HE SMOKES, YET HE'LL BUTT OUT

Just in case you're busy as you read this -- and believe me, I know many of
you are -- I'll sum up my point right off the bat: I'm a smoker, and I
think smoking should be banned in public places.

OK, thanks for reading.

Those of you with other business are dismissed. Everyone else, please read on.

To be honest with you, I don't really see where the argument lies. Why
should people get to smoke in a place where non-smokers breathe the same
air?

What gives us the right to blow foul-smelling, cancer-causing clouds of
gray evil toward people who don't want it there?

When I make this argument, smokers (and some non-smokers) look at me as if
I've betrayed some kind of smoking code, like I've sold them down the
nicotine river.

And they always manage to make references to the great freedoms that we
fought for in this country.

"You know," they say, disgust curling from their lips like the smoke from a
Marlboro Menthol 100, "first the government takes away smoking -- then
what? Huh? Then what? What's next?"

Well, let's see, the government took away our freedom to discriminate
against women and blacks.

They took away our freedom to have asbestos in our children's schools.

They took away our freedom to prescribe thalidomide to pregnant mothers.

Those are "freedoms" we'd still have today had someone not spoken out and
said enough's enough.

Of course a church-bombing and a quiet smoke at lunch are not the same.

But you get my point.

Sometimes government is intrusive. But sometimes government does what it
has to do for the welfare of the people.

In this case, it's doing just that. For years, smokers have gotten their
way, mostly because the health risks were never proven. But now, knowing
what we know about smoking, it just doesn't make sense to allow it in
places where the public congregates, even privately owned establishments
such as restaurants.

Non-smoking sections? Great. All smokers, no problem, right?

Wrong.

Should a non-smoking waitress have to work in a smoking section and inhale
the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes during her shift? I don't think
so. Should that waitress have to choose between her health and keeping her
job? No.

Establishments on the smoking front lines aren't happy about a ban. They
fear it will hurt business and they feel it should be their choice to allow
or disallow smoking -- not the government's.

But it seems to me that the issue here should be doing the right thing for
the public's general welfare. And in my view, banning smoking in
restaurants is doing the right thing.

Hey, if you want to smoke, smoke.

I do, every day -- outside, or in my car, or in the back room of my house.

And I love to have a cigarette in a bar or a restaurant when I can.

But that doesn't make it my God-given right to do so.