CommentaryPUBLIC HEALTH, RESPONSIBILITY AND ENGLISH LAW:ARE THERE SUCH THINGS AS NO SMOKE WITHOUT IREOR NEEDLESS CLEAN NEEDLES?

摘要

IntroductionPublic health law has become something of which many scholars are now aware, even if there is not a single understanding of what it is, or even whether it exists as a 'true' field of academic study. Perhaps, most noted, Larry Gostin gives the following definition:Public health law is the study of the legal powers and duties of the state, in collaboration with its partners... to ensure the conditions for people to be healthy..., and of the limitations on the power of the state to constrain for the common good the autonomy, privacy, liberty, proprietary, and other legally protected interests of individuals.The two cases reviewed in this note can be viewed from this public health law perspective. In their facts, they are quite distinct: one considers whether there are obligations on the state to provide needle exchange programmes within prisons, the other whether detained psychiatric patients have a right to smoke notwithstanding the recently introduced smoking ban in England and Wales. A shared theme, however, is the question of harm reduction/minimisation policy. Furthermore, their common reliance on human rights arguments and the analytic focus of public health law provide interesting scope for joint analysis and observation.