🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4iiogn$g1j@muss.CIS.McMaster.CA>, u9216523@muss.cis.McMaster.CA (S.D. Lantos) writes:
|> I completely disagree that non-smokers movements are too hard on smokers, 
|> for the simple reason that anyone who risks another's life by some 
|> unnecessary action must be made aware and stopped. Having asthma makes it 
|> difficult to go places where there are smokers; I do not relish the 
|> thought of dying a long, slow, painful death of cancer because of living 
|> with a smoker, nor do I really need the hassle of asthma attacks simply 
|> because I want to go out for an evening.

This statement is filled with some interesting assumptions, not the least of
which is an implicit stereotyping of smokers as people who are perfectly
prepared to blow smoke in your face, ignore "no smoking" signs in indoor
facilities, and behave boorishly.  Do you really think that you would
live with someone who would smoke in your presence, knowing it bothered
you?  Either you don't love carefully or you are setting up a deliberate
straw-man, probably the latter.

I am old enough to remember the not-so-slow transition of smoking from an
acceptable practice to one which makes the smoker a pariah.  I find it curious,
let's say, that sometime in the Seventies, all of a sudden all these people
suddenly appeared with a host of respiratory ailments that they never seemed to
have before.  Were these emboldened asthmatics who now had social morality on
their side?  How DID these people survive before, when smoking was permitted in
interior public places?

|> I also think that parents should NOT be allowed to smoke around their 
|> children: one of my friends had childhood cancer directly connected to 
|> both her parrents smoking, and she suffered greatly. 

Thank you for finally coming clean: you are a Puritan and your objection is not
health-related, but religious.  America has a gift for the Mrs. Grundy or Anthony
Comstock mentality that takes personal offense and raises it to the level of
public policy, PC, or whatever else you want to call it.  I call it invasion of
privacy masquerading as child protection: it is no less invasive in that sense
than the CDA, also launched by hiding behind children as a smokescreen.  You base
your silly, fascistic statement on a friend who suffered from cancer because her
parents smoked?  Where is your evidence to support this?  Can you do better than
a non sequitur anecdote?

No, ma'am, I will not smoke around YOUR children.  It is your right to insist on
that.  If you or one of your little Republic of Virtue friends tries to stop ME
from smoking around MY children, you will have more than asthma to worry about.

-- 
Kenneth Wolman  	Information Technology		Morgan Stanley Inc.  
750 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019			       212-762-1685
No external communications should be construed to represent Morgan Stanley,
    any of its clients or associated companies, or anyone but myself.