Smoking

Wednesday March 15, 2006 - 10:22PM EDT

I remember reading some clown's opinion piece of how nowadays we tend to demonize smoking and restrict smoking in public places. The arguement was based on the fact that people can do what they want to and we shouldn't limit that. I forget the article but this person tried compare restricting smoking to restricting another activity that had no business being in an analogy. But somehow he forgot that smoking is an activity that affects those in proximity to the smoker more than most activities. Especially since all it does is bring pleasure and a slow death to the smoker. There are no benefits to it at all to argue that somehow we should ignore the damage it causes to surrounding people. If smoking had no smoke involved then hey, it would be ok. But damn dude how you going to defend it as a personal right in a public place when it actively damages the health of others who didn't chose to smoke. The nature of smoking prevents it from being a choice that one can make on  their own in public places. Becaus you decide for everybody so you can't defend it from the perspective of allowing someone to make thier own choice. There are definately a lot of things that can be analyzed by that line of reasoning and skewed either way. But I think the effects of smoking have been demonstrated enough that we are all in agreement, so there isn't wild speculation on effects that might pervert the line of reasoning in another issue. Just a thought.