They used smoking to get this foot in the totalitarian door.
Until mom and pop two-job suburbia realizes just what a world of chicken dung can come down on them from this, it will continue to advance.
I cut my finger pretty thoroughly when prying apart some slices of frozen roast beef one night. Drove the 25 miles to the ER I knew was open to get sewn up.
The doctor informed me that he had to inform the police because it was a knife wound.
I said "For a kitchen accident?"
"Yep. "
When the deputy arrived he asked me "What happened?"
I informed him, with suitable gravitas, that "The roast beef won." (after all, it was back in the fridge, relatively unmolested, and I was in the ER, hungry, and getting stitches in my finger.)
The look on his face was worth the price of the ER visit, the nurses got a kick out of it, and even the doctor was forced to admit it was a pretty dumb rule.
Unfortunately, the rule being "dumb" does not stop them.
As for the statists, I'll continue to speak out against them and their philosophies. Some will see the error of their ways, and the others will show their true colors.
If we are intimidated, they will win, because that is the entire thrust of their tactics, to intimidate us into compliance.
Thank you! The vast majority of the population doesn't grasp this. In fact they applauded it (smoking bans everywhere)and continue to do so. Once the Nanny Staters realized how easy it was to get people to give up their rights and freedoms it's been downhill like an avalanche over the past 15 or so years. I honestly hate the weak people who allow themselves to be turned into slaves of the state. The biggest losers are the leftists who claim that Bush is "taking away freedoms". It has been the left that has been doing this and now republicans think it is "good politics" to go along also. I don't know if you read the thread about companies not hiring, or firing people who smoke. Now they are refusing to hire people who are fat, or use alcohol, because of insurance costs. It's going to have to give at some point. People keep talking about a second civil war. I wonder if that is what it will come to. The average American is so pathetic that they would probably welcome police going door to door looking for guns or tobacco or trans fats or computers that have politically incorrect websites on them.
And we all see this creeping socialism with smoking.
First, smoke-free workplaces. Then smoke-free restaurants/bars. They pushed to move smokers away from building entrances. They are banning smoking in cars. Now, they want to ban smoking in apartments.
Once the legal precedent is set that the state can dictate what you can and cannot do in your home, they can start to dictate other rules as well.
Oh, and they always rely on your neighbors and children to report you.
Having lived long and fairly well, and having dealt with doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats of varying power and authority and other assorted lowlifes, I can honestly say that the only persons who ever intimidated me were addressed as, "Your Honor".