I don’t care how many indignant cigarette wielders get onboard the smoker’s rights train. They can ride that train, moaning and warning the world until they’re wrinkly in the face. They can ring the alarm and let us know that big brother is killing their freedom buzz and will be coming for the overweight, hamburger chains, and YOU for using energy inefficient light bulbs… It won’t make any difference because they are missing the point.
Maybe the government allows us to buy liver-killing, family-wrecking alcohol. Maybe the obese continue over-eating because the government allows advertisers to make sure they never stop.
It doesn’t matter.
No amount of government endorsed hypocrisies and cancer causing decisions will ever make smoking safe for public consumption.
Some really believe that the anti-smoking campaign is a conspiracy run on smokers’ tax money with the one and only goal of violating smokers. Addicts band together and declare smugly that since that idiotic, horrifying, deadly thing is legal then this moronic, useless, deadly thing should be too. If the idiotic are allowed to exercise their rights, then it’s unjust to stop horrifying, deadly morons’ from expressing theirs…
This makes me sad.
Wastes of time and energy that divert worthwhile efforts and get in the way of positive change always tend to make me feel a little blue.
Smokers who get caught up in the frenzy of smokers’ rights rhetoric are wasting their already scarce breath. The decision of whether or not to legalize death by inhalation of unnecessary poisons rests on consideration of the rights of everyone who comes into contact with that poison. When deciding on laws that affect the public we have to consider all parties and try to balance what is upheld with what is being taken away.
Smokers can still legally smoke in many public places, they just don’t want to be inconvenienced by not having enough time for a butt on a five minute break, or not being able to eat dinner and smoke at the same time.
Stripped of rhetoric and appeal to emotion, the debate boils down to this:
Does smoker convenience outweigh the inconvenience of non-smokers being forced to smell, smell like, and potentially die from smoke inhalation?
The answer seems obvious to me, but just in case – no. Smoker convenience is not more important than our health.
I can almost hear the indignant gasps, the crinkle of cellophane and the click of lighters.
“Give me my public space to hack back my cancer stick or I’ll, I’ll…”
What? What can smokers possibly threaten, or offer, in order to get the non chemical-huffing portion of the population to agree to inhale flaming cyanide and formaldehyde?
You can say the words – they’re grammatical and each one has a meaning – but when placed side by side ‘’smokers” and ”rights” just doesn’t look and feel like a combination worth paying attention to.