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