Amoebistan
11-11-2005, 15:34
There are a lot of politicians who are trying to get the "mommy vote", if you will, by pledging to make measures against smoking into law. It's not just a problem in the US (witness the ban on smoking in bars in the UK, or was it specifically Ireland?) but since I am a damnyankee after all, US problems are what I see in the most detail.
New Jersey's Acting Governor Richard Codey, a man who is otherwise well-qualified for the job, with a strong sense of integrity and a head screwed securely onto his shoulders, has proposed to raise the age at which people can buy cigarettes from 18 to 19 years.
Other political figures have suggested banning smoking outside of public buildings as well as in them. (I can't remember where, off the top of my head, but some brilliant thinker came up with the idea of forcing people to stay at least 25' away from doorways - meaning, on a normal street in a business district, you couldn't smoke even if you stood in the middle of the road.) Yet others have considered banning smoking in places other than bars that have traditionally had smoking in them, such as casinos or those restaurants that still have "Smoking" and "No-Smoking" seating.
Being the liberal that I am, this really bugs me. While I don't smoke, and I react badly to other people's smoke (besides which, I think it stinks, but never mind), my right to breathe freely and not have to smell someone's burning tobacco shouldn't extend to forcing smokers to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid offending my lungs or nostrils. I can get up and move, I can take a job where smoking is out of the question anyway (I work in a lab, where there are computers, birds with sensitive lungs, and extremely volatile compounds, so it would be a bad idea), and I can always ask people not to smoke in my house or my car.
The concern of anti-smoking activists is about underage smoking, but why don't we tackle underage smoking the way we tackle underage use of illegal drugs? Just educate people about the risks, and let them make their own decisions; let their parents teach them their own take on it; and let the kids fuse those ideas and come to their own conclusions. That's what we do with heroin and coke, it's what we do with sex (or it's what we should do, anyway), why not with tobacco?
What the hell is this about? Is it just me or is there a growing authoritarian trend in our national politics?
New Jersey's Acting Governor Richard Codey, a man who is otherwise well-qualified for the job, with a strong sense of integrity and a head screwed securely onto his shoulders, has proposed to raise the age at which people can buy cigarettes from 18 to 19 years.
Other political figures have suggested banning smoking outside of public buildings as well as in them. (I can't remember where, off the top of my head, but some brilliant thinker came up with the idea of forcing people to stay at least 25' away from doorways - meaning, on a normal street in a business district, you couldn't smoke even if you stood in the middle of the road.) Yet others have considered banning smoking in places other than bars that have traditionally had smoking in them, such as casinos or those restaurants that still have "Smoking" and "No-Smoking" seating.
Being the liberal that I am, this really bugs me. While I don't smoke, and I react badly to other people's smoke (besides which, I think it stinks, but never mind), my right to breathe freely and not have to smell someone's burning tobacco shouldn't extend to forcing smokers to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid offending my lungs or nostrils. I can get up and move, I can take a job where smoking is out of the question anyway (I work in a lab, where there are computers, birds with sensitive lungs, and extremely volatile compounds, so it would be a bad idea), and I can always ask people not to smoke in my house or my car.
The concern of anti-smoking activists is about underage smoking, but why don't we tackle underage smoking the way we tackle underage use of illegal drugs? Just educate people about the risks, and let them make their own decisions; let their parents teach them their own take on it; and let the kids fuse those ideas and come to their own conclusions. That's what we do with heroin and coke, it's what we do with sex (or it's what we should do, anyway), why not with tobacco?
What the hell is this about? Is it just me or is there a growing authoritarian trend in our national politics?