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Path: utzoo!linus!wivax!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!tim
From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Smoking . . . (Slow Motion Suicide)
Message-ID: <5349@unc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Jun-83 22:13:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5349
Posted: Thu Jun  9 22:13:38 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jun-83 06:26:05 EDT
References: flairvax.130
Lines: 65


Here are two recent articles on net.flame on the subject of
anti-smoking legislation.  The first one is a reply to an article
of mine, in which I claimed that public smoking should not be
controlled by the police in a free society.

        I'm amused at how unc!tim sabotoges his own argument by
        saying, "Freedom requires responsibility" to justify
        smokers' rights.  He goes on to say that those of us who
        are non-smokers are required to act responsibly and allow
        smokers their right to polute our environment.

        Where he sabotoges his argument is simply that he, while
        requiring responsibility from non-smokers, requires no
        similar responsibility from smokers.  The way I under-
        stand his argument, non-smokers must allow smokers the
        right to smoke, but in turn are granted no rights to en-
        joy a healty and non-lethal atmosphere.

Well, I'm glad you at least got some amusement out of it, since
you seem to have missed its content.  The point is that the link
between public smoking and danger to healthy people nearby is
currently only tenuously proven.  Certainly there is some danger;
after all, you do breathe a few smoke particles.  I expect that
the ambient pollution from cars and other internal combustion
machines in a large city is somewhat more dangerous than public
smoking.  Can you disprove this?  If not, then it seems to me
that you're throwing away people's freedoms in a pretty cavalier
way.

Someone smoking near a person who has a health hazard that would
be worsened by any inhalation of smoke is extremely vile, provid-
ed of course that the person is asked to stop, the situation is
explained, and the person contiues to smoke.  Such idiots should
be prosecuted for charges commensurate with physical assault, be-
cause that is just what they are doing.

Now, on to the second letter.

        As a smoker, I was not at all offended by the recent
        anti-smoking submissions. In fact, my personal feeling is
        that cigarettes should be made illegal. Sure, a huge
        black market would form... just like marijuana is now.
        But people would smoke in privacy or with other addicts,
        never in public.

        My worst problem with breaking this obnoxious habit is
        that there are cigarettes EVERYWHERE I go -- in checkout
        lines of every kind of store, in machines at work and at
        every kind of establishment...

You're sick, do you know that?  You want to put people in jail to
be gangraped by large felons for smoking, do you?  Well, that's
what making cigarettes illegal is really all about.  The laws are
not there as bluffs; they can and will be enforced.  Have you
ever had a friend busted for selling a few joints to an undercov-
er cop who pretended to be his friend?  I have, more than one.

Remember, laws always imply cops and prisons.  They are not mere-
ly little things that we should create whenever people aren't
acting just the way we think they should.  They are at best a
necessary evil.  The freest society is one in which there are
only those laws which are necessary to its continued functioning.

Tim Maroney