hand smoke does, indeed, contribute to overall ill health. But if the smoker has the right to the pursuit of happiness (as US citizens claim under their constitution, for example), and smoking a cigarette makes this person happy, then don't we have a conflict of rights? Is someone's health more important than someone else's happiness? Clearly, in this situation, since it is my health we're talking about, I'm likely to believe that to be so. If I were the smoker claiming that cigarettes were my route to achieving happiness, I'd probably disagree , and thus we have the classic conflict of rights dilemma.