Concerning the smoking ban benefit put in by C.H. of Monroe: Some may be buying beer and drinking at home or just having a few at a bar and leaving, but some are going to clubs or over state lines to drink, which means farther away from home. That means a longer distance to travel to get home. Bars are losing business. They have bills to pay, families to feed, just like everyone else. How would you like it if you owned a bar and your business was declining? And bartenders are losing their tips, which they depend on to make ends meet.
And for these clean-air nuts who started this whole business to begin with, what makes them think that their own children are not going to smoke? When you tell children don't, they do the opposite. The more you preach, the worse it gets.
A smoker's freedom is being taken away. Hitler started this way, and look what he did.
Studies were done on secondhand smoke. There is no proof that secondhand smoke kills; it's hogwash or I would have been dead a long time ago. I'm almost 60 years old. I've been smoking a long time and have been taking in both first- and secondhand smoke. What is clean air, anyway? There is no such thing
Toni Blair
Roscoe
People associate Hitler and the Nazi�s with many different things. White supremacy. The Holocaust. Blitzkrieg. What many people do not know is that it all started with the great German Smoking ban of 1933. The Nazi�s actually got in power on a �German national pride-smoking ban� platform.
Sorry Toni. I just have a literal-sarcastic sense of humor. I also find it funny when people just cite studies (that are probably made up) to support their arguments. Like this one study I read that states that second hand cigarette smoke is more likely to choke you to death then second hand marijuana smoke, which is more likely to calm and sooth you. (Sounds reasonable right! Guess what??? I made up that study!)
While you argue that second hand smoke doesn�t �kill,� I think it is fairly obvious that second hand smoke causes sever health ailments, (In addition it smells and is unpleasant.)
But at least Toni talks about the best policy argument against the smoking ban which is the loss of business to bars and taverns. I don�t know if the smoking ban is worth the loss of all that business. The next writer, however, ignores the best argument and jumps right into the worst argument, which is individual rights of smokers.
Nicky C
In the argument regarding the smoking ban, the underlying issue is being ignored. It's called free will, one of the basic tenets on which our country was based. No one can order us not to smoke.
No one denies smoking is detrimental to our health. Smokers know this. Lack of information isn't the issue. This whole fiasco comes down to whose rights are more important, the smokers' or the nonsmokers'. The way things are going, the nonsmokers' rights are. Woe to this country if they win and cigarettes are banned altogether.
That's where this is heading, making smoking illegal because it's bad for you. If we let that happen, it won't stop with smoking. Salt, sugar and fat are all bad for you. Ergo, they're health hazards. Shouldn't they be banned?
Our government is saying it knows what's best for us; we are not intelligent enough to decide things for ourselves. Unless we stop this erosion of our basic rights, we'll be thinking of George Orwell as a prophet instead of a novelist. The government telling people how to live is not a democracy. Big Brother is real, and he's gaining strength as we bicker over whose rights are more important. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, "When a people give up rights for security, they deserve neither rights nor security."
Greta F. Franks
Port Jervis
The �smoking ban� is not to prevent people from smoking because it harms the smokers, it is meant to prevent innocent people from inhaling secondhand smoke. You ask, whose rights are more important, the smokers' or the nonsmokers'. The last I looked, smokers do not have a right to spew carcinogens all over non smokers. So in this instance, nonsmoker�s rights are more important.
Nick
