And most people find farts offensive. Should everyone be banned from eating beans? Or be forced to wear butt plugs to make you happy? So put on an air filter if the air offends you. If someone wishes to kill themselves with either smoke, drink, or Mickey D's, that's their choice. No one forces you to walk behind them, nor breathe their exhaled smoke, or farts, or car exhaust, live over Radon emitting land, stick your head in a microwave oven and disable the safety switches, etc. You can chose to be where those odors that offend you are not. Just as you can chose to not engage in unprotected sex with VD/HIV carriers, play Russian Roulette, etc. it's up to you to protect yourself. If others chose to endanger their lives and health it is their choice. Either they will wind up killing themselves weeding themselves out of the gene pool and winning a Darwin Award, or their bodies will build up tolerance improving the gene pool. Why should your standards and life choices be used to limit those of others? Who decides whose life choice should define the baseline of everyone's? And why that person? Remember Farenheight 451. Books were burned because not everyone, but someone found something offensive, and since everyone put together pretty much found everything offensive, all books were banned and everyone was forced to be happy by artificial means. That is the slippery slope you ask all humans to take with your stupidly selfish demands. And no, personally, I'm not a smoker. But I take great exception to NYC forcing everyone to quit smoking just because a few morons in power - much like yourself - except that you have no political power (thank the gods for that!), have decided to be the conscience of the public. And personally, if someone wishes to clog their arteries or lungs or destroy their liver with alcohol, or pancreas with sugar, brain cells with aspertame, no one should have to pay for their condition. Neither in welfare, social security, health insurance, nor any other means. And yes, if a corporation decides to poison the environment and their actions make everyone around them sick - without informing them of the dangers, they should be held liable. But things like second hand smoke and obesity are well known to be dangerous, so if someone inhales smoke or fat burgers, that's their life choice. Fuck'em. If someone is spreading SARS, the plague, or running around machine gunning people, they should be dealt with accordingly. But if all they're doing affects only themselves, that's their choice. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :NSA got $20Bil/year |Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :and didn't stop 9-11|share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:Instead of rewarding|monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :their failures, we |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :should get refunds! |site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Sat, 19 Apr 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Smoking in public, that's an easy one to pick on. But the argument holds no water, unfortunately. Find me RELIABLE, UNBIASED evidence that second-hand smoke is actually dangerous, and I'll agree to ban smoking.
I could care less what any report says, I get an immediate sick feeling from breathing tobacco smoke. And a great many other people do as well.