"PLEASE BRACE YOURSELF
for the DENIAL TROOPS to descend on you with all their fangs and claws."
HAHA. I just had to resond to this one, too.
It's not about smoking for me. It's about the freedom to make a personal decision.
When they come for the obese, I will fight them, and I am not obese. I fought the gun-grabbers. I will fight the food-police. I will fight ALL the nanny-statists, regardless of the subject. What you wish to happen will have no end. It will consume everything, and only a fool (or hardcore nannystatist) would believe otherwise.
Governmental intrusion into our homes and daily lives is NOT what this country was built on.
You said, in part: It's not about smoking for me. It's about the freedom to make a personal decision.
***
I support the right to smoke, although I really dislike the habit, and am convinced that smoking was the cause of my mother's death at 43 from lung cancer. However, it was her choice, a personal decision. Laws should not infringe on the decision to smoke.
Unfortunately, I did not get to make a personal decision about exposure to cigarette smoke as an infant until I moved away from home. My parents smoked heavily, and I had no choice about breathing it in, and having the stench in my clothes, hair, etc. In the car it was awful, as I and my younger sister and brother could not escape the smoke, with windows up and the smoke billowing.
Today, my sister smokes, my brother and I never have. My sister displays the same inconsiderate behavior as my mother and father did, but her youngest is in his senior year of high school. Where was THEIR personal decision about exposure to cigarette smoke?
Fortunately for infants of smokers, they don't know that air is not naturally smoky, and are not in distress (with some health exceptions).
All of that said, I don't support laws on the subject, only honesty in the debate about exposing those who have no choice in the matter. Homeowners and businesses should decide if smoking is allowed on their property, free from government intrusion. Children, though, should not be forced to breathe in cigarette smoke, whether it proves to be deadly or not, simply as a matter of courtesy-- the same courtesy most, but not all, smokers show to adults before they light up.
HELLO?
I have not once, on this thread, said it was a priority to me to have the govenment get involved in the issue.
I'd much prefer social pressure.
But, hey, I realize that like the FACTS about smoking and second hand smoke--
THE FACTS about what I say on this thread really don't matter.
It's customary to twist them into any fool thing to satisfy the selfishness, arrogance and TYRANNICAL NAZI-LIKE CONTROL NEEDS OF SMOKERS TO FORCE THE UNBORN AND CHILDREN to endure the health degredations the smoking of the tyrannical smokers causes their defenseless bodies and defenseless personhoods.