[Spam] Re: [Vision2020] New topic

[lfalen]

My dad smoked and so does one brother. I only smoke a pipe occasionally in the car to keep from falling asleep at the wheel. Smoking is bad for you, but it is better than hitting an Atlas Moving Van head on which I did once. My neighbor across the street in Genesee sits outside with his coffee and cigarette about 7:00 every morning. He is there even when it is 0 degrees and a 40 mile an hour wind, but he is not polluting anyone else. Everyone has a right to their vices so long as it does not effect anyone else, Re: secondhand smoke.

Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Joan Opyr joanopyr at earthlink.net
Date: Thu,  8 Dec 2005 11:31:39 -0800
To: "jill was framed" w_w_s_d_ at hotmail.com
Subject: [Spam] Re: [Vision2020] New topic

> 
> On 8 Dec 2005, at 09:30, jill was framed wrote:
> 
> > Hello All -
> >
> > Been off the list for awhile but came back to see what's new.  New 
> > subject...what do you think of the new Washington no smoke ban?  I 
> > think we just might have a few more packed bars here in 
> > Moscow....vices are good for the economy!
> > Personally I don't smoke but I think the bar should be the one place 
> > people can cut loose and relax.
> >
> > Now I'm going to catch up on the archives and see if I've missed 
> > anything.
> >
> > J.
> 
> Okay, here's where my odd libertarian streak (not to mention my North 
> Carolina tobacco-farming family history) comes to the forefront: I am 
> concerned about the health risks of second-hand smoke to bartenders and 
> wait staff.  I know that as non-smoker who grew up in a house full of 
> chain-smokers, I have something like a 3 times greater risk of 
> contracting lung cancer, and while there is treatment, there is no 
> cure.  I know all of this and yet . . . we have the right to our 
> various vices.  With each new broad-reaching, 
> protect-us-from-ourselves, anti-smoking ordinance that passes, I feel a 
> wild desire to drive down to the reservation at Lapwai and buy a carton 
> of untaxed cigarettes.  I want to go into the Co-Op puffing on a 
> Sobranie Black Russian in a long FDR filter, fling my mink coat over my 
> shoulders, and say in my best Bette Davis voice, "What a dump!"
> 
> This makes no sense.  I really don't like smoking.  I'm an asthmatic.  
> My father and grandparents nearly killed me with their ceaseless 
> puffing.  We used to take 800-mile road trips with my father, who 
> chain-smoked brown More cigarettes with his window cracked open one 
> inch, as if that would dispel the choking smoke.  I used to have to hit 
> the inhaler once every fifteen minutes, all the way from North Carolina 
> to Michigan.  By the time we reached the halfway point in Charleston, 
> West Virginia, I was bouncing off the doors of our wood-paneled Country 
> Squire station wagon.
> 
> And yet . . . my high school in Raleigh had both a teacher's and a 
> student's smoking lounge.  Smoking, tobacco farming, tobacco auctions, 
> the annual harvest -- these are the things of my childhood.  Nothing 
> smells as good as fresh-picked tobacco when it's hanging in the curing 
> barn.  Once you turn it into a dried-up cigarette and set fire to it, 
> frankly, it stinks.  But before that, tobacco smells kind of like 
> raisins or cured dates.  It's a sweet smell, but not sickly or cloying.
> 
> Finally, just how many of our vices is the government planning to 
> regulate?  When does regulation cross the line from public good to 
> personal harassment?  No, I don't think smokers should stink up 
> restaurants where I'm trying to eat -- and we all know that a smoking 
> section right next to a non-smoking section means the whole joint is a 
> smoking section.  Smoke pays no attention to signage.  I also have to 
> admit that I enjoyed the new non-smoking pubs in London and Newcastle.  
> I could indulge my own vice for pints of alcoholic cider without coming 
> out reeking like an ashtray.  But I do hate to see smokers clustered 
> around the entrances of buildings, twitching and puffing like heroin 
> addicts at the methadone clinic.  And how long will it be, I wonder, 
> before my own vices come under relentless legal assault?  Wouldn't it 
> be better if someone watered down the booze in my Bahama Mama at 
> Applebee's?  A couple of those and I feel like singing . . . a couple 
> more and I feel like singing opera, Bugs Bunny style.  (Put those AA 
> brochures back in your pocket.  I only do this about once a year.)
> 
> Okay, I've meandered down memory lane long enough.  I approve of no 
> smoking in restaurants; I think that bars should have the option of 
> allowing smoking or not, as they see fit.  We have the right to smoke.  
> We have the right to overeat.  We have the right to drink, to not 
> exercise, to exist on a diet of Pepsi and Fritos, to live fast, die 
> young, and leave a corpse so bloated it requires a piano case.  We 
> should not be regulated, bullied, or pressured into Jack LaLane 
> fitness.  The health costs of smoking are tremendous, and they should 
> be born by smokers and by the tobacco companies; not by the rest of us. 
>   But I don't hate smokers, and I don't believe in treating them like 
> pariahs.
> 
> Just a few thoughts, addled, no doubt, by my family's ceaseless puffing.
> 
> Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
> www.joanopyr.com
> 
> 
>