What the hell? If y’all want to police smokers, if you PLEASE, make them stop smoking right outside the building where I can’t escape the fumes. But, NO. This is considered on the level of “nuisance crimes” like littering our precious forests, that nobody bothers to enforce.
Smokers get to have a life and they ought to get regularly screened for lung cancer—which also attacks non-smokers but usually gets diagnosed too late to save their lives because the PC Police decree that they are Bad, that they Deserve to Die.
I used to be a smoker. In the 20th century there were allowances made. Railroads had smoking cars, clubs had smoking rooms. Now in the 21st it would be so easy to create comfortable and pleasant rooms for smokers, with our high tech options to mitigate, ventilate, and separate. But, NO. The evil Smokers must be punished. No leeway is permitted, no comfort allowed, no recognition for the social community of smokers (Think, a ciggie after sex? After dinner?). NOT, you say: They are so bad, bad, bad, even if you were once one of them.
Well, except for letting them puff away while I am trying to enter a building, any building, y’all make me want to smoke again (in a comfortable room at home with the window open or lazing on my deck). After 13 years, I Need a Smoke! In Kentucky where I come from tobacco is a good thing. For Native Americans, tobacco is a sacred thing.
Minnesota is one of the worst states in terms of trying to find a sensible solution for non-smokers and smokers alike. Ugh. I wish I could move to Canada, but with Repugs like Pawlenty, Bachmann, Bush & Cheney in charge, the dollar is tanked and so I can’t afford to leave this stupid state. Don’t forget, it wasn’t the best and the brightest who left the old country for the New World (as dear Garrison Keillor has pointed out)!
Last but not least, Minnesota “allows” corporate polluters hundreds of thousands of pounds per year for environmental pollutants discharged in the course of their business activities. The state wants to invest in more filthy coal-powered electrical plants and a copper mine (Polymet) that will destroy all life in local lakes and streams. The state has jumped on the Ethanol Bandwagon even though it is widely understood that the consequences of ethanol production will increase poverty and hunger while destroying wildlife habitat around the increasingly fragile world we inhabit.
Minnesotans, get your priorities straight. Have a little compassion for smokers, give them a filtered space to light up, and think outside the PC Police Law. If you want to be really PC, start charging those corporate giants with the “new sin” of pollution as per the Pope and letting THEM pay the big fines.
3 comments:
Moving to Canada might not be a good idea, bars there are smoke free. Also forget about Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy and probably most of the rest that I just haven't checked on. Sorry, but smoking in public places is pretty much going the way of sex in public places, and sex has not even been declared hazardous to your health.
Hey, Jerry,
Nice to hear from you, and now I know where I will never move to in case I take up smoking again....
For me it's like Prohibition and jailing people who smoke weed. As I said, there are ways to allow smokers to enjoy their disgusting habit without threatening health but the PC Police won't allow it. No they would rather make us have ugly confrontations in front of buildings where we both suffer....
I also like nude beaches.
True
Life isn't fair, but I guess you'll just have to add it to the list of requirements by code that every business has to accept. Look through any local code book and you will see all sorts of criminal acts a business could be guilty of including many more questionable than the smoking ban. Oddly, the law permits smoking in hotel and motel rooms, go figure! In general we jail people in this country far more than any other of which I am aware, and for the most innocuous reasons.
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