Posted on 11/14/2002 9:06:16 PM PST by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:05:02 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
So if someone can get enough people to vote that people shouldn't be allowed to spend their time on online boards like FR, tough noogies for us, cause "we've been outvoted"?
'Wish I'd read just that further along 'fore I'd posted.
I don't smoke, never have tried, and also have asthma. I like the fact that I don't have to worry about second-hand smoke in the office or restaurants or in supermarkets, as I did in my youth. However, I also firmly believe that enough is enough.
I certainly hope not.
The old bag has her way.
Now you find your own way; a way of a young Lady with a full life ahead of her & one without the baggage *this* one carries, y'hear?
Besides, tell me you didn't find it somewhat odd *Peggy* went to such great lengths to articulate -- emphisize -- how smokers are, "old fashioned, having made old fashioned deals"?
Don'tcha think ol' *Peggy* neglected to mention the flip-side to this?
Like how these old fashioned smokers are (increasingly) hiring old fashioned sheisters to sue the crap outa the old fashioned tobacco companies?
Yea, & following their lifetime of old fashioned smoking which was of course, a matter of their own old fashioned free choice??
No.
If you're intent on writing for a living, Angel?
Then, tell the complete story.
...the whole, bloody, old fashioned story, eh?
But with the anti smokers they come from both sides, that's all I was trying to say. I know many conservatives who are just as fanatic about smoking as any liberal.
Having said that, when I was in the Navy we would have training sessions in rooms with no windows or ventilation, and everyone would light up except a few of us, and the room would be blue with smoke. My nose would burn. My eyes would tear. My throat would burn. I didn't complain but one day our Department Head came down, walked in and said, "Oh, no, this is just too much."
And I don't regret it. I don't regret that I can go out to eat in a pleasant atmosphere without the stench. To act like having to step outside for a smoke is some sort of martyrdom is just nonsense. As a matter of fact, there ARE ordinances that say I can't bring my cats into the restaurant where you are eating and I haven't heard you complain about that. I can't bring my cats to work. I can't bring them to the public library and let them curl up on top of the shelves and swat people's heads as they go by. When, oh when will this ridiculous, intolerant attitude toward cat owners be done away with? See how silly that sounds?
Brilliant use of activist language.
I am ambivalent about this but, on balance, come down on the side of the government having the constitutional right to protect non-offending, non-smokers from those who are indifferent to the discomfort their behavior causes others. This applies only to state governments of course. You would have no problem with a state law whidh prohibits peeing down your leg, or against a factory which emits noxious fumes or effluviants, or which prohibits noisemakers at operas.
This is not to say that a state government always has a duty to exercise its constitutional prerogatives to protect its citizens from behavior which is merely obnoxious or offensive. I believe that most of these anti smoking ordinances have been justified because they protect non smokers from the health hazards of second hand smoke. This brings most of them within the constitutionally permissable area of public welfare. I know a new study just out perports to debunk this notion, but a legislature or city council is not required to believe every new study.
Problems arise when the government seeks to regulate smoking outdoors where health hazzards to others are clearly remote as in such places as football stadiums or courtyards. How can this be constitutionally permissable? In Singapore it is illegal to chew gum on the street because you might litter the wrapper. Would this justification pass constitutional muster in America? I think not, but there is no guarantee if Hillary ever gets to appoint more Justices like Ginsberg. Could the Mallibu city council pass an ordinance prohibiting smoking anywhere (including in your own private home) because it wants to protect the smoker himself? It can regulate liquor if authorized by the state, why not smoking? At some point a social policy which can be justified because it allegedly advances some permissable police or general welfare goal becomes unconstitutional because it too remote or encroaches on some other value like the right to be left alone, or to speak freely, or to associate freely with (only)those whom you chose.
But I do think that among the electorate there is a growing and alarming tendency to ignore whether a matter is constitutionally permissable and to consider only whether it is viscerally desirable. At this point, everything becomes a public relations game.
Precisely.
The reason there are anti-smoking ordinances has nothing to do with whether people such as yourself might be discomfited or some cockamamie health concern.
"Second hand smoke will kill you" may be a lie, but it is also no more than a rationalization, substituting for the sponsors' real objective. Which is Control -- by the We Know What's Good For You Crowd.
When I was a smoker, I would ask, "Do you mind if I smoke?", and I would happily defer to your expressed wishes. But I strongly object to the impositions on freedom which are sponsored by the anti-smoking fascists.
I think it is an insufficiently commented-upon irony that cigarette prohibition and the public shaming it entails is the work of modern liberals. They're supposed to be the ones who are nonjudgmental, who live and let live, but they approach smoking like Carry Nation with her ax. Conservatives on the other hand let you smoke. They acknowledge sin and accept imperfection. Also most of them are culturally inclined toward courtesy of the old-fashioned sort.Had one of Carrie Nation's vandalism sprees been abruptly and permanently ended by a tavern owner with a double barrelled shotgun, the nation would have been saved a ton of trauma. Some of the antismoking zealots are closing in this status as well.
Noonan's dead on, especially with her comparison of smokers to the "homeless" early on. I've often suspected that homeless advocates had a hand in the banning of smoking in downtown office buildings, to facilitate panhandling.
Interestingly, when I got stuck on jury duty in Cleveland a few years ago, the ban on indoor smoking was not enforced in the courthouse. The jurors had a smoking room and each judge had the perogative of allowing smoking in the hallways outside their chambers.
-Eric
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