Comments on: Persecuting smokers …and leaving everyone else to their own devices http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2008/05/03/persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-everyone-else-to-their-own-devices/ I am a mongrel - O ma! A gremlin... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:15:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: maria http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2008/05/03/persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-everyone-else-to-their-own-devices/#comment-8741 maria Sat, 03 May 2008 20:11:56 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2008/05/03/persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-every#comment-8741 Well, you know, here in Lotus Land North (Northern California) there have been several proposal to ban smoking not just outdoors, but also in apartment buildings, as well as in the backyard of one's own home, lest the smoke should waft too far afield from the smoker's personal space and infect innocent children playing in the yard next door or sleeping two floor up from the smokers condo. I used to be a heavy smoker myself, but I quit more than 25 years ago. I always hated ashtrays and the smell of cigarette smoke, and only started to smoke because everyone around me was doing it and I figured (back then) that it would bother me less if I smoked too... Hah! Anyway, I have been defending the right of smokers to smoke and do whatever they want with their lungs, provided they leave me smoke-free places in restaurants and bars, planes, trains, and other enclosed public spaces. But you are right, the problem is with giving up on controlling drug use on the streets ... and because maybe some legislators are as addicted to "control" as smokers to nicotine, and users to their brand of drugs, they get a bigger hit with coming down on smokers, which is way easier than dealing with the tangled web of drug use. Well, you know, here in Lotus Land North (Northern California) there have been several proposal to ban smoking not just outdoors, but also in apartment buildings, as well as in the backyard of one’s own home, lest the smoke should waft too far afield from the smoker’s personal space and infect innocent children playing in the yard next door or sleeping two floor up from the smokers condo.

I used to be a heavy smoker myself, but I quit more than 25 years ago. I always hated ashtrays and the smell of cigarette smoke, and only started to smoke because everyone around me was doing it and I figured (back then) that it would bother me less if I smoked too… Hah! Anyway, I have been defending the right of smokers to smoke and do whatever they want with their lungs, provided they leave me smoke-free places in restaurants and bars, planes, trains, and other enclosed public spaces.

But you are right, the problem is with giving up on controlling drug use on the streets … and because maybe some legislators are as addicted to “control” as smokers to nicotine, and users to their brand of drugs, they get a bigger hit with coming down on smokers, which is way easier than dealing with the tangled web of drug use.

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