interesting that the mayor avoided mentioning how citizens have been encouraged to face off anyone they spot smoking, and how interesting that now, they talk about provisions to "protect" people who 'sneak' out to have a cigarette.
talk about infantalizing a society.
and the funny thing about kids, they don't usually learn what you intend to teach them. they pick up on the subliminal messages more quickly than adults do because we're too busy thinking we're doing the 'right' thing.
half way around the world, US citizens are getting heads and limbs blown off for some concept of 'liberty', 'democracy', what have you, that is progressively getting pruned itself.
it almost makes me wish that ASH et al are right about how i'm gonna drop dead any minute now. and i'm sure the anti's around here support that desire. thank goodness i'd rather make them annoyed with my presence!
how easy is that? simply by being on this earth by the grace of an entity greater than their cause do i get up their noses. i don't even have to light up!
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Mike,
You failed to mention the most pertinent quote in that New York Sun article.
As John Banzhaf pointed out
"Yes, [cigarettes] are [legal], but then so are alcoholic beverages and aerial fireworks, trail motorcycles, and Formula One racing cars, dice for gambling and large size blow-up dolls meant for various sexual purposes. The fact that these are legal items doesn't mean that there's any corresponding right to use them on a city street."
I don't see the pertinence of that quote. After all, I've never argued that there is an absolute right of smokers to smoke outdoors. This debate is not at all about whether it is legal for Calabasas to ban smoking outdoors. It's about whether it's right, and whether it's rational, and whether it's scientifically justified. That quote doesn't support any of the above.
Actually, I changed my mind. The quote is very pertinent, because it shows that ASH is not concerned primarily with the scientific evidence of any health hazard from outdoor smoking. What they are unduly concerned with is the moral affront that smoking poses to them. By putting it in the same category as public drinking, public gambling, and public use of large blow-up dolls, they are basically revealing that they simply loathe smokers and find them to be a moral affront - something that needs to be confined to the privacy of the home and which children must not see. I think it's pretty disgusting myself (not smoking in public, but comparing smokers to people using large blow-up dolls in public).
When they interviewed Mein Fuhrer Von Banzof was he wearing a condom ? We do wish to make certain that the kids practise safe sex.I see little difference in Banzof and Saddam Hussein,apart from locking the wrong one up of course !
oh MAN, si! what the hell have YOU been smoking? lolololol
pleasepleaseplease don't make it so difficult for me to behave myself! lolololol
*sigh*
oh, well. "LEAD ON McPUFF!"
Mike wrote:
"I think it's pretty disgusting myself (not smoking in public, but comparing smokers to people using large blow-up dolls in public)."
Using a large blow-up doll in public doesn't harm anyone else, while smoking in public can harm others (albeit the risk is low).
As I recall, in a previous article you advocated reducing cigarette advertisements that encourage youth to smoke. And yet, every time a person smokes in public, he/she becomes a cigarette advertisment that teaches (i.e. encourages) youth to smoke.
Cities can regulate issues concerning pollution and always have.
There is no underlying right to burn a tire or a cigarette in a building or in a city park. Yet, there is a health concern.
http://coaching.epfl.ch/php/img/
...ette_danger.jpg
"The fact that these are legal items doesn't mean that there's any corresponding right to use them on a city street."
Bill, I'll never understand how you can elevate law to the ultima ratio for governing life on this planet.
benpal wrote:
"Bill, I'll never understand how you can elevate law to the ultima ratio for governing life on this planet."
Constitutions and laws do govern much human behavior on this planet. If you don't believe me, try walking naked down any public street, try going to Saudi Arabia and drinking some whiskey on a street corner, or try going to China and procreating a family with three children.
"There is no underlying right to burn a tire or a cigarette in a building or in a city park. Yet, there is a health concern."
Is it illegal to burn tires? No ...
Is it illegal to drive a car? No ... yet there is a health concern.
Erik, do you really feel that everything in our lives has to be regulated by law?
Common sense dictated by law?
I just got back from the local premire of the new movie "V for Vendetta". Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman were both amazing.
People like our resident smoke hating fascists better really want what they are asking for. This movie depicts what it might be like if they get it.
>Is it illegal to burn tires? No ...
Yes.
Try in on the sidewalk in a city and see what happens.
Since this is one of the Anti's favorite examples.... Drinking in public. Banzhaf used it in his example, and Bill has done so a number of times. I want to know how two wrongs make a right. Bill, please do explain to me why an open container (drinking in public) is such a risk to public health and safety, that it deserves to be legislated, or perhaps you'd rather plead immorality of an open container.
I contend an open container is a hold over of prohibition (prohibition in spirit), as a small minority find alcohol consumption immoral. Such laws are typically the strongest in the south where the Southern Baptists rule the roost. It is usually enacted for the sake of the children, as it's alleged to set a bad example for our children, and they should be shielded. But ironically, usually sporting events such as a Braves Baseball game, the beer vendors freely roam the stands selling their product. I guess you shouldn't bring your children to a baseball game.
In Alabama for example, it is illegal to advertise the word "Beer" so "Beverage" is the magic word. Wine is sold in grocery stores but right next to the wine counter is little brown bags which the wine must be placed into before putting it in your shopping basket.
Southern Baptists have a very strong influence in the laws in the southern states. Which reminds me of a common joke. Not to pick on Southern Baptists but it's a common joke here in the south.
Do you know why you never take just one Southern Baptist with you fishing? With two or more, they won't drink all your beer.
Speaking of hypocrites Bill, hypocrisy is synonymous with today's tobacco control movement. For example, the Mayor went to explain in great detail, how the law in Calabasas came about. A student complained about being forced inside because of smoking at the commons of the mall. But low and behold, with this legislation is the commons at the mall is one of the few bastions to which the Calabasas smokers can do so in public. Holding true to form you have ignored such point, while on your jihad of the ends justify the means.
Also interesting is the fact that Banzhaf is very much anti-soda, and has gone to lengths to protect our children from soda at schools, and believes this to be an immoral act of our learning institutions that he has threatened them with lawsuits. I can't help but wonder if they would be so warm to the same restictions on drinking soda in public, as the health concious moralists of Calabasas wouldn't want the caffiene addicts setting such a bad example for their children.
Erik, is there a law specifically banning burning tires?
Erik, is there a law specifically banning burning tires?
Yes, in fact, I will bet you $100 that you will get stopped from doing this on a city sidewalk if you try this weekend.
I will donate the $100 to your favorite tobacco company.
"Using a large blow-up doll in public doesn't harm anyone else, while smoking in public can harm others (albeit the risk is low)"
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! okay, i CAN'T resist!
time to do a little RESEARCH of our own!
i'll smoke cigarettes on one side of the street, but someone has to be on the opposite side, d-d-d-"dating" the blow up doll.
we can find out
a) who gets arrested first (if its calabasas)
b) who everyone suddenly doesn't view as such a threat in that moment
c) including people with children!
who's up for it??? (so to speak)
Annette,
Does Bill or John get a blow up cigarette after the "date"?
OK here is the implication of public health in the Calabasas issue:
"But Groveman, who refers to the Calabasas ordinance as the Secondhand Smoke Control Ordinance, would disagree. “You have to ask this basic, fundamental question: Do we believe, as the state of California and the American Heart and Lung Association have stated, that second-hand smoke contributes significantly to death upon exposure? That’s where the argument begins and ends.”
Contributes significantly to death upon exposure. WTF does this mean. One wiff and the entire population of Calabasas drops dead? Must be a new California Brand "Serin"
I think the mayor just volunteered to date the doll.
Link to the above quote
http://www.vcreporter.com/articl...092&
IssueNum=60
Dr Siegel,
The large blow up doll could be a freudian thing.
I think the mayor of calabasas just topped the 20 minute mark of Ohio, it's now "upon exposure".
ooooooooooh geeeeeeeeeeeeeezz...
first si, now you walt!
*whew*
hey, doc! am i getting any gold stars for good behaviour for NOT taking an easy shot when i get 'em?
"Bill, I'll never understand how you can elevate law to the ultima ratio for governing life on this planet."
Constitutions and laws do govern much human behavior on this planet."
When I see how easy it is to create laws devoid of any sense (e.g. Calabasas), I doubt that laws can be ultima ratio, let alone rational.
Calabasas is certainly just the beginning.
"Make no mistake about it: Diabetes is on the rise in the United States, increasing from 6 million diagnosed with the disease in 1980 to 15 million in 2004. And the medical consequences of uncontrolled diabetes are devastating, including heart disease, strokes, kidney failure, blindness, and progressive limb amputations. The disease shortens a person's life expectancy by as much as a decade."
"Using a public health rationale to control diseases that result from lifestyle choices could easily spread beyond diabetes. After all, the leading causes of death are now non-communicable diseases like heart disease, strokes and cancer. These diseases are affected by many of the same risk factors as diabetes. One can imagine health authorities requiring medical laboratories to report the results of one's cholesterol and blood pressure tests. If your "bad" LDL cholesterol is too high, you could be reminded to take your statin drugs, cut back on the steaks or get to the gym more often.
If the United States finally succumbs to universal government funded health care, health bureaucrats will no doubt justify their intervening in the exercise, dining, transportation, smoking, drinking, and recreational drug choices of Americans on the grounds that they are saving taxpayers money. We might all live longer, but we will certainly be enjoying it less. "There are lots of good reasons to do this kind of thing, but the questions it raises all have to do with the nanny state: Should the government be collecting this kind of information? Should it be intervening like this?" said Lawrence O. Gostin, who directs the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities in the Washington Post last month. "You can imagine it getting to the point where you have a public health worker showing up at your door and asking, 'Did you remember to exercise, eat right and take your medication [or: do I smell smoke in here?] today?' "
Given the trend toward ever more intrusive government intervention in health care, New York's proposed cure may well turn out to be worse than the disease."
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb031706.shtml
Emphasized text added by me.
Bill wrote:
"Constitutions and laws do govern much human behavior on this planet. If you don't believe me, try walking naked down any public street, try going to Saudi Arabia and drinking some whiskey on a street corner, or try going to China and procreating a family with three children."
OR go to Calabases, California, and smoke a cigarette!
Excellent point, Bill.
Thanks!
I seriously doubt that these policies will spread throughout California within a year, and that they will ever spread to New York, but if I am wrong, then what I am quite sure about is that it will mark the near end of the smoke-free movement. I don't think we can withstand the spread of such laws, because it will expose the perception (true or not?) that this is not about public health protection, but that it is simply a crusade to clear smokers out of public view.
I seriously doubt that you're right. Anti-smoking gave up any pretense of scientific rationale long ago. Now it's about image and perception. It's now about saving smoker's from themselves, not about protecting other's from their SHS. To "allow" smoking or to make accommodations for smokers is synonymous with "condoning" or "promoting" it. It's all good in the "nanny state" because they know what's best for you and if you can't be "educated" into conformity by the "facts" about the dangers of smoking, then coerced conformity is the next step. I don't see this insanity slowing down at all and I don't see many people getting their angst up over it because they don't like smoke and they don't do it, so the limitations on personal choice and responsibilty doesn't affect them. Most people are self interested after all, that's why history is replete with atrocities.
I expect it is only a matter of days before these groups begin to issue their public denunciations of the Calabasas mayor's comments.
Michael Siegel
Not going to happen Dr. Siegel. Weather you want to believe it or not, the mayor of Calabasas is the PERFECT "anti tobacco user" government official, to them.
This is all about the Pharmaceutical Industry promoted, discrimination and "segregation" of a group of people that are contributing to a RIVAL Industry; using (in my opinion) bias scientific studies as a weapon to implement hate toward this minority that continues to buy a "legal" product that takes away from the Pharmaceutical Industries yearly profits...
It is ALL ABOUT "DESTROYING COMPETITION" NOTHING MORE.
None of it has accomplished the goals that were intended by the "noble" in the beginning.
People are still dying of the diseases blamed on tobacco, the majority of those that have give up their tobacco have replaced it with prescription drugs with horrific side effects that sometimes lead to death. (for depression, ADD, Parkinson’s, weight loss, atopic disorders, Alzheimer's disease, preeclampsia, etc. etc.) On the other side many have picked up the habit of eating rather than smoking leading to the "obesity war" and yes, "more prescription drugs."
quote;
More than 40 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug and one-in-six takes at least three, the government reported Thursday.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2...,140279,00.html
Are you seeing a pattern yet?
As I recall, in a previous article you advocated reducing cigarette advertisements that encourage youth to smoke. And yet, every time a person smokes in public, he/she becomes a cigarette advertisment that teaches (i.e. encourages) youth to smoke.
Bill Godshall
In today’s AMERICAN society children "see" a lot more than "adults smoking" in public, Bill. It is up to their parents to teach them the difference between "THEIR CHOICE OF" appropriate "adult behavior" and appropriate "child behavior" not you, our health organizations, the tobacco user, or the affectionate homosexual couple (that you may also view as "encouragement" for a child to become homosexual.)
This is AMERICA, A FREE COUNTRY; not China, or Saudi Arabia. Parents here should know that when they take their children into THE AMERICAN public they run a risk of exposing them to PEOPLE OF "DIFFERENT" BELIEFS AND DIFFERENT "SOCIAL" BACKGROUNDS AND TEACH THEIR CHILDREN ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN BELIEFS, NOT TRY TO FORCE THEIR OWN BELIEFS ON OTHERS IN THE PUBLIC OR EXPECT A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL TO DO IT FOR THEM.
Just because you view tobacco/tobacco users "evil" does not mean everyone does. Just because you think tobacco "kills" does not mean everyone does. Just because you believe "you and people that believe as you do, should control the world" does not mean everyone does...
Iopener has a point. We allow white supremacists to teach their children hatred in the name of free speech. Certainly immoral and harmful from my end of the picture, not just to those that they practice their hatred on, but I do believe anytime you teach a child to hate it harms them. I personally believe involving a child in religious practices is criminal (as they have yet to reach rational thought where they could make an informed decision of their own in regards to it) and extremely harmful (akin to brainwashing).
I'm also pretty certain both these beliefs can be backed up by scientific studies if they already aren't. However, you surely don't see me pushing to force MY views of what's harmful on you as a parent.
I also believe it's extremely harmful to hide the less acceptable of society from children, instilling some belief that the world is all light and good, thereby not doing our job as parents in preparing them to deal with the real world and the diversity that makes it up. One could definitely say that in "protecting" the children from seeing anything bad in Calabasas, the city is doing the children NO favors.
From iopener2000: "People are still dying of the diseases blamed on tobacco, the majority of those that have give up their tobacco have replaced it with prescription drugs with horrific side effects that sometimes lead to death."
From last week's Parade Magazine: "Bad reactions to prescription drugs cause 1.5 million hospital visits each year and 100,000 deaths, says Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen. He adds that many doctors don't know the adverse side effects, and the information sheets from pharmacies are unregulated."
No phantom menace, apparently.
"This is AMERICA, A FREE COUNTRY"
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
It appears that some opponents of the Calabasas ordinance are anarchists who oppose democratically elected representational government, especially at the local level.
Unfortunately for many involuntary smokers in Calabasas, the ordinance exempts many different locations, so people will still be exposed to tobacco smoke pollution in many locations.
According to an LA Times article
http://www.latimes.com/news/loca...ines-
california
"The new rules exempt residences, backyards, balconies and patios unless they are adjacent to common areas, laundry rooms or apartment complex walkways."
And according to a NY Times article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
ar...MNGU7HQGCO1.DTL
"Smoking in one's car is allowed, unless the windows are open and someone nearby might be affected."
"It appears that some opponents of the Calabasas ordinance are anarchists who oppose democratically elected representational government"
Do you really, REALLY believe that opposition to and criticisim of the decision of a democratically elected representational government should be equated with anarchism? That a cry for liberty is the activity of scoundrels?
I find this hard to believe, especially from a froth-mouthed smoke hater who decided to engage in an act of INSUBORDINATION that was too extreme for his employer - the freaking AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION - and wound up getting SACKED for it.
It's funny how you keep pointing out rules for us to follow, but your own track record at following rules sucks big time.
I'm sorry but Bill Godshalldoashistold if the democratically elected officials utilise their authority to overstep what they were DEMOCRATICALLY NOT ELECTED TO DO one would think that the next tier of government would do something about it.Your view in essence would have been to leave Hitler alone and any other despotic ruler for that matter.I have never come across anyone who despises smoking so much that they are a danger to the general public because they just don't see the full picture.
Erik said "There is no underlying right to burn a tire or a cigarette in a building or in a city park. Yet, there is a health concern." and then provided a link.
To take first things first: Erik are you really mentally unbalanced enough to feel that burning a tire is equivalent to burning a cigarette? I doubt anyone's been funded to do a study on it (Think I could get a grant from an Antismoking group maybe?) but I would guess that buring a tire releases roughly the same amount of pollution as burning 10,000 to 100,000 cigarettes.
The link you point to is interesting as well: it has a cute graphic of a skull & crossboned cigarette that looks like it was done by Joe Cherner in his new home in France. The graphic lists the various "poisons" given out by a cigarette, including such tasty things as arsenic.
Now the regulars here have seen this before, but I don't think Erik has. I'm going to paste a little segment from my book (p.64) that shows just how misleading it is to pose concerns about such things:
======
To return to the case of our nonsmoker, and to take one particular element that is often pointed to in Antismoking publications, let’s look at the toxic chemical “arsenic.” Now we all know that arsenic is toxic, but we also all know that if we wanted to kill someone with arsenic we’d have to give them a certain amount to accomplish the task. How much? I don’t actually know the lethal dose of arsenic, but I do know that even the proposed new stricter standard of arsenic in drinking water of 10 ppb (parts per billion) allows for 10 nanograms (billionths of a gram) of arsenic to be present in one gram of “safe” drinking water.
Ten nanograms per gram equates to about 5,000 nanograms for a sixteen-ounce tumbler of water. Now, in 1999 a landmark analytical study was done by all four major tobacco companies under the coordination and according to the standards of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. This study examined the total smoke output, both mainstream and sidestream, of 26 brands of U.S. cigarettes. Forty-four sep-arate smoke constituents were measured. Measurements of total arsenic in the smoke output of their average brand style gave a value of 32 nanograms. In most well ventilated smoking situa-tions our nonsmoking water drinker would inhale no more than about 1/1000th of this: an amount equal to about three hundredths of a single nanogram. See Appendix B for an explanation of why this exposure assumption is reasonable (The 1999 Massachusetts Benchmark Study. Final Report. 07/24/00).
Thus our nonsmoker would have to sit in a room with a smoker while that smoker smoked more than 165,000 cigarettes to get the same “dose” of arsenic that he or she would get from their government-approved watery beverage! Actually, under 20th century standards of 50 ppb for safe water the smoker would have to smoke 825,000 cigarettes. So is it correct to say that the nonsmoker is “threatened by toxicity” from ordinary levels of exposure on this basis? Of course not… unless we want to completely redefine the concept of threat so that we’d all flee in blind stumbling panic from a glass of water!
============
Anyone interested in the other "deadly" elements Erik and his friends worry so much about should visit the table near the bottom of the ETS Exposure page on my website below.
Burning tires... sheesh! And these folks get PAID to come up with nonsense like this????
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://www.AntiBrains.com
(heehee... just envisioning Erik in a small room at a poker game with a dozen or so tires being burned in it every hour... might do the world some good, ya think?) ;>
I didn't think I'd find anything further down to top Erik's tires... then I ran across Bill opining that it is "unfortunate" that smokers in Calabasas will still be allowed to smoke in their residences and in cars with their windows tightly rolled up.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://www.AntiBrains.com
(Let's see if we can get Bill to join Erik for that poker game... but set it up inside a sealed Volkswagon.)
We should send all of these fascist little creeps to Iran where they belong--each and every one of them–besides, they'll like it there: theocratic controls, burkas, fascism, no gum-chewing, plenty of sun.
(I sent the following letter to the mayor, city council, local paper, etc...)
An Open Letter to the People and Mayor of Calabasas
As we watched the news of your city's new smoking ban and witnessed your mayor and others touting the supposed benefits, we couldn't help but laughably notice how all of these people were either standing in, or surrounded by freshly sprayed, chemically-laden lawns.
Obviously, the fungicides, herbicides and pesticides from these lawn-chemicals, constantly permeating the air and perpetually breathed in by your populace, are the preferred method of obtaining the cancers and illnesses your misguided resolution against tobacco so fearfully tries to protect you from.
As you carry these lawn chemicals into your homes on your shoes and clothing where they become a permanent addition to your toxic living space (these chemicals don't break down indoors and build up in your carpets--contaminating you and your children and eventually spreading to your bedding, your skin, lungs and bloodstream). Consider also the fact that it is the chemicals in many cigarettes which can cause the most harm to smokers and today many tobacco products are without these chemical additives--some actually contain organic tobacco--which make them far less dangerous to non-smokers than your dull-witted crusaders would have everyone believe.
Of course a certain amount of protocol should be in place regarding second-hand smoke in confined areas where children are present or in restaurants and public buildings; but many bars should still have the choice whether to go smoke-free or not.
Further, regarding indoor contaminants: most commercially available household cleaners contain many more of these same toxic chemicals along with a variety of industrial solvents, which can cause most of the chronic and fatal illnesses among the population that your foolish crusaders seem to fear the most. Combine these with the constant out-gassing of chemicals from paints, varnishes, synthetic carpeting and furniture, glues, adhesives, and chemical perfumes and dyes and you'll begin to see that cigarettes are the least of your problems.
These are the real killers in our society, as evidenced by the death of Dana Reeves of lung cancer. It is not certain where she could have contracted the disease, but it wasn't from second-hand smoke. Sort of makes your whole case a fallacy based on ignorance, fear and fanaticism.
Outside smoking? Don't be ridiculous. It's the chemicals, you idiots.
Cle.OH
Bill Godshall,
could you please stop hitting and running and actually respond to some of the questions that are asked of you?
how about BACKING UP what you accuse marcus of doing with data and coherent argument? to make it easier, here you go:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...27771202/
#39915
and instead of slinging sh*t at mike seigel all the time, how about debating his stance? even erik (with a k) and steve johnson occasionally step up to the plate; to the doc AND to us. they hate people who choose to smoke as much as you do, but at least they have half a pair.
what happened, the 'cat' got yours?
The more I read about these bizarre laws and restrictions, the more I question whether they will ever really be enforced in most cases.
I think it's just become a game for elected officials and large corporations to PRETEND to issue ever more draconian laws and restrictions without ever really intending to follow through on them.
Calabasas has a choice, it can either arrest old ladies for smoking on the sidewalk on the way to the grocery or it can 'issue warnings for first time offenders' (as was quoted in the NYTimes today) and never actually do anything to anybody. The more I read about this law, the more I think they will choose the latter, except possibly in the case of a poor or homeless person who foolishly attempts to walk on the streets of that gated community. That person will probably be arrested whether they smoke or not.
And many of those employers who refuse to hire smokers are doing the same. The more I read about these things, the more suspicious I am becoming that this isn't just posturing. If the way they are weeding out smokers is to ask them during the interview process "do you use tobacco?" then I doubt they are really serious. Because most people looking for work will just say "No" whether they smoke or not, just like pot smokers. And, in most cases, that will probably be the end of it. Because, when it comes down to it, I think most of these employers are posturing.
I'm starting to think that the Mayor of Calabasas and the head of Truman Hospital in Missouri don't REALLY believe that one wisp of outdoor smoke causes instant death, or that someone smoking at home after work will cause the hospital to collapse financially. I'm starting to think that they are nothing more than posturing opportunists, along with the New Jersey and Washington state politicians with their draconian restrictions unless it's a casino, or the Attorneys General who bought into the MSA, or the anti-smoking groups who rail against smoking in movies but accept corporate partnerships from the same studios.
I used to believe that all these extreme anti-tobacco hacks were lifestyle fascists and prohibitionists, little Hitlers and Billy Sundays imposing their health morality on everyone around them. But the more I think about it, and the more I read about them, the more I think that they are actually closer in spirit to the opportunistic hypocrites who run the tobacco companies.
hey t.dave,
i tend to agree with you. as far as i'm concerned one of the reasons that the anti-smoking crusade got to the extent it did was because politicos on all levels figured for an easy brownie point.
unfortunately, the breadth and scope of these types of laws, and especially the mentality behind them, is an ever-growing threat. please check out this link provided by benpal
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb031706.shtml
this is what is happening now. where do we draw the lines. better question - when?
Personally, I enjoy drinking Coke, I enjoy red meat and fast-food cheeseburgers, I enjoy tater-tots and french-fries and potato chips, I enjoy candy bars, I enjoy beer and liquor, I enjoy cigarettes and cigars and, quite frankly I enjoy smoking pot. I may not live to be 100, but I know what I like and I try to enjoy my life every day as much as I can.
20 years of dealing with the illegality of pot has prepared me for potential prohibitions on the others. I'm not afraid of breaking the rules, and I'm guessing I'm not alone. I've been to places all over the world where you can still smoke no matter what law has been passed. And I know that if worst comes to worst and I have to piss in a cup to prove my "moral purity" to my employer, that nicotine and cotinine have much shorter half-lives in my blood than THC. And I suspect that as long as I am a valuable employee or a valued customer, and somebody is profiting off of my labor or my recreational spending, then these laws will be more of an irritation than a mortal threat to my well being.
t.dave! SHHHHHH on the 'p' word, eh?
we need you here, not locked up in the pokey!
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Bill Godshall
Boswell tells us that Samuel Johnson made this famous pronouncement that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel on the evening of April 7, 1775. He doesn't provide any context for how the remark arose, so we don't really know for sure what was on Johnson's mind at the time.
However, Boswell assures us that Johnson was not indicting patriotism in general, only false patriotism.
http://www.samueljohnson.com/refuge.html
My Patriotism is "far" from "false," Bill; my actions and words prove that... Do your actions/words, say the same?
From last week's Parade Magazine: "Bad reactions to prescription drugs cause 1.5 million hospital visits each year and 100,000 deaths, says Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen. He adds that many doctors don't know the adverse side effects, and the information sheets from pharmacies are unregulated."
No phantom menace, apparently.
Harry O'Brien
Too true!
However, you surely don't see me pushing to force MY views of what's harmful on you as a parent.
Jales
If this continues on it's present course; many with the same mindset as Bill will try...
Of course a certain amount of protocol should be in place regarding second-hand smoke in confined areas where children are present or in restaurants and public buildings;
stevie
Why only tobacco? What about perfume/cologne, hairspray, laundry detergent, air freshener, automobile exhaust, etc. etc.
Good point about the kids, Annette. The message we are actually sending them is "we don't give a damn about other people's freedom, and you shouldn't either."
Glad to see Bill owning up to his lack of patriotism.
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