Up in Smoke: The (quicky-dissipating) Joys of Smoking pt. 2

Hello, my fine and (hopefully) extant readership! I am back with more of that vitriol tonic, that medicated bile, that fix of anger, that illegally-prescribed hate that you love so much.

This article, as you may well have put together, is my reaction to the anti-smoking fervor that has gripped the planet. OK, folks, we get it already. Nothing is more important than you and yours. I'm not saying I'm not looking out for #1, but honestly! you don't see me writing letters to congressmen asking them to ban offensively bad taste or lobbying to end the lives of countless mental incompetents. It's just that I'm a tolerant guy.

We have to look at this smoking thing from two angles, the civil rights issue and the health issue. The former is not a difficult one to argue. No government can justifiably prohibit activities that either harm no one, only harm the individual participating in the activity, or harm consenting adults. Unfortunately, second-hand smoke couldn't be left alone, and now we are in murky territory concerning the harm smoking brings upon others.

From a statistical standpoint, I can't argue that second-hand smoke is harmless, except to question that these scientists aren't just lying to us at the behest of government and industry. As likely as that is, for the sake of argument, we'll say the facts are straight. So, second-hand smoke kills. 53,000 American non-smokers a year. A whopping 0.02% of the population. It just screams health crisis to me!

The main issue I have with these cries for justice and the well-being of the population is that it comes from people who DO NOT analyze their behaviors. They take these studies as gospel and jump on whatever bandwagon the study is concerned with, failing to realize that every other aspect of their lives is just as damaging to the public health and global state. For example, it strikes me as ridiculous that a city as polluted as New York could possibly benefit from a smoking ban. Not that they will ever be done, but I'd like to see a study on the effect of car exhaust on respiratory disease. Hell, why stop there? What about heavy industry? Construction? Demolition? The data does not exist, but common sense would dictate that these factors contribute to illness far more significantly than inhaling smoke at a bar.

To migrate from the main point a bit, I want to focus on the smoking ban in restaurants and bars. I don't see what the public health has to do with consensual exposure to smoke. I should state the obvious: NO ONE IS AT ALL CONFUSED ABOUT THE DEADLINESS OF SMOKE. So, when someone goes to a bar and has a cigarette, and another consumer walks into a cloud of smoke, neither of them will wake up in the future in an indignant rage, cursing the government for allowing such a product as cigarettes to exist. For fuck's sake, if you had any common sense and were concerned for your health, you wouldn't be drinking in bars in the first place.
Assuming people are making informed decisions based on facts (a dangerous assumption, I know, but you are aware of my stance: if people refuse to think about anything, fuck 'em, they should die), doesn't it stand to reason that the invisible hand of the market would sort this matter out? Those who prefer to smoke and be in the company of smokers can go to bars where people smoke, and those who don't can go to the next fucking bar. Come on people, it's not as if there aren't thousands of bars in this city. Just go to a bar that serves your particular(ly stupid) clientele. Correspondingly, if, like the uppity bitch that started this whole mess, you are just too fragile to work in a smoky environment, I have a simple solution for you: WORK SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!! Can we momentarily consider the idiocy of taking second-hand smoke out of bars where it only harms those who aren't bothered and putting it on sidewalks where it does actually affect the public health? Nice thinking, Bloomberg! Remind me to push you into traffic.

To wrap this up: listen, all you anti-smokers out there, until you clean up your act and erase your ugly footprint from the earth by reducing your need for imported crap and fancy gadgetry, ease up on the moral crusading, would ya? It's fucking annoying, and moreover fucking wrong.

Expect more rants like this on such prosaic subjects as drunk-driving and cop-killing!