I don’t smoke, although reading about Democrats’ plans to try (again) for a statewide smoking ban makes me think about lighting up in protest. Having now secured the majority in both chambers of the legislature, in a state suffering a projected budget deficit, and a declining economy, someone must think that keeping tavern patrons from smoking is a top priority.
Why keep people from smoking?
Perhaps it’s for smokers’ own good. Adults can read the label that says the Surgeon General warns of plagues and pestilence for those who smoke. If they break out in boils, it’s not as though they weren’t warned. I am fully in favor of adults making a free choice like this.
Perhaps children will follow adult smokers’ examples, and light up themselves. I support smoking restrictions for minors, but if you’re really worried about kids smoking, then talk to your kids about smoking. I am from an era when students often did smoke in schools, in lounges designated for that purpose. It was only a minority of students who carried on this way. They were unpopular, and often a bit grimy, actually.
(Sorry, today’s youth of America – you can’t even lawfully jaywalk now. When you’re fifty, and everyone who imposed these inane restrictions is long gone, you’ll be able to use your disposable income to skydive while wearing tie dye, and jaywalk with impunity. Patience!)
Perhaps smokers seem like a burden on society, contracting all sorts of diseases they might otherwise avoid.
Nothing is more false! Smokers save society money, contracting diseases that cause them to die far sooner than healthy people. In the Netherlands, a study, involving the obese and smokers are subjects, concluded that healthy people – who live longer than smokers — cost society more than pathetic nicotine fiends foraging between sofa cushions for misplaced cigarette butts. See, Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure.
With a simulation model, lifetime health-care costs were estimated for a cohort of obese people aged 20 y at baseline. To assess the impact of obesity, comparisons were made with similar cohorts of smokers and “healthy-living” persons (defined as nonsmokers with a body mass index between 18.5 and 25). Except for relative risk values, all input parameters of the simulation model were based on data from The Netherlands. In sensitivity analyses the effects of epidemiologic parameters and cost definitions were assessed. Until age 56 y, annual health expenditure was highest for obese people. At older ages, smokers incurred higher costs. Because of differences in life expectancy, however, lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people and lowest for smokers. Obese individuals held an intermediate position. Alternative values of epidemiologic parameters and cost definitions did not alter these conclusions.
Emphasis added.
(The morbidly overweight also offer cost-savings over healthy people. Eat up, Wisconsin!)
What about second-hand smoke? It’s wildly exaggerated as a healthy risk.
The science in favor of a ban is speculative; proponents of a ban likely act from false certainty or disguised aesthetic prejudices.
Many may not like smoking, or think it’s revolting. Very well – stay out of bars that allow smoking. You’re free to drink in taverns that voluntarily choose to prohibit smoking, or the dark, dank basements of your own liberty-despising homes.
By the way, if you really think that smoking is – in all times and places – ugly, then how do you explain this?
There’s simply no way that Big Tobacco can mar Miss Madsen’s aesthetic qualities. It’s just impossible. (Somewhere, someone is squealing that this photo is ‘inappropriate.’ Whatever. I care nothing for that opinion, and – I have something better on my side.)
Democrats, liberals, progressives – can’t you find focus on more important regulations? Republicans went down the big-government path from the right, and look where that got them. There’s a part of me that welcomes this focus, and a focus on possible mandatory civilian community service, because few goals are more impractical and irritating simultaneously.
Go slow, but feel free to keep talking about it.