Halakhah sa Deuteronomio 21:18: Mishneh Torah, Rebels, Gray Matter III & Sefer HaChinukh

It is a scriptural decree that a wayward and rebellious son be executed by stoning. But the daughter is not convicted in this legal ruling since her mannerism is not to persist in eating and drinking like a man does. As (Deuteronomy 21:18) says "son" and not daughter and not 'tumtum' [indiscernable gender] and androgyne.

Although Rav Moshe did not prohibit smoking entirely, even he agrees that it is forbidden to smoke if one did not begin the habit before 1981.¹²Rav Moshe presumably would require one who began smoking after the time of his ruling to quit. He explains that it is forbidden to habituate oneself to and develop a desire for frivolous worldly pleasures. Rav Moshe also discusses this idea in another responsum (Teshuvot Igrot Moshe Y.D. 3:35), in which he rules that it is forbidden to smoke marijuana or use any other illegal drug. His source is the concept of the ben soreir u’moreh (see Devarim 21:18-21), a rebellious son who is punished for developing frivolous worldly desires (see Sanhedrin 68b).

And Ramban, may his memory be blessed, does not hold of this approach and he does not lean towards it; but [rather] he holds that there always be an explicit warning about the one to be lashed or about the one being killed — and not from a general negative commandment. And even if Scripture makes his death penalty explicit a hundred times, the Rabbi will still say that it does not punish unless it warns (and not from a general negative commandment). And he does not consider a general negative commandment as a warning in the place of lashes, because of that which is a famous law in our hands, “We do not administer lashes for a general negative commandment.” And therefore he, may his memory be blessed, said that they already clarified in the Gemara from which verse we learned to administer lashes to the rebellious son: And they said in Sanhedrin 71b, “It is like Rabbi Abahu, as Rabbi Abahu said, ‘We learned lashes for one who puts out a bad name, as it is written about him (Deuteronomy 22:18), “and they shall chasten him,” from “and they chastised him” (Deuteronomy 21:18) that is written about the rebellious son; and “son” from “son” [in] “And if the evildoer be a son of (liable for) lashing” (Deuteronomy 25:2).’” And there is also a difficulty for Rambam, may his memory be blessed, in this, [since] he writes in the second root, that we do not give lashes by the power of a comparison (which is what seems to be indicated here). And he also challenged the Rabbi about his statement that the rebellious son is liable for the death penalty for his indulging in much eating and he did not distinguish between the first eating and the second. But they said explicitly in the Gemara in Sanhedrin 71 that we do not punish the first eating of the rebellious son with the death penalty, but rather lashes, as they said, “We warn him in front of two [witnesses] and we lash him in front of three. [If] he goes back and goes bad, he is judged by twenty-three [judges for the death penalty].” He, may his memory be blessed, also wrote and this is his language, “And what is fit to take out from this is that the first eating is prevented (forbidden) and its punishment is lashes, and the punishment of the second is death, and they are two preventions (negative commandments) in the tally of commandments, and they are [both] included in ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’” To here [are his words].