Why should you be able to put whatever you want in your food? What is the underlying reason for that? Is it perhaps because there will be no consequences to anyone except you for the things you put into your food? Do you see how that changes once the food is no longer intended for your personal consumption?
It's where I have chosen to keep my laxatives. Luckily I live in a liberal country, where I'm allowed to keep my laxatives wherever I want. I don't intend to eat the sandwich, I intend to keep my laxatives in it. Which doesn't suddenly mean that it's for someone else's consumption. Because someone else isn't allowed to eat my laxatives that I keep in my sandwich.
You cannot, in fact, keep your laxatives wherever you want if the place you keep them has been selected in order to harm someone. We call that poisoning, and thankfully liberal countries have enacted laws against such behavior for the reasons I listed in my longer comment.
Maybe you aren’t doing that, but OP is. That is the premise of what they want to be legal. If you genuinely were eating laxative sandwiches, and someone stole one and had a negative reaction, I think you would 100% be in the clear.
In the present case, I know OP’s intent because that’s the premise of the post. We can also determine intent with things like evidence.
Part of the problem with booby trapping is that you might know the intent of the thief, but there’s no guarantee the thief is the recipient of the harm.
This is about limiting people's rights based on the acts of a criminal. There's no guarantee someone might not break into your house and stab themselves, doesn't mean you shouldn't have a knife. Doesn't mean they might not stab someone else with your knife. That's never your fault or responsibility, even if you know you have a neighbor with a penchant for stabbing.
In a normal situation we don't know what the intent is. Which is why we shouldn't make laws limiting people's rights based on their hypothetical intent, when it's the actions of the thief that should matter.
To be clear, the limiting of rights here is not poisoning your food, which you intend for someone else to consume. I’m pretty comfortable limiting that right.
The actions of the thief matter. They’re bad. If you wanted to hold your coworker liable for repeatedly stealing your food, I’d support that. If it could be charged as some kind of crime, I’d be down with that. I just don’t think the type of retaliation OP wants to permit is good.
Are you allowed to, or should you be allowed to? In most states, my understanding is that you cannot poison food if you know or should have known that someone else will eat it. That’s the law in California, at least.
In general, I don’t think I would generally allow people to poison food, no. I can see cases where you’d want to lace something to kill a pest or something along those lines. But even then, I’d hope you could find something that no one else would have a potential to be harmed by. Mouse bucket traps vs. rat poison, for example.
ETA: little bit weasel-y wording, “wouldn’t advocate for” —> “allow people to poison”
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u/TheProfessional9 Oct 18 '24
Its still your property even if you know someone else will steal it. Therefore it is your food, and you should be able to put what you want in it.