Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watarts!geo
From: geo@watarts.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Smoking . . . (Slow Motion Suicide)
Message-ID: <1876@watarts.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jun-83 16:25:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: watarts.1876
Posted: Wed Jun 15 16:25:08 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jun-83 07:25:21 EDT
References: flairvax.130 unc.5349
Lines: 67

In a recent article Tim Maroney has this to say about smoking:

     "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,
     provided 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, because that is just what they are doing."

Well I would agree with Tim that legislation  is not a worthwhile
way to try to resolve this issue.

I don't think your description of how much consideration smokers
should exercise goes nearly far enough.  I am not more allergic to
cigarette smoke than most people, I just don't like it.  If I have
been near someone who smokes, in a poorly ventilated place, my clothes
SMELL, my hair STINKS.

I think that I should be able to have a reasonable expectation of
being free from cigarette smoke in the public places I have to
frequent.  I generally don't go to bars because I know that I will
smell afterwards.  But sometimes I choose to do so, perhaps because it
is a friends birthday, or some reason like that.  But in a public
place, like a public terminal room for instance, I may not have any
choice about going there.

Tim, you tell us that it is your intuition that compared with
pollution from cars and factories, the smoke smokers add to my
environment is negligible. When did I surrender my right to decide how
much pollution I should be surrounded by?  If I had just been mugged,
would that mean that you should then feel free to take a newspaper I
was carrying, on the grounds that it was of negligible value next to
my money?  If I had been raped, would that mean that I no longer had
any right to choose my sexual partners?

Are you aware how trying it can be to ask someone, particularly a
stranger, not to smoke in a public place?  I do this sometimes.  I ask
politely, and sometimes it is OK, because the smoker didn't realize
what they were doing, or something like that.  Most smokers though,
act very childishly, they tell you they are almost finished, or they
say they will stop, and then they don't, or all their cronies start
smoking too.  Commonly, you politely ask them to stop, they take one
last big drag, and say something condescending like, "All right, just
this once", meanwhile exhaling that last big drag right in your face.

Do you think I should regard smokers abstention from smoking as some
kind of favour they are condescending to do for me?  Well I don't.  I
regard people who smoke in public places as little more than school-
yard bullies, who are daring me to do something about it.

I would like smoking in public places to be as socially unacceptable I
would like other non-smokers to quit pleading with smokers and start
being more forthright about how much it bothers them.

	Cordially, Geo Swan, Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo
	(allegra||ihnp4)!watmath!watarts!geo