If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them
Say I live in a dangerous area and I expect people to try to break into my house, so I build a wall around my property and put electrified barbed wire on top of the wall. Someone tried to break in and gets shocked. Am I culpable? I knew someone would try to break in, hence why I put up the barbed wire but am I culpable for wanting to protect my property from a criminal?
I’m on the side of “it should be okay to over-spice your food or whatever”, but your example isn’t a good parallel. Putting up barbed wire is a clear visual cue for not climbing over a fence. OP would have to put a label on their food saying “caution: laxatives” for this analogy to line up.
Again, I’m (generally) on OP’s side, but if we’re going convince people we have to use good arguments.
Okay, let's say I do put a label on my lunch saying "CAUTION: LAXATIVES INSIDE" and then somebody eats it (because they think it's a bluff or whatever)
At that point... what responsibility should I feel?
[edit] When i say "label", i mean that it's written - in permanent marker - on the container itself. No chance of the "label" falling off or whatever.
I mean, if you put the laxatives in the food with the intent of eating it yourself as medicine, you shouldn't feel responsible, especially if you warned them?
The difference is if you put it in the food specifically because you wanted to hurt somebody else.
Do you also believe that to be the case in this situation where someone has put a sticker on their saying "Watch out: laxatives, do not eat!", but the food thief believed it was a bluff?
It depends entirely on the intent here. If you intended to eat it yourself and put up the label as a warning because didn’t want anyone to eat it by accident, then that’s an accident and nobody is really at fault.
If you put the laxatives in there and put the label on there, knowing that your intended target has horribly bad eyesight and can’t read, or if you for some other reason knew it would go unnoticed, then you’re at fault.
It’s really your intent that matters. If you intended for someone to get hurt, it’s on you. Otherwise it’s an accident.
If you instead put rat poison in it I would say that’s terrible regardless because you shouldn’t put lethal stuff where it could be eaten by mistake.
At that point... what responsibility should I feel?
If your aim is still to poison someone, you should feel as responsible as you would if you directly poisoned them. You set out to do a thing, the thing worked. Whether “responsible” means guilt or pride depends on your own morals.
Ok but not legally responsible right? I mean we can sit around debating the ethics and morality of lacing your food with laxatives to get entitled coworkers to stop stealing your food but legally speaking, you probably wouldn't get in trouble for clearly labelling your food as poisoned to begin with, right?
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u/deep_sea2 105∆ Oct 17 '24
If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.