THE WAR ON TOBACCO FROM A SMOKER'S POINT OF VIEW

Smokers are everybody. We are nice or not, neat or slovenly, educated or illiterate, wealthy or destitute, of good character or depraved. We are your family, your friend, your co-worker, your boss, your employee, your waiter, your pilot, your cabbie, your favorite movie star, your grocer, your doctor.

Smokers don't want to annoy others, to irritate, to cause contention, to "blow smoke in anyone's face," to "force" anyone else to breathe our smoke.

Smokers don't like being defamed, being insulted, being called "addicts" or "junkies," being sent out in the cold and rain, or away from the building to smoke, being burdened with more taxes than any other segment of society, having our children taught to hate and fear us, being called "ignorant, selfish child abusers" or even worse, "murderers."

We are one in four of the population; there are some 60 million of us. We smoke. We don't want to quit, and if we do, we will, without your help or your coercion. We CHOOSE a lifestyle activity that you may not like. That's okay. It's not required that we all like what others do. But when you let that dislike turn into a deliberate disenfranchisement of one-quarter of the population, you should rethink your position.

If a non-smoker wants to open a non-smoking restaurant or bar, he should have that option. A smoker should have the same option to open a smoker-friendly restaurant or bar, plainly marked, to cater to the portion of the population that shares that lifestyle choice. Equal treatment under the law is a precious part of our country, and this issue has dragged it in the dirt of anti-smoker zealotry.

It's time to stop the insanity.