by Roryanne O'Rourke

Created on: December 15, 2009   Last Updated: December 19, 2009

Smoking Banned in Public Places!

I do not advocate smoking, and I am not trying to recruit people to start smoking. If you used to smoke and you have successfully quit, congratulations. I am merely voicing my opinion on the No Smoking Law!

I am a smoker. I have been a smoker for the last 30 years. Yes, I know about the health warnings on packs of cigarettes. I know that smoking cigarettes may cause heart disease, lung cancer, and a host of other illnesses.

I do not know who runs those studies on the effects of second-hand smoke, but I grew up in a house where both my parents smoked. My two older brothers smoked and so did one of my older sisters. I sat on the couch next to both of my parents more times than I can remember while they were both puffing away.

Most of my friends' parents also smoked. I was surrounded by second-hand smoke the whole time I was growing up. With all that exposure to second-hand smoke, you would think I would have some terrible respiratory ailment by now. However, I have 'never' had any serious respiratory illnesses.

I haven't had more colds than the average person has, and when I was in my late forties, could still outrun my 10-year-old son without shortness of breath. In addition, I have never been hospitalized for anything other than giving birth since I had eye surgery when I was three years old.

Perhaps I am an exception, but until there is actual definite proof, I for one will never believe that second-hand smoke from cigarettes is harmful to non-smokers.

I am not defending the tobacco companies. They know what is in the products they sell and they know what those products can do. However, we smokers are the ones who put the cigarettes in our mouths, and light them up and smoke them. The tobacco companies do not send people out to my house to tie me up and force me to smoke.

I think it is insane that tobacco companies pay people who smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day for 30 years who claim they did not know cigarettes are addicting.

I guess I will have to suffer like the rest of my smoking cohorts and go outside during lunch breaks in 20-degree weather to smoke a cigarette because of these no-smoking laws.

I will have to wait until I leave a restaurant to have my after-meals cigarette because restaurants only want to cater to the non-smokers in the world. I can get used to it, but here are a few laws I would like to see passed.

Alcohol Consumption Banned in Public Places (Except in Bars and Taprooms)

What about

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