About fifteen years ago I was walking through a Vancouver park with a friend of mine, a strict vegetarian who was obsessively concerned with her health and with what went into her body. When she saw someone about ten or fifteen yards away from us sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette, she became agitated, and started talking about her right to breathe clean air. Thing is, the smoker was actually downwind from us; my acquaintance was not being tormented by any actual violation of her lung-space, but rather by her own thoughts, by the idea that her well-tended health was being violated, and she seemed mulishly, self-righteously unable to see the distinction.
I mention this because the executive director of Action on Smoking and Health recently called for a ban on smoking in parks and playgrounds in Edmonton, and now City Council is debating whether or not to implement the proposed ban. The chief executive of the Lung Association of Alberta, who has come out in support of the proposed changes, noted that “In the indoor world, we started with small areas that were smoke-free…and moved on from there.”
Boy, have they ever moved on. It might be hard to get overly worked up about a ban on smoking in playgrounds – although even that is probably a bit of an overreaction – but…city parks? The last time I checked, the outdoors is a pretty big place.
Even Edmonton’s Mayor Stephen Mandel, who has a tendency to see the city as a community league or a social club that every resident has voluntarily joined, said “There are all kinds of rules and regulations, but where does government start and where does government finish?”
Well, if the nanny-statists have their way, it finishes one precisely-measured finger length inside the opening at the end of your alimentary canal:
Anti-smoking advocates upped their demands on Wednesday, calling on the province to outlaw smoking in provincial parks.
Seriously.
Keep your curtains drawn and your bathroom door locked at all times, folks…
As already mentioned this is really the product of successful propaganda/indoctrination to dehumanise smokers (unless it is dope), the same type one found in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes. Actually Hitler himself was a rabid anti-smoking and anti-meat fanatic, and the understanding of the necessity of dehumanising “the enemy” has been around for a long time.
Jamie MacMaster is also spot on in his comments.
I hate smokers. But I hate liberal control freaks even more. So I will side with the smokers on this one.
Texas Canuck I agree. I smoke but I am also aware of other people. I don’t smoke around kids, don’t blow smoke in anyone’s direction or litter the ground. I have had people walk from 200 feet away upwind and tell me my smoking bothered them. My reply was to get away from me then. I must admit I do attract the loons though. Don’t know why.
As much as I think smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit and even the smell of cigarette smoke is noxious, there is such a thing as going to extremes. Give people a designated area for smoking and be done with it.
Rita & LC:
George Orwell noticed the lefty fetish for interfering in people’s lives years ago. Although he was a passionate democratic socialist (and remained one to his death, although he wrote both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning of how easily “democratic socialism” could morph into a two-class totalitarian state) but he was disdainful of female socialist tendencies. In one of his essays (and I searched for it but it’s not described on the net; it was probably in his collected essays As I Please that I read it) he wrote to the effect that no sooner had a woman become involved with a socialist party then she started to agitate for all members to conform to her peculiar lifestyle – he mentioned vegetarianism, temperance, and of course, not smoking. Why, he wondered, were these women so against a man on Saturday night having a pint and a cigarette with his friends? He argued that it was these small pleasures that made working class life in 1930’s Britain bearable (and his The Road to Wigan Pier detailed these privations exquisitely, and that is available for free on the net).
But that tendency is why I really hate socialists. I really don’t mind them taking some of my income to establish a basic living standard; I’ve seen what it’s like with no safety net in the Philippines, and it ain’t pretty. (Having hordes of beggars pursue you if you dare to walk, and having to live behind walls topped with razor wire and manned with armed guards is NOT my preferred lifestyle.) But they can’t stop there.
They have to control what we eat, where and when we can drive, how much we exercise, even how and where we can exercise. Marni Soupcoff had an excellent article in the Post this morning about kids’ lack of exercise. When I was a boy in the 60’s, at school, we played baseball in the spring, football and soccer in the fall, and a game called “British Bulldog” in the winter. Basically, all the boys but one lined up at one end of the field, while “It” stood in the middle of the field and called out. All the boys ran from one end of the field to the other, while “It” tried to tackle people. Each one he tackled joined “It” in the middle for the next round. This continued until there was only one boy left with 30 or 40 boys trying to tackle him. The male teacher used to watch with amusement; the women with indifference.
Today, my daughters’ public school bans baseball (the balls are too hard, and the bats are made of wood!), football (even touch), soccer (some of the children kick each other!), etc. If they saw a game of British, they’d probably call the cops.
Similarly, my friends and I ran and biked all over the neighbourhood from the time we were out of kindergarten. We organized our own sports games – no adults involved. (We did have sports leagues, but it was one game a week.) We’d run around from after school until dinner, and in the summer, we’d run out to play with our moms calling after us “come in when the lights come on”.
Today, it’s hard to find parents who’ll let their pre-teen kids bike around freely, even with a helmet on. I went by the old park where we used to set up our baseball, football, and soccer games, and there was a big sign saying “No ball playing”. Sporting activity isn’t good for you unless it’s organized and run by one of these socialist nannies.
Wanna ride your bike? In Toronto, you have the choice of restricting your rides to the 59 km of bike paths (compared to over 50,000 km of roads), riding illegally on the sidewalk, or taking your chance on the roads, where deaths have averaged between 3 and 4 cyclists per year (no stats available on injuries, but they’re considerably higher; I’ve been hit twice myself in the last three years). There are paved paths in many of our parks with large “No Cycling” signs next to them.
Wanna go for a walk instead? Last year, the nannies at Toronto City Hall ticketed a group of senior citizens for an “unauthorized group walk” through a public park.
These people just don’t want equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome. They want equality of lifestyle, best achieved in Mao’s China, where everyone dressed the same, exercised together, and went hungry together. I don’t know what I find more objectionable: their gall at deciding they know better than I how I should live, or the hideous prospect of the sheer boredom of life in their world, or the way they explain it, with their moist little eyes shining, “But it’s in everyone’s best interest”.
Sorry for the extended rant. Sometimes the insanity gets to me.
“Second-hand smoke kills.”
Just not fast enough.
Jamie MacMaster is also spot on in his comments.
Indeed. I too have been enjoying Jamie’s trenchant comments here.
In Vancouver, a friend and I were lunching on a sidewalk patio when a couple were ejected for smoking. They hopped over the patio barricade and continued on the sidewalk proper. I was embarrassed. I don’t like a smoky environment but the outdoor smoking bothered neither my friend nor I. I quit smoking in 1974 but as a good libertarian have thusfar resisted the all too human tendency to want to display my virtue and rectitude by tormenting people who aren’t tormening me.
When I read about these State pronouncements [which have nothing whatever to do with public health, except making libertarians state-sick], I always envision a progressive committee meeting in which news of the the latest progressive initiative in another city is discussed followed by a spirited brain-storm [fart?] about how said committee could be even more cutting edge, even more progressive, and make the news.
“So … okay, parks and beaches are now on which we’ll clearly have to do. But how can we distinguish ourselves? What about bans on smoking in cars inside the city? Is that done yet? No?! What about banning smoking in private houses? Is this done anywhere yet? No?!!”.
With regard to smoker rudeness, a theory: rudeness rises with state intervention.
Is there anything RUDER than Leviathan?
The leftist interfere with other peoples’ lives by word, while the smokers by smell.
“Does Vancouver do anything about people smoking marijuana in parks?”
No, and this speaks to the politics of the PC Police. Why do some behaviours like smoking pot get a pass from the PC Police, yet the hammer falls on cigarette smokers and the peanut-butter-sandwich dealers?
The answer is quite elementary; they do it because they can!
These do-gooders already have their infrastructure well in place (the aforementioned NGOs), and as Jamie M noted, they exist for the sake of existing. Furthermore, pot smokers and those with permissive lifestyles fall into the Left’s voter demographics; whereas, the aging smoking demographic is expendable. (side note: tomorrow culture battle will be Young vs. Old; Boomers are the new Joos, not smokers)
OT
Commenter Aizlynne said yesterday: “Umm … news flash – there are many conservatives who support legalization of marijuana and who do NOT like Bill Maher.”
Are you serious? You’d get a Gong Show, not a Bong Show!
I’m very puzzled by the mind set of the pothead, especially conservative ones. Why on Earth would you want the government legalizing pot? You’ve practically got immunity from the law for smoking the ONLY inflation proof commodity on Earth. The price of getting stoned hasn’t gone-up in at least 15 years, and nobody gets flak for smoking it. Ever!
Seriously, any cost/benefit analysis shows there are NO BENIFITS for legalizing pot for the pot smoker. The only entity that will benefit from legalizing pot IS THE GOVERNMENT.
You fools!
> Why on Earth would you want the government legalizing pot?
So that innocent people will stop dying in botched police raids and billion$ stop getting wasted on prosecution and incarceration for purely pot offenses.
Kevin B. I admire Orwell’s works (some are more equal than others) and much of what was considered science fiction when he wrote 1984 (in 1948 I believe) has come to pass. So much of what we allow to limit our lives is what we have been indoctrinated into believing is “good for us”. The sun causes skin cancer therefore children were slathered in SPF 34, swathed in head to toe clothing before being permitted to go outdoors. Now we’re concerned that folks are going short of Vit. D. Seems that it’s never possible to go just far enough, someone has to keep pushing until the situation becomes ridiculous. (Too many people involved in making the rules and running out of things to regulate–as someone else pointed out.)
We can’t allow a situation to reach its own equilibrium–that determined by courtesy and common sense or even a stand off between a person who is rude and one who objects. A rule that starts out being halfway sensible (don’t smoke indoors in public places) mutates into something totally ludicrous like giving a trucker a ticket for smoking in his cab because “it’s a work place” even though the driver was alone.
I’m not so sure about the effect of women on all this rule-making. Perhaps having been taught their “place” in Orwell’s times, the resentfulness emerged in trying to make others miserable rather than making more people less oppressed. Or only those with a massive discontent involved themselves. I find it silly that anyone would choose rule-making for such trivia as manners, basic safety and common sense. I see that as a refuge of the weak and ineffectual–is that a trait of any particular sex?
The unfortunate thing is that once a rule has been born, it seems virtually impossible to eradicate it. Often the remedy to stupid rules is to amend the original and add more layers. I see the gun registry as one of those colossal blunders that emerged from the emotions caused by one isolated event. Now the more we try to restore good sense, the more tortuous and convoluted the matter becomes.
Good comments KevinB
All things being equal, the proper solution for dealing with “These people”(people who would choose tyranny for you) is to beat them down when we heard them espousing their isht. There was a time when these ideas were beneath contempt(judging from old TV shows like WKRP and All In The Family). Today, the thought of assaulting someone is beneath contempt, even if that someone advocates communist drivel.
Yup, a good a$$ whoop’n would do wonders for these homos!(no homo)
Also, I have observed many tendencies demonstrated by women(in general) are the same tendencies demonstrated by the political left. The most blatant being the absence of a self-deprecating sense of humour. Women make exceptional managers and leaders, voters and dreamers not so much.
“Give people a designated area for smoking and be done with it”
At first glance, a reasonable and workable compromise which had been successfully used for decades.
However, there are a number of drawbacks.
What if a minute quantity of second-hand smoke was to escape and poison innocent passers-by?
What if impressionable children were to witness smokers indulging in their deadly habit?
What if non-smokers wished to enter the designated smoking area but were prevented from doing so out of fear of second-hand smoke?
Designated smoking areas must be cleaned occaisionally. What if the cleaner was a non-smoker and was forced to endure the horrors of second-hand or third-hand smoke?
Tongue-in-cheek? Not really. As ludicrous as these scenarios are, I have personally seen them used successfully by anti-smoking fanatics to argue against designated smoking areas.
Al’s GW heah: Welcome to Mah Ashram.
Ah declare a no-ash, no-smoking pot zone heah.
You may “Smoke the volcano”, howeveah.
…-
“Ash cloud set to close Scottish airspace
Smoke the volcano last month
Ash from the volcano caused severe disruption last month
Scottish airspace is set to close again on Wednesday after forecasters warned levels of volcanic ash from Iceland would make it unsafe to fly.
Flights over remote parts of Scotland resumed on Tuesday afternoon following earlier disruption.
The Civil Aviation Authority has now said airspace over Scotland will close from 0700 BST on Wednesday.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8660841.stm
[quote]Just a small step from downright silly to plain stupid.[/quote] Jamie Mc
Watch my Left hand dazzle your senses, while my Right hand slits your throat; is more appropriate…. The Anti-Smoking Agenda is all about MONEY (taxes) & Social engineering…. They will make Noise and up goes the Taxes….Follow the Money!
The Tobacco taxes are regressive; they target the lower & Middle Class
A suitable wakeup call, to those offended by the smell of smokers, would be several loads of Pig Manure dumped in each Park by “The Natural Earth Products Group” Just helping out Mother Nature!
So it’s OK for smokers to interfere with other peoples’ lives by blowing their noxious smoke into the air and forcing other people to breath it, but it’s not OK for other people to interfere with them by compelling them to stop?
I’m sorry, but that’s a bit of a non sequitur, isn’t it?
And selfish to boot…
Smoking bans are just witch hunts for the mentally feeble drones of political correctness. To feel superior. To give an issue & people folks can make demonic.
Besides it gets the pod people hating a group while these advocacy GROUPS PICK YOUR POCKETS.
While this is going on, the nuts are attacking citizens in other areas. While Government petty bureaucrats have you obsessed with a habit. They curtail your rights in yet another area.
Oh yeah noticed smoking herb doesn’t seem to bother these black lights of totalitarianism.
I guess pot is the exception to the rule. It might piss off young recruits to their cause of Prohibition.
Don’t worry though your next by this group of social engineers for the environmental Religion.
The second hand smoke bogyman is pure BS Its about as scientific as AGW. Its the same crowd.
One volcano recently put enough smoke in the atmosphere for 200 years of constant smoking by every human on Earth.
They strain at a gnat while the bridge they walk on is falling apart under the anti-People ASH ,with its fellow travelers like PETA.
JMO
If someone pooped on a sidewalk in front of your house, you’d be up in arms banning pooping on the sidewalk. Smoking is the same thing.
He was disdainful of female socialist tendencies. In one of his essays…he wrote to the effect that no sooner had a woman become involved with a socialist party then she started to agitate for all members to conform to her peculiar lifestyle – he mentioned vegetarianism, temperance, and of course, not smoking. Why, he wondered, were these women so against a man on Saturday night having a pint and a cigarette with his friends? – Kevin B
Also, I have observed many tendencies demonstrated by women(in general) are the same tendencies demonstrated by the political left.- Indy
It’s a nasty combination of women’s need for religion and maternal instinct – rules, sacrifice, martyrdom, guilt trips, nagging. Since women on the left tend to have neither marriage nor children, they apply their natural impulses to society in general.
Men on the left – What’s their excuse? Mommy Issues?
Edward Teach is a typical of those whose preoccupation has become their occupation. I have seen a few such types who bicycle or walk along city streets inhaling traffic fumes (including big diesels) and then go ballistic if they spot someone smoking. Sad that such people have no life.
The recent prohibitions against smoking have just about made me take up smoking again as a political statement. I remember a time when I would start off my day in my first class of the morning with a coffee and cigarette and chainsmoked through exams. Nicotine has beneficial effects on concentration and the only problem with nicotine is the delivery system, not the drug.
I do have to admit that when I first quit smoking 35 years ago I was a bit of a fanatical antismoker but that applied to situations like a group of people with cigarettes in an elevator.
When I smoked the tobacco industry was working on a smokeless cigarette and I wonder whatever happened to this research. Nicotine patches don’t give one the immediate rise in blood nicotine levels that a cigarette does and nicotine inhalers work well only in warm environments.
I’ve had quite a good success rate in getting patients to give up a flawed nicotine delivery system and onto a far healthier means of getting the nicotine that their bodies need. What surprises me is the number of doctors who are ignorant of the benefits of nicotine in some people; virtually 100% of schizophrenics smoke because they find they think better with nicotine. People who smoke are also less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. The bad vascular effects are due to a combination of carbon monoxide and nicotine and, in a heavy smoker, up to 50% of their hemoglobin is effectively useless because it’s bound to CO instead of O2.
Sleep apnea is lessened with nicotine and I make sure to do sleep apnea screening in any patient who feels much worse after quitting smoking. Of course, there’s also the problem of people getting depressed after quitting smoking since nicotine works as an anti-depressant in some people.
For the most idiotic anti-smoking regulations imaginable, one has to look at the restrictions in smoking on hospital property in BC. I don’t think it is particularly healthy for a patient just out of surgery to be dressed in a hospital gown struggling to push a wheelchair in -20 C cold through snow to make it to the edge of the hospital property where they are legally allowed to smoke. Perhaps the politicians who came up with this idiotic legislation should be dropped off in the woods during the winter wearing similar garb for a few hours to see what they’ve done. I’ve been strongly tempted to have a cigar break in front of the hospital.
The only reason to ban smoking in parks is when the vegetation is so dry that the smallest spark could start a fire. This is only common sense and when I worked planting trees we weren’t allowed to smoke when we were walking but had to sit down in a damp area preferably, have our cigarette and then bury the butt making damn sure it was out.
All of the recent legislation is uncannily similar to the German legislation of the 1930’s which is well described in the book The Nazi war on cancer. I wonder what the police response would be in Vancouver if a few thousand people walked through a park smoking cigarettes?
“…the language of liberty.
It was 33 years ago that a bewildered acquaintance, hearing I opposed the then-freshly minted federal Human Rights Code, said to me: “Let me get this straight. You’re a liberal. Wouldn’t you hire anyone regardless or race and religion?”
“I certainly would.”
“So what’s your problem with the law compelling what you’d do anyway?”
He couldn’t see how compelling something right could be wrong… When the smoking wars went into overdrive, anti-smoking activists couldn’t believe that anyone who quit smoking years earlier, as I did, could nevertheless object to the tyranny of the smoke Gestapo.
“Did you say ‘Gestapo’?”
“Yep.”
“But you say you don’t smoke?”
“Nope.”
They thought it was bizarre. A non-smoker, objecting?
I am freedom nut…what I want is for my neighbour to be as free to own his gun as his father was. I have a selfish reason: The state that can tie my neighbour’s ownership of a gun to inane conditions can similarly restrict my ownership of anything I want”
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/13/george-jonas-the-gestapo-come-in-many-forms.aspx#ixzz0mzp0Ekoi
“billion$ stop getting wasted on prosecution and incarceration for purely pot offenses.”
I’m not aware of anyone who’s been bothered(except kids) or charged for that matter for smoking a joint, or having small amounts in possession. If you are not smoking pot in you car, nobody will accost you. You’re just PARANOID!
RE: drug busts. If those committing the Trafficking crime would submit without resisting, those fatalities you speak of wouldn’t happen.
In your world, everyone WILL be paying $50/g not $10. Like I said, let it go!
I object to your call for MORE TAXES!
“Men on the left – What’s their excuse? Mommy Issues?”
Scoundrels,
or Beta-males. You know, those homos(no homo) that enter into female dominated industries such as nursing to be in the proximity of women. Nurses’ aren’t attracted to Murses, they’re attracted to Doctors; but how’s a Beta-male to know this? After all, they weren’t getting any in high school! So they go to school/work/hobbies/causes to be close to women, and there they try to work the “friend” angle. As a “friend” they applaud all of the bra-burning victim hood mumbo jumbo in hopes of one day providing a soft “friendly” shoulder to cry-on, and a stiff…
Aaron (@2:53), you do amaze me with this stuff. You’ve said in the past that SDA is not anti-commie enough for you, and then in practically the same breath you want the feds to start banning things. Look, the leftists always “interfere with other peoples’ lives” to protect them from something: From capitalists or Fox News or having to think for themselves. Can’t you just prohibit smoking in your own house.
larbennett @4:32 – oy vey iz mir, oy gevalt! Well, someone – Voltaire or somebody like that – said that a misogynist is a man who feels about women the way women feel about each other. Certainly there’s a type of stupid, passive-aggressive testosterone-fearing female collectivist who is naturally attracted to petty leftist interfering and guilt-tripping, but, since we’re generalizing, these lame chicks haven’t done half the damage in this sphere that amibitious and coldly-abstracting males have achieved. You make “religion” (i.e. your idead of Catholicism) sound like an outpatient mental-health program for the pathetic female sex.
Indy – all the economics I know I learned from P.J. O’Rourke. Why is pot not subject to inflation? I do agree with you about beta males. You should see the kind of lichen who attach themselves to Anthro departments (largely run by wimmin, of course). One exchange I had with an arrogant grad student: Him – “If women had more influence in the world, there wouldn’t be wars”
My unfortunately esprit d’escalier response: “Yeah, God I miss Thatcher.”
Little suck that he was.
p.s. I don’t like second-hand smoke, but somehow I manage to be brave about it.
My spelling and punctuation appears to be sucking. Sorry about that.
“If someone pooped on a sidewalk in front of your house, you’d be up in arms banning pooping on the sidewalk. Smoking is the same thing”
This is typical of the bizarre analogies that anti-smoking cheerleaders constantly put forth.
Pooping on the sidewalk and smoking? Please get serious.
That’s OK, Black Mamba, your spelling and punctuation aren’t your biggest errors.
First, I never mentioned Catholicism anywhere. My comment was a followup on an earlier comment about the left’s secularism becoming a far more destructive religion than Christianity.
Second, my “misogynist” comment was an attempt to provide Indy with an example of some “self-deprecating sense of humour.” Figure the rest out yourself, you wanker. 🙂
(…appear…. Oy. Maybe if I start drinking now…)
Mamba
Perhaps “ONLY inflation proof commodity” is the incorrect economic term, but I digress.
In the 80’s, much to my embarrassment, my father used to send me to the gas station with “about Three-fiddy” an a note that said “please sell my son some smokes, they’re for me”. Today I see cigarettes are $11.00+. Also as a young chap, I’d only have to wheel $11.00 from the ladies to get a case of beer for the party; whereas, a case of beer costs about $20 today.
Conversely, the first time I didn’t inhale(15 yrs ago), it was $10/g and discounted as you went up. Today, its $10/g and is discounted as you go up. So yes, pot isn’t immune to inflation; but, it is the only commodity I’m aware of operating in a free market on any type of serious scale. That in my view is worth preserving.
Legalizing pot is absolutely the worst thing that can happen to pot smokers.
Re: men/women
Women are, and always will be attracted to what they’re attracted to; and no amount of pu$$ification or money will change that. Men are and will always be attracted to what they’re attracted to , and no amount of Hollywood propaganda or political correctness will convince that cougars are hot.
Oh, LC, “self-deprecating” means: “deprecating to oneself“; and since, Larry, you are likely not a woman… (If I’m wrong, do please inform.)
And by “religion” I think we can assume you didn’t mean “Judaism” (heh!), or “Buddhism” or “Episcopalianism” . If I’m wrong, do please inform.
Indy – not so much inflation, then, as punitive taxataion?
(Anyhoo, I can live with Bennett calling me a “wanker”, which isn’t even a venal sin where I come from, but do I hope you aren’t implying I’m a “cougar”. I’m not even as old as you are, Homez.)
Well, that’s all off-T, so enough from me.
“Sadly, smokers in general (not all) do not look after their cigarette butts. At the place at which I works, people violate smoking zones all the time. Ashtrays are set out, large containers for butts are set out, and these are surrounded by butts on the ground. It’s unsightly, and frankly bothersome….Ticketing people isn’t a solution because that won’t work. So I’m fine with the proposed initiative.” – Erik, 11:21 am
I don’t like littering either, but you’re conflating two different things: smoking and littering. If you support a ban on smoking in provincial parks because of the potential for litter, (which, btw, has nothing to do with the various Lung Associations’ and anti-smoking groups’ reasons for a ban) does that mean you support banning canned beans and potato chips and packaged hot dogs from provincial parks on the grounds that the plastic and the tin cans might end up on the ground?
You say issuing tickets for littering isn’t a solution because it doesn’t work, so you’re “fine with the proposed initiative” …to ticket people for smoking.
I don’t smoke, and I don’t like second-hand smoke, but in a provincial-park type situation second-hand smoke is, realistically, not a problem. We’re talking about the outdoors. If I’m in a provincial park, and I see some German picnicking with his wife and kids having a smoke, I don’t really consider it my business in the slightest. That would be taking the idea of “my personal airspace” way, *way* too far, IMHO.
Black Mamba – I really don’t mind being mistaken for LC Bennett, but he may not be quite so willing to be mistaken as, well .. me! Yes we do have the same last name, but as far as I’m aware we’re not related.
Well, if you swear you’re not the same man, I’ll believe you. I wonder if anyone’s related to “Larry Bennett”, though.
At any rate, I’ll try to keep straight who called me a “wanker”.
‘Smoking bans are just witch hunts for the mentally feeble drones of political correctness. To feel superior. To give an issue & people folks can make demonic.
Besides it gets the pod people hating a group while these advocacy GROUPS PICK YOUR POCKETS.
While this is going on, the nuts are attacking citizens in other areas. While Government petty bureaucrats have you obsessed with a habit. They curtail your rights in yet another area.
Oh yeah noticed smoking herb doesn’t seem to bother these black lights of totalitarianism.’
You said it all very well Revnant Dream. And Loki has written something that most of the self righteous will not read because they have been programed by progressives to be militantly anti- tobacco. I had a Brain aneurysm in 1983, my surgeon was no anti fool; when he inquired about my terrible headaches, post operation, he asked me if I was a tobacco smoker; I said I had been; he went to the hospital kiosk and bought me a package of smokes. My screaming headache stooped within 5 minutes. I get raging headaches if I do not smoke to this day. I am sure that no fanatical anti tobaccos will give a moments concern to me but even the most crass progressive should take note of what Pat said
“First they came for the Jews…”
Like you Speedy, I vacation where I am welcomed: Vancouver and most of B.C. has not been on my list for years. The interior is much saner than the Commie wacko west coast (the East End that hatched such wonders as Bill Ayres ‘other brother’ John, who is now head of the Joyce Foundation – you know the All gore Carbon Exchange set up in thug town – Chicago!).
Smokers are not welcome in most places; so we take our business elsewhere. Lots of businesses here in Whitehorse are out of business because of a dumb law that assumes that bars are health clubs. The ban has saved me a lot of time and money for this reason; also every time someone requests my time for volunteer work, I ask if I will be expected not to smoke; if they say ‘yes’ I tell them to forget it – my time will be spent in a place where I can enjoy a coffee and a smoke.
Hitler was the first tobacco ban man – hence the source of Pat’s quote.
There are NO ashtrays anywhere in the city of Whitehorse because it is against the law. Lots of Butts in the gutters all over town. Should they hire someone to ‘police’ this practice? Already millions in debt for their other stupid decisions…they also have a big drug problem and free needle exchange program to pay for – dirty needles are all over the public parks – easy come easy go.
Would you rather step on a dirty needle or a cigarette butt? Oh wait..you don’t have to choose in some places, these places have low tax revenue so both are everywhere. Whatever happened to common sense?
Black Mamba: By apologizing for occasional, functionally trivial typos you’re setting a standard that would require others to shoot themselves in the forehead six times a day. And I don’t think you want to live with that for the rest of your life.
Good thread, save for that one ad hominem “wanker” comment.
Thanks, EBD. (Maybe if I got to choose who, with the shooting… but of course I keed.)
(Given the subject under discussion in that post, it might be best characterized as an “ad feminam” wanker comment.)
Yes, but I added a smiley face so it isn’t an “insult insult”. Nonetheless, I’ll retract the wanker comment.
Driving smokers to Jihad.
Maybe it’s time to cull the herd before we have no freedoms left.
For the overly sensitive ( ie. HRC Operatives)
DEF: “cull the herd” = Ignore the morons.
That’s true, there was a smiley face. It was not an “insult insult”, merely a statutory insult. All is forgiven.
Yes Black Mamba, I do have relations, not as in “relationships” but there is still some family left, though few of them are interested in old uncle Larry, he not being very avuncular. Still I feel that youth should give deference to the aged in the family, and keep in touch a little more often.
Sorry Horny Toad, I don’t spit on the ground, so you can’t fine me for that.
And I use my plastic bags wisely, but given the fact that everywhere I look I see plastic bags – in trees, in the river, in the gutter, on my driveway etc – if “big government” says we’re going to ban plastic bags, I would say “well, OK, we deserve it”, because our society is too lame to look after itself by itself.
And that’s a pathetic view of our current society, but accurate.
So Larry is not LC- good to know. Almost called him on it last week. Was wondering why someone with frequent and credible posts would need two aliases? Turns out there’s nothing to see here, folks. Carry on….
And Mamba, “insult, insult”- tell me you’re not actually Whoopi slumming, and the ‘Black’ is just a not-so-subtle teaser. :>)
And Horny Toad, you missed my point. I wouldn’t have too much problem with people smoking in public parks, as long as they didn’t interfere with others, and always properly disposed of their cigarette butts.
They don’t, or at least enough people don’t which makes the park unsightly.
Seeing butts all over the place makes me mad, because it’s uncivil and unnecessary.
Actually, Black Mamba, I had a bubble bath, shaved my legs, painted my toenails and changed my mind (being my prerogative and all). I’ve decided you can “Bite Me”…I keed, of course. 🙂
Snagglepuss – rest assured that I am not Whoopi Goldberg.
LC – all of you are all over the place tonight, aren’t you?
Now, about this proposed smoking ban…
Like I’ve said many times … tongue clucking, finger wagging scolds.
Spineless and stupid politicians are no match for them.
I think a lot of people have the issue confused.
This is not a smoking issue, it’s a nanny state encroachment issue.
Smoking regulations, seat belt/car phone laws, bicycle helmets, plastic bag bans and yes, even drug laws, are all issues that deal with state control over behaviours that are entirely personal.
If you’re really for personal freedom and individual responsibility I can’t see how you can support restrictions on any of these things.
“And I use my plastic bags wisely,”
My wife ran into someone in the grocery store who was adamant about NOT using plastic bags for groceries. So my wife aked her what she put her garbage in. The woman replied-“oh, we buy plastic bags for that” Idiot!!!