by Patrick Sills

Created on: March 12, 2010   Last Updated: March 13, 2010

No government has been right in making a decision to ban smoking in public places. This not only applies to the United Kingdom, but any other country as well. With that said, the only reason the British government implemented this ban is because the United States has become for all intents and purposes a Fascist state for smokers.

The rest of the world is simply following the US example. America has long been the trend-setter for the vast majority of the civilized world, and the latest fad involves ostracizing those who smoke tobacco.

The fact is that if the US Environmental Protection Agency had never concocted their bogus "Report" on "secondhand smoke," a term created by anti-smoking fanatics sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, everyone in English pubs and restaurants and workplaces would be lighting up just as they had been doing for decades.

Moreover, next to nobody would have a problem with it. Let's face it: The only reason nonsmokers even have an issue with those who light up in public is the fact that they have been told by their respective governments that other people's smoke is a health hazard! 

There is perhaps no better way to turn public opinion public against a previously acceptable activity than to suddenly be told that it is killing everyone around you. Those who wished to eradicate smoking altogether were very clever and realized this.

As for the UK or any other country across the Pond, this author has never set foot in this part of the world, and therefore cannot honestly speak for the character of its inhabitants. However, it is reasonable to assume that in time, the public smoking bans over there will be extended to the outdoors just as they have already been in some US locations.

Even if one is gullible enough to believe that the ignited tobacco from a tiny 70 mm cigarette will somehow travel several feet across an enclosed room and likewise be "smoked" by a nonsmoker who happens to be sharing this space, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that tobacco smoke will in any way harm or even annoy such a person outside.

But in America, the hatred of smokers has reached a point where it is slowly becoming acceptable to ban lighting up in parks, on beaches, and even on public sidewalks!  The goal here?

Allegedly "for the sake of children," an increasingly larger number of local governments have decided that smokers should not even be seen. This falls nothing short of a brainwashing of sorts, for the agenda here is clear: Smokers are to be demonized.

Smoking bans were never about public health. Sharing an enclosed space with a smoker is about as "deadly" as enjoying a candlelit dinner. They instead have been implemented to denormalize the act of smoking until the practice ceases to exist.

It will be interesting to see what pasttime is slated next for banishment. If a smoke-free society is one day realized, the pharmaceutical companies will no longer reap the huge profits from cessation drugs sold to the remorseful, pitiful smokers.

Then again, at the very moment you are reading this, you can bet that Big Pharma and pocket-filled doctors are creating new and exciting diseases for children who simply like to daydream.

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