ThirtyWhat weighs in on the smoking ban debate and gets to the simple root of the problem:
So I'm conflicted. The liberal in me screams that I don't have the right to tell you not to smoke in a bar ... or a bowling alley ... or anywhere else for that matter.Look, I really, really don’t give a fuck if anyone smokes. Well, I am sorry they’re hurting themselves but that’s none of my business. It’s the fact that you can’t contain the hurtful substance that makes this not just your business, but mine too.
But the realist in me knows that your smoking doesn't just affect you. In an enclosed building, the cigarette smoke saturates the air ... and that air gets harder and harder to breath over time.
Yelling “Freedom!” does not change this. I would love to have the “freedom” to race down the road at any speed I want and not be bothered with traffic signals. The problem arises when my “freedom” to speed and move unencumbered through intersections collides, literally, with your “freedom” to do the same. Yes, I’m inconvenienced when sitting at a red light but our society as a whole is better off for it.
And, as long as we are waving our freedom flags, where’s my freedom to go where I want to without breathing someone else’s smoke and stinking like and ashtray. Again, sometimes various freedoms are incompatible. My not smoking does not, in and of itself, take anything away from a smoker. A smoker while smoking DOES remove relatively clean air from me.
5 comments:
Smokers constantly talk (listen to the Pam Furr show) about how important the taxes they pay on cigarettes are to society.
If smoking were banned outright society would find other things to tax to make up for the sin tax on smoking, but the effect would be that people would live longer, and healthier lives.
The cost of smoking is shared by anyone who pays premiums on health, life, and property, insurance.
All of us are victims in one way or another to this drug addiction.
We talk about freedom, but freedom to do whatever we want is only available to those living on a deserted island.
Part of living in a society is having to trade that absolute freedom for all the benefits of living with others.
Smokers get over it - the end is near!
JP
Amen, preach brothers!
I was being sincere when I said that I want to support the whole "smoker's rights" movement. But, I just can't ...
If someone wants to use chewing tobacco ... as repulsive as I think that is ... I say go for it. Because the only one they're is hurting is themselves (and their immediate family when they die from throat/tongue cancer.)
But cigarette smoke doesn't just stay in some invisible box around the smoker ... it floats into everyone's air.
I'm sorry ... I can't buy it. Someone's right to pollute the air does not override my right to breath fresh air.
I'll tell you this though ... if I had money to invest, I'd spend it all designing a vending machine that spit out nothing but nicotine patches ...
JimLeach Blog to shut down by Nov 27th!
JP
I'd like to thank you for providing thoughtful and logical insight in support of the smoking ban. Much like Thirtywhat, I felt conflicted between my bleeding heart tendencies and my repulsion to cigarette smoke and its dangers. Your posts, as well as Thirtywhat's, and Jerome Prophet's comments provide a lot of common sense which can only be argued against with hysteria and conspiracy theories by opponents of the ban. I'm interested to know if you think a statewide ban is in the near future?
Also, why is the full blame for the decline in some businesses hoisted fully on the backs of nonsmokers when it's clearly the smokers who are not returning to the establishments that they obviously sustained previously? Other restaurants and bars are enjoying increased business and I think those are the places that non-smokers are now patronizing.
I don't smoke, so my freedom flag is not for the supposed right to smoke whereever one wants.
It's for the now-lost right of the business owner to set his or her own smoking policy.
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