Trackbacked at basil’s blog:
From abc7.com:
Life will be a drag for smokers in the city of Calabasas starting today, when a strict ban on lighting up in most outdoor spaces takes effect.
The ban, perhaps the most comprehensive smoking ban in the United States, prohibits smoking in all public places at times when other people can be exposed to secondhand smoke. Businesses can apply to create a designated smoking area far away from non-smokers starting in April.
The “Comprehensive Secondhand Smoke Control Ordinance” includes indoor and outdoor businesses, hotels, parks, sidewalks, restaurants and bars where people can be reasonably expected to congregate or meet, according to an announcement from the city of Calabasas.
If I didn’t destroy my conservative reader base with my post supporting gay marriages, then this one surely will.
You see, I support a ban on public smoking. I have discovered very little as obnoxious or revolting as breathing in someone else’s smoke from their cigarette. Sometimes it makes me gag.
I have no problem with anyone smoking. Killing yourself off early simply means there will be more room for me on this Earth. But you have absolutely no right to expose me to your smoke. If there was any way that you could keep all your filthy fumes just to yourself, on your person or on your property, then I would support you in every way. But every time someone lights up their smoke wafts into the air, spreading everywhere, and eventually making it into my space or onto my property, I have to breathe it. I didn’t ask for it, but I have to breathe it anyways, and you have no right to do that to me. That’s the Libertarian in me coming out - smoke anything you want (tobacco, marijuana, gym socks), just don’t affect me with your behavior or actions.
Here’s an option. I dip snuff. I enjoy it. I have a legal right to do so. So let’s make a deal - everytime you puff smoke into my air I’ll spit at you. If I have to breathe your filthy habit, then you’ll have to wear my filthy habit. OK?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Chad // Mar 20, 2006 at 10:04 am
The basis of common law is that you can get away with whatever you want, until you infringe upon the rights of others.
If smoking in a restaurant doesn’t infringe on non-smokers rights, well, I don’t know what does!
2 Bruce // Mar 20, 2006 at 2:37 pm
What right would that be? The right to eat dinner on someone else’s private property while telling the owner what they can and cannot to on their property?
Don’t like it? Don’t do business there.
Banning smoking in PUBLIC places is one thing. But I have a big problem with ther state telling anybody what they can and cannot do on their privately owned property.