The Smoking Haters are so emotionally invested in the issue no one will ever change their minds. I thinks it's utterly astounding that the "haters" have so totally bought into their positions with classic Liberals Ideals. They are so extremely emotionally invested that no amt of evidence to the contrary will move them from their position.theyalso fail to realize that by ceding more control to govt it paves the road for yet more & more govt control over everyones lifes. So typically liberal, govt control over others not them & emotion rather than logic & factual driven
I probably qualify as a smoking hater. I quit in 1979 after having smoked about 10 years. At the time I quit, I was up to about a pack a day -- not much by many smoking standards.
I can still remember the pleasure in smoking a cigarette after a meal and with a cup of coffee. At the same time, I knew it was killing me. When I damn near died (seemed like, anyway) after running a mile, I knew it was time to quit.
Anyway - I'm emotionally involved in this largely because my mother literally committed suicide by smoking. She'd had 7 bypasses done and had actually quit smoking for maybe 3 years, then decided she was ready to check out and picked it up again. I hated cigarettes and what she did with them. I hated the fact that she chose to end her life that way.
I hear the arguments about encroachment on liberty and property rights and SHS data being skewed or not. And as much as I loathe the size of the government and what it's become, I do believe government has a measure of responsibility in making sure that people are making informed decisions about what they're doing -- and as we have seen time and time again, people are misinformed or completely ignorant. Where we have situations where people like children or minors are in public places and they're exposed to tobacco, I think government has an obligation to restrict that activity, particularly when there is a public health issue as a result. Does that mean government goes after fatbodies? Not really. As far as I can tell, obesity impacts the immediate family, though there is a disturbing trend in our society.
It's easy to regulate smoking. It's a whole different matter to regulate Twinkie-stuffing.
If you're running a bar or restaurant and you choose to allow smoking in your facility, you won't see me frequenting your establishment. I vote with my feet. I quit bowling for that reason -- God, the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
As far as I'm concerned, the data are completely overwhelming -- the act of routinely using a tobacco product, usually by smoking it, has a deleterious effect on the human body. The fact that some people can smoke like chimneys their entire lives and not (supposedly) be impacted by the habit does not indicate anything about the statistical norm -- those folks are simply outliers. Most people have trouble as a result of smoking.
It's a tough issue. But I can tell you that Mrs E and I will turn around and walk out of a facility that smells like a chimney. For a business owner whose clientele consists of maybe 85% who smoke, he/she won't give a rip. That's fine. It's a win-win. I keep my lungs intact and he keeps his coughing and hacking customers.
And then there was the scene when I visited a family member in the hospital, in mid-January in Michigan with the temps in the single digits. Right there by the main entrance, off to the side a little bit, stood a man who had an IV stuck in his arm and the little wheeled stand with the IV bottle hanging from it, dressed in one of those backless hospital gowns, slippers on his feet and ice on the pavement -- smoking his cigarette.
I liken that to the hopeless drunk whose liver is gone, yellow as a daffodil from jaundice, as he lifts the water glass of rotgut gin up to his mouth with shaking hands....
Some people call that freedom. I call it enslavement.
YMMV.
