by James Kellard

Created on: June 13, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

It is truly baffling that with everything going on around our country and the world right now, our government considers the most important issue to be smoking. Let's just take a look at some of the more pressing issues; our economy is as bad as it has been in decades, as is the housing market. The government has poured billions upon billions of dollars of our money into bailing out the banking industry. Unemployment rates continue to rise. The Taliban is trying (and succeeding) to take control of Pakistan (which has nuclear weapons). Kim Jong Il is not only grabbing Americans that may or may not have been in his borders and threatening to build an atomic bomb, but it appears that his time is running out and we do not know what North Korea will be like when he is gone. The list goes on and on, and what is Congress focusing on? Legislating to "protect" us, the mindless American citizens, from ourselves.

Whether you are a smoker or non-smoker, you should be concerned with this legislation. More and more our government is creating laws to "protect" us and our children. Megan's Law began as a law to protect the public from rapists and child molesters, now we have teenagers being forced to register as sex offenders because they take a nude photo of themselves.

The "war on drugs" was initiated to protect us from drug dealers, addiction, overdosing, of course to "protect the children," all depending who you ask. Our prisons are now flooded with more non violent offenders than ever before. The Patriot Act, the Do Not Fly list, an entire book can be written about all the laws that have been created to "protect" us, which generally end up just giving the government more control over our lives while stripping away our rights as American citizens.

There seems to have been some sort of shift in American ideology in recent years. Never before would we have accepted these types of laws. When did we become so fearful that we actually started to believe that we need the government to protect us from everything? Drinking, smoking, drugs, driving, medical decisions, parenting, family issues, even sex, do we really need the government to make all of our decisions for us? We used to encourage people to live their lives and make their own decisions.

If someone makes a bad decision or a mistake, that was considered a learning experience and they became a better and stronger person for it. Now we discourage anyone from making any decisions on their own that may be detrimental. Apparently

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