"Jacob Z. Sullum" is a syndicated newspaper columnist with Creators Syndicate and a senior editor at Reason (magazine)/Reason magazine. He focuses most of his writings on shrinking the realm of politics and expanding individual choice. He was interviewed in the 2004 documentary Super Size Me.

Sullum is a native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

More Jacob Sullum on Wikipedia.

If you ban smoking outside near a door or window, essentially you have no place to smoke except your own home - and maybe not even there. What's next? Smoking in a house with children will be considered child abuse. Smoking around pets will be cruel to animals.

People may very well choose to trade off years of their life, or the possibility of disease or injury, in exchange for the current pleasure, excitement, or stress relief they get (from food).

It's a question of what people want.

What you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, that's pretty personal. It doesn't get much more personal than that.

You're talking about protecting people from their own decisions.

It's not for the government to say that's not a legitimate trade-off to make. Canadians need to question the idea that just because something implicates health that government intervention is justified.

What the anti-fat activists are saying is, people don't want what they ought to want, and therefore the government has to coercively change what they want.

You're talking about protecting people from their own decisions, ... What you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, that's pretty personal.

People should have a choice whether they want to engage in risky activities.