Before you start freaking out on me:
Yes - this is regarding pig blood in cigarettes.
No - it's not like a bunch of blood was spilled in some factory and now packs may be tainted.
But the truth is somewhere in-between and it's rather disconcerting (and makes me glad I've only had one cigarette in my life).
University of Sydney Professor in Public Health Simon Chapman points to recent Dutch research which identified 185 different industrial uses of a pig - including the use of its haemoglobin in cigarette filters.
So it's not just pig blood - it's a specific part of the blood, and it's serving an industrial purpose. It turns out that pig haemoglobin can make cigarette filters more effective at trapping harmful chemicals before they can enter a smoker's lungs.
And it's not in ALL cigarettes - maybe. The fact is that we don't know and have no way of knowing. Some tobacco companies have voluntarily moved a list of product contents to public websites, but these lists can include undisclosed "processing aids ... that are not significantly present in, and do not functionally affect, the finished product." That means that cigarettes could contain "insignificant" amounts of pig haemoglobins.
Of course, that all depends on your definition of "insignificant" - devout Jews and Muslims, whose core beliefs specifically ban the consumption of pork in all its forms, will undoubtedly find any amount of pig in their cigarettes to be "significant". Likewise with vegetarians, who never would have suspected that behind the leafy safe tobacco filling could be lurking a meaty filter.
According to the article I read this news from, at least one cigarette brand sold in Greece was confirmed as using pig haemoglobin in its processes.
The fact remains - unless your cigarette company is willing to divulge this information, you will have no idea how much your smokes have in common with a smoky side of bacon.
What do you think? Are you a smoker and this knowledge may affect your smoking habits? Are you Jewish/Muslim/vegetarian and a smoker? Leave a comment!
And then Digg this article!
Read more!
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, May 02, 2008
Smoking Ban Closes Bars
Exactly one year ago (from May 1st), Northern Ireland was the victim of the wave of smoking bans as theirs took effect. And the effect has been great - but not in a positive way at all. It's led to the closing of 100 bars. That's 7% of Northern Ireland's pub count, according to the Federation of Retail Licensed Trade, which represents about 1,100 pubs, hotels and restaurants in Northern Ireland.
The whole reasoning behind the smoking ban was so that non-smokers would be rushing to these locations now that they contained a smoke-free environment. That is obviously not the case, as 100 locations have gone out of business and Steve Kelly, the chief executive of the Federation of Retail Licensed Trade "expects another 100 to close next year."
Isn't this proof-positive that the smoking ban is USELESS, especially in bars?
I mean the whole "argument" (if you can call it that, since there are scientific studies that support it and scientific studies that counter it) was that non-smokers wanted to cease the attack of secondhand smoke on them while they were trying to get a pint. So now that they got their wish and the smoke is gone, they're not drumming up enough business for the pubs to keep them even afloat!
This is just an obvious example of people who shouldn't have a say in the OPERATION of a business because they aren't CUSTOMERS of that business. If there were a bar with 100 regular customers and 50 of them were planning to stop coming because of an establishment policy (or lack thereof), the business can decide to do what it must in order to maximize their customer satisfaction or their profits (maybe the other 50 are twice the profit as the complaining 50). It's when people who are NOT customers start raising a fuss that problems occur. Changing the business' practices and policies won't mean a thing unless the result is more patronage or more profitability!
Sure, you can argue all you want that the protesters who caused the smoking bans to come into play were "thinking about the greater good" and "wanting to protect your lungs" or something. I still don't understand why it's a "libertarian" view to take away the business's liberty of choosing policies in favor of the potential customer's liberty of not breathing secondhand smoke. If you ask me (and you didn't, but I'm telling you anyway), the REAL libertarian view should be that the potential customer DOES have the liberty of not breathing potentially-harmful secondhand smoke - and that businesses should have the liberty to say that those potential customers have every right to find somewhere else to enjoy that liberty, because that business has chosen to protect the liberty of those who want to smoke.
Northern Ireland bar owners lost that liberty to choose their own smoking policy. And the result was that 100 of them also lost their businesses. And 100 more are probably going to lose their businesses next year.
If we can't even get enough IRISH people into PUBS to keep them in business with this smoking ban, what chance do any bars have in general to survive this idiotic smoking ban?
Once again, I am NOT a smoker. And yes, I find smoking to be a disgusting habit and I hate the smell of secondhand smoke. But I also think that smokers have the right to EXIST and to SMOKE - especially in bars.
What do you think?
(The sad story about the pub closings)
Read more!
The whole reasoning behind the smoking ban was so that non-smokers would be rushing to these locations now that they contained a smoke-free environment. That is obviously not the case, as 100 locations have gone out of business and Steve Kelly, the chief executive of the Federation of Retail Licensed Trade "expects another 100 to close next year."
Isn't this proof-positive that the smoking ban is USELESS, especially in bars?
I mean the whole "argument" (if you can call it that, since there are scientific studies that support it and scientific studies that counter it) was that non-smokers wanted to cease the attack of secondhand smoke on them while they were trying to get a pint. So now that they got their wish and the smoke is gone, they're not drumming up enough business for the pubs to keep them even afloat!
This is just an obvious example of people who shouldn't have a say in the OPERATION of a business because they aren't CUSTOMERS of that business. If there were a bar with 100 regular customers and 50 of them were planning to stop coming because of an establishment policy (or lack thereof), the business can decide to do what it must in order to maximize their customer satisfaction or their profits (maybe the other 50 are twice the profit as the complaining 50). It's when people who are NOT customers start raising a fuss that problems occur. Changing the business' practices and policies won't mean a thing unless the result is more patronage or more profitability!
Sure, you can argue all you want that the protesters who caused the smoking bans to come into play were "thinking about the greater good" and "wanting to protect your lungs" or something. I still don't understand why it's a "libertarian" view to take away the business's liberty of choosing policies in favor of the potential customer's liberty of not breathing secondhand smoke. If you ask me (and you didn't, but I'm telling you anyway), the REAL libertarian view should be that the potential customer DOES have the liberty of not breathing potentially-harmful secondhand smoke - and that businesses should have the liberty to say that those potential customers have every right to find somewhere else to enjoy that liberty, because that business has chosen to protect the liberty of those who want to smoke.
Northern Ireland bar owners lost that liberty to choose their own smoking policy. And the result was that 100 of them also lost their businesses. And 100 more are probably going to lose their businesses next year.
If we can't even get enough IRISH people into PUBS to keep them in business with this smoking ban, what chance do any bars have in general to survive this idiotic smoking ban?
Once again, I am NOT a smoker. And yes, I find smoking to be a disgusting habit and I hate the smell of secondhand smoke. But I also think that smokers have the right to EXIST and to SMOKE - especially in bars.
What do you think?
(The sad story about the pub closings)
Read more!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Smoking and Other Bans
Hopefully by now you've gotten the message that I'm against the smoking ban. If you don't regularly read my blog, let this be your introduction to my hatred for this ban. I'm not as against it as the ban on the sale of foie gras, which is the most ridiculous ban I think I've heard of in the past few years, but I'm still very much against it. Maybe this will help illustrate why.
I'm not a smoker. This isn't about me wanting the ban to go away so I can smoke in places that aren't subzero in temperature. This is about civil liberties being taken away under the false pretenses of "benefitting the many over the benefits of the few" or some nonsense like that. You know, bleeding-heart liberal slogans designed to tug at heart-strings (possibly how the term 'bleeding-heart' came to be?) and basically saying under its breath "we pander to stupid people because stupid people vote in higher numbers and we want it to be for us." Here's a quote from the article I read this morning:
For health advocates, the ban represents a simple idea: The rights of an individual should not come before the health of all.
This is the biggest pile of nonsense I've heard in a while - thank goodness they put it so succinctly, because that makes it all the easier for me to mock it and illustrate a point. Several points, actually. Because it's horrible thinking like THAT which is going to be the end of us all. Forgive me if some of my arguments border on the "conspiracy theory" line, but I'm just following that "simple idea" as my mind takes me. Let's see what the future holds if this precedence holds and indeed dooms us all.
Ban on junk food. Well, the hot-button issue is the "obesity epidemic", which means that if obesity is threatening to somehow spread like a disease, then they can enact laws that take away your rights as an individual to eat how you want for the sake of the health of all. They already started with trans fats, didn't they? How long before they press onward? That basically opened the door, along with this precedence, to allow them to declare a ban on anything deemed by a panel of idiots (like the FCC of food) to be "unhealthy". All the good fast food places shut down, Hershey's goes bankrupt, as well as the Mars corporation. And probably Frito-Lay as well, since their "healthy" chips are disgusting and I doubt anyone buys them, even if there were no alternative good-tasting chips.
Ban on fat people. You think I'm joking, right? Well they already have a study showing some kind of correlation between having overweight friends and becoming overweight yourself. Which means that idiots will assume causation, and then obesity will be not only a regular disease but also a social disease to them, and then fat people are banned. We won't be allowed to socialize indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest someone have to talk to us and catch a bad case of obesity or something.
Ban on meat. Think the Atkins diet would help you become skinny enough to be allowed back inside buildings? Well you'd be quite out of luck, because once we have no fat people allowed in buildings to talk sense into the retarded PETA skinny-people brigades, they'll have their run of the show. They'll use their studies showing that cows and other ruminants cause XX billion tons of pollutants and global warming - yadda yadda yadda - all meat is banned for sale because the rights of an individual to eat meat should not come before the health of people who live in the environment being destroyed. (Even if we all know that without the meat industry, the cows will just continue to produce pollution because they're not being slaughtered to become tasty steaks that people can eat in order to save the world.)
Ban on food. All it's going to take is a few idiots who happen to get a peanut-based allergic reaction from being on a train with someone who just had a PB&J or crumbs in a break room resulting in an epinephrin-injection to resume breathing and then we're all up a creek without a paddle. Lawsuits ensue and then we've got mandates about foods. We won't be able to EAT indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest the allergy-prone have to be trapped with a food they're allergic to. Or just food that smells in a way they don't like. Think I'm insane? Follow the logic, and you'll likely get there, even if you're not insane. The rights of an individual to eat what and where they want should not come before the health of the feeble who just don't want to take precautions and place that responsibility on everyone but themselves.
You know, there used to be a thing called "survival of the fittest" where the strong go on to live and breed and the idiotic dumbasses ate too many marbles as kids and died. It's time to stop banning games with marbles that idiot children can eat and start focusing on teaching children to not eat marbles or they don't get to grow up and have kids of their own. I'm sick and tired of watching stupid behavior and wanting to remove the gonads of everyone in that family unit as a way of saying "your bloodline stops here, and the world will praise me for doing it." But I digress - back to the bans.
Ban on profanity. I'm not talking about record labels and TV/radio airwaves. I'm talking about cursing in general, just in everyday conversation. Sooner or later we'll get a study linking a child hearing a curse word and some kind of new psychological mental illness or even the ever-widening umbrella of A.D.D. or something. And the mental health of all, segue to the individual rights to freedom of speech, ergo a ban on profanity everywhere but inside your home and beyond the 15-foot building entrance lines now drawn out like bubbles because of all the bans in effect.
Ban on defending ourselves. Now I'm certainly in the "conspiracy theory" zone, but if all the above has palyed out to the point where we're all starved, weak, repressed agorophobes - we'll have lost our "superpower" status completely. Even Canada could just decide to walk right in and take over. It's more likely to be all of those Middle-Eastern regions that we've had the pleasure of declaring war on in the past. And seriously, once they start their suicide-bombing runs here in the U.S.A., we'd still be banned from even fighting back. Someone would argue that fighting back would cause more Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by fighting in a war to defend our country than the amount of PTSD generated by witnessing an ongoing stream of bombs going off and killing loved ones and other civilians. They'd argue it, and there would be no intelligent people like myself left to argue back due to a severe lack of steak. Our country would be doomed.
And that's how the smoking ban apparently kills us all. Remember that on January 1st, when the smoking ban takes effect. And horde your steak. For the good of the world, people.
EAT A STEAK - SAVE THE WORLD!
(An online version of the article I read in today's RedEye)
Read more!
I'm not a smoker. This isn't about me wanting the ban to go away so I can smoke in places that aren't subzero in temperature. This is about civil liberties being taken away under the false pretenses of "benefitting the many over the benefits of the few" or some nonsense like that. You know, bleeding-heart liberal slogans designed to tug at heart-strings (possibly how the term 'bleeding-heart' came to be?) and basically saying under its breath "we pander to stupid people because stupid people vote in higher numbers and we want it to be for us." Here's a quote from the article I read this morning:
For health advocates, the ban represents a simple idea: The rights of an individual should not come before the health of all.
This is the biggest pile of nonsense I've heard in a while - thank goodness they put it so succinctly, because that makes it all the easier for me to mock it and illustrate a point. Several points, actually. Because it's horrible thinking like THAT which is going to be the end of us all. Forgive me if some of my arguments border on the "conspiracy theory" line, but I'm just following that "simple idea" as my mind takes me. Let's see what the future holds if this precedence holds and indeed dooms us all.
Ban on junk food. Well, the hot-button issue is the "obesity epidemic", which means that if obesity is threatening to somehow spread like a disease, then they can enact laws that take away your rights as an individual to eat how you want for the sake of the health of all. They already started with trans fats, didn't they? How long before they press onward? That basically opened the door, along with this precedence, to allow them to declare a ban on anything deemed by a panel of idiots (like the FCC of food) to be "unhealthy". All the good fast food places shut down, Hershey's goes bankrupt, as well as the Mars corporation. And probably Frito-Lay as well, since their "healthy" chips are disgusting and I doubt anyone buys them, even if there were no alternative good-tasting chips.
Ban on fat people. You think I'm joking, right? Well they already have a study showing some kind of correlation between having overweight friends and becoming overweight yourself. Which means that idiots will assume causation, and then obesity will be not only a regular disease but also a social disease to them, and then fat people are banned. We won't be allowed to socialize indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest someone have to talk to us and catch a bad case of obesity or something.
Ban on meat. Think the Atkins diet would help you become skinny enough to be allowed back inside buildings? Well you'd be quite out of luck, because once we have no fat people allowed in buildings to talk sense into the retarded PETA skinny-people brigades, they'll have their run of the show. They'll use their studies showing that cows and other ruminants cause XX billion tons of pollutants and global warming - yadda yadda yadda - all meat is banned for sale because the rights of an individual to eat meat should not come before the health of people who live in the environment being destroyed. (Even if we all know that without the meat industry, the cows will just continue to produce pollution because they're not being slaughtered to become tasty steaks that people can eat in order to save the world.)
Ban on food. All it's going to take is a few idiots who happen to get a peanut-based allergic reaction from being on a train with someone who just had a PB&J or crumbs in a break room resulting in an epinephrin-injection to resume breathing and then we're all up a creek without a paddle. Lawsuits ensue and then we've got mandates about foods. We won't be able to EAT indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest the allergy-prone have to be trapped with a food they're allergic to. Or just food that smells in a way they don't like. Think I'm insane? Follow the logic, and you'll likely get there, even if you're not insane. The rights of an individual to eat what and where they want should not come before the health of the feeble who just don't want to take precautions and place that responsibility on everyone but themselves.
You know, there used to be a thing called "survival of the fittest" where the strong go on to live and breed and the idiotic dumbasses ate too many marbles as kids and died. It's time to stop banning games with marbles that idiot children can eat and start focusing on teaching children to not eat marbles or they don't get to grow up and have kids of their own. I'm sick and tired of watching stupid behavior and wanting to remove the gonads of everyone in that family unit as a way of saying "your bloodline stops here, and the world will praise me for doing it." But I digress - back to the bans.
Ban on profanity. I'm not talking about record labels and TV/radio airwaves. I'm talking about cursing in general, just in everyday conversation. Sooner or later we'll get a study linking a child hearing a curse word and some kind of new psychological mental illness or even the ever-widening umbrella of A.D.D. or something. And the mental health of all, segue to the individual rights to freedom of speech, ergo a ban on profanity everywhere but inside your home and beyond the 15-foot building entrance lines now drawn out like bubbles because of all the bans in effect.
Ban on defending ourselves. Now I'm certainly in the "conspiracy theory" zone, but if all the above has palyed out to the point where we're all starved, weak, repressed agorophobes - we'll have lost our "superpower" status completely. Even Canada could just decide to walk right in and take over. It's more likely to be all of those Middle-Eastern regions that we've had the pleasure of declaring war on in the past. And seriously, once they start their suicide-bombing runs here in the U.S.A., we'd still be banned from even fighting back. Someone would argue that fighting back would cause more Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by fighting in a war to defend our country than the amount of PTSD generated by witnessing an ongoing stream of bombs going off and killing loved ones and other civilians. They'd argue it, and there would be no intelligent people like myself left to argue back due to a severe lack of steak. Our country would be doomed.
And that's how the smoking ban apparently kills us all. Remember that on January 1st, when the smoking ban takes effect. And horde your steak. For the good of the world, people.
EAT A STEAK - SAVE THE WORLD!
(An online version of the article I read in today's RedEye)
Read more!
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Letter to RedEye: Smoking Ban
Still trying to get published again. I'll let you know if anything comes of this one.
(UPDATE: Got published! As usual, everything in bold is what they printed - you get to see the entire unedited version!)
I think that the smoking ban is a horrible idea. Banning the use of something that is approved for sale is a ridiculous notion, even if it's for the supposed "greater good" of preventing secondhand smoke. The product can be sold at any establishment and is regulated by the federal government, but with this ban anyone purchasing that product is like a pariah. That makes as much sense as saying, "Here is your cupcake - now go outside if you want to eat that because you're offending the other customers with your cupcake-eating. You're putting them all at risk of being killed by getting crushed by a fat person!"
While I'm not going to turn a deaf ear to all of the scientific research about secondhand smoke and its effects, my gut is telling me that most of the secondhand smoke damage is done either at home over a prolonged period of time, or working in a previously-smoke-friendly location - not having to be in the same area as a smoker during lunch a few times a week. My gut also tells me that I inhale more poisons into my body from crossing one traffic-filled street downtown than I would by spending an hour in the non-smoking section of a restaurant (even if the entire smoking section were filled with chain-smokers). And that's just one street-crossing. So unless the government plans on foolishly trying to remove all cars from the downtown area (oh wait, Alderman Burke proposed a downtown toll) or removing all the buses as well (oh wait, Doomsday in January's got that covered) - I'd prefer if lawmakers started focusing on real crimes and enforcing laws that keep real dangers from harming me. Stop taking away our liberties. Oh, and just for the record, I'm a non-smoker.
Aaron Samuels, 24, Bridgeport Read more!
(UPDATE: Got published! As usual, everything in bold is what they printed - you get to see the entire unedited version!)
I think that the smoking ban is a horrible idea. Banning the use of something that is approved for sale is a ridiculous notion, even if it's for the supposed "greater good" of preventing secondhand smoke. The product can be sold at any establishment and is regulated by the federal government, but with this ban anyone purchasing that product is like a pariah. That makes as much sense as saying, "Here is your cupcake - now go outside if you want to eat that because you're offending the other customers with your cupcake-eating. You're putting them all at risk of being killed by getting crushed by a fat person!"
While I'm not going to turn a deaf ear to all of the scientific research about secondhand smoke and its effects, my gut is telling me that most of the secondhand smoke damage is done either at home over a prolonged period of time, or working in a previously-smoke-friendly location - not having to be in the same area as a smoker during lunch a few times a week. My gut also tells me that I inhale more poisons into my body from crossing one traffic-filled street downtown than I would by spending an hour in the non-smoking section of a restaurant (even if the entire smoking section were filled with chain-smokers). And that's just one street-crossing. So unless the government plans on foolishly trying to remove all cars from the downtown area (oh wait, Alderman Burke proposed a downtown toll) or removing all the buses as well (oh wait, Doomsday in January's got that covered) - I'd prefer if lawmakers started focusing on real crimes and enforcing laws that keep real dangers from harming me. Stop taking away our liberties. Oh, and just for the record, I'm a non-smoker.
Aaron Samuels, 24, Bridgeport Read more!
Friday, July 27, 2007
Smoking Ban vs Gay Marriage
Before I even get off into my usual slur of bad analogies, half-baked jokes and other things that prevent me from forming a coherent verbal (but not written) sentence before 8am - I have no idea what I'm talking about. You hear that? My opinions on these subjects really don't matter because neither of them really affect me directly. Just like men and abortion rights, we can have an opinion, but we'll be seen as wrong just for having one since it's not our issue and it apparently never will be. Now that this is out of the way, I'll say my peace.
Hopefully at least SOME of you read my last piece, about the new Illinois smoking ban that still allows people to smoke, just nowhere where they'd LIKE to smoke. Like in places where there's shelter from the environment other than their own home. What was GOING to follow was a piece about the new cigarette taxes coming into legislation.
I can't begin to think of a better analog for "adding insult to injury."
Instead, certain reader responses in the RedEye this morning just got me BACK onto this original rant, and I felt I had to add more on because people STILL just don't get it: there should NOT be laws being created to ostracize people just based on the theory that secondhand smoke is really that dangerous. Again, I haven't seen any scientific proof. And even if there were test subjects in controlled environments who got cancer from extreme doses of secondhand smoke, I highly doubt that those experiments would reflect the REAL world, where secondhand smoke isn't that concentrated (even indoors) and the hundreds or thousands of other factors that determine when a person gets which cancer.
But no! The liberals (who, might I remind you, are taking away liberties rather than protecting them) are trying to argue that they can tell you where you can't smoke because they're afraid of dying from secondhand smoke. Fine. If you want to make the argument that a hypothetical scary result that hasn't been factually proven yet can be stopped by one of the things that might trigger it in limited circumstances (a long way of saying "you MIGHT get cancer from POSSIBLY secondhand smoke IF this all happened INDOORS and you ignore everyone OUTDOORS")...
...then I say that you have to also agree with the arguments to ban gay marriage.
That's right, I went there. I went there, took some photos, bought a T-shirt, came back, and showed you boring slideshows of it all. Smoking ban? Gay marriage ban. But why, Aaron? Why would you equate something as silly as not being able to smoke indoors with the lifelong struggle of the gay community to commit to each other for life in a federally-recognized ceremony?
Because it's the same argument being made against gay marriage that was made against smoking indoors: something that could potentially harm in a non-proven way if conditions were met. I'm taking about the "gay marriage destroys families" argument here.
I'm arguing that there's an equal percentage of people trying to prove that this seemingly-unlikely event is what triggered their horrible problem. Trying to pin secondhand smoke as the culprit for lung cancer in non-smokers is just as improbable as pinning gay marriage as the culprit for the lack of value of the sacrament of marriage itself.
After all, while being gay is NOT a choice that can be turned on or off, deciding to couple and deciding to want to get married is TOTALLY a choice. You can be gay and do whatever you want to other gay people for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the institution of marriage, that apparently affects OTHER people in the bond of marriage and some see it as possibly destructive.
Likewise, while nicotine addiction is not as much of a choice (at serious levels of addiction), it is TOTALLY a choice to start smoking. And you can smoke whatever kinds of cigars and cigarettes you want for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the air space of other people indoors, that apparently affects OTHER people in the room and some see it as possibly destructive to their health.
Can you agree on the similarities in the arguments?? One is just as ridiculous as the other! And yet the insane one about SMOKING is easily thrown together as actual legislation by the liberals, while the insane one about GAY MARRIAGE is a rallying point liberals AGAINST the same argument!
Sorry, liberals, but you can't have it both ways. One fauly argument becoming law should equate to more laws backed by the same argument - whether it's something you believe in or not. Smokers believe they have the right to smoke. You argue it threatens the health of others and besides, "smoking is bad for you anyway so maybe this'll help people to quit." Gays believe they have the right to get married. Others argue it threatens the sanctity of marriage and besides, "being gay is morally wrong anyway so maybe this'll help people to get right with God."
Are you starting to see how absurd it all is?
You don't have the right to quash someone's liberties because you're afraid people could get hurt and die. If that were the case all around for everything, people shouldn't be allowed to play sports because there's a high risk of steroid use, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars because they can't be trusted to not crash and kill people, and farmers shouldn't be allowed to grow peanuts anymore because so many people are allergic to them and they kill so many people.
You have the right to defend yourself from imminent danger.
You don't have the right to legislate a ban on anything that could potentially be dangerous.
Because people have the right to do dangerous things - to themselves especially, and potentially to others. You can drink alcohol. You can own a gun. You can drive a car. You can bungee jump and parasail and skydive. You can also smoke a cigarette.
And if people are going to take away that liberty for such a stupid reason, I'm just saying that the things THEY believe they have the liberty to do should be taken away just as easily.
And please don't try to turn this into me being a homophobe or against gay marriage. I have several gay friends and I'm not against gay marriage. If you read this piece properly, you'd see that I'm trying to NOT ban gay marriage by trying to get this smoking ban lifted due to the ridiculous reasoning that brought it into existance. It just usually gets a hot-button topic to get people to actually notice the NOT-hot-button topics.
Read more!
Hopefully at least SOME of you read my last piece, about the new Illinois smoking ban that still allows people to smoke, just nowhere where they'd LIKE to smoke. Like in places where there's shelter from the environment other than their own home. What was GOING to follow was a piece about the new cigarette taxes coming into legislation.
I can't begin to think of a better analog for "adding insult to injury."
Instead, certain reader responses in the RedEye this morning just got me BACK onto this original rant, and I felt I had to add more on because people STILL just don't get it: there should NOT be laws being created to ostracize people just based on the theory that secondhand smoke is really that dangerous. Again, I haven't seen any scientific proof. And even if there were test subjects in controlled environments who got cancer from extreme doses of secondhand smoke, I highly doubt that those experiments would reflect the REAL world, where secondhand smoke isn't that concentrated (even indoors) and the hundreds or thousands of other factors that determine when a person gets which cancer.
But no! The liberals (who, might I remind you, are taking away liberties rather than protecting them) are trying to argue that they can tell you where you can't smoke because they're afraid of dying from secondhand smoke. Fine. If you want to make the argument that a hypothetical scary result that hasn't been factually proven yet can be stopped by one of the things that might trigger it in limited circumstances (a long way of saying "you MIGHT get cancer from POSSIBLY secondhand smoke IF this all happened INDOORS and you ignore everyone OUTDOORS")...
...then I say that you have to also agree with the arguments to ban gay marriage.
That's right, I went there. I went there, took some photos, bought a T-shirt, came back, and showed you boring slideshows of it all. Smoking ban? Gay marriage ban. But why, Aaron? Why would you equate something as silly as not being able to smoke indoors with the lifelong struggle of the gay community to commit to each other for life in a federally-recognized ceremony?
Because it's the same argument being made against gay marriage that was made against smoking indoors: something that could potentially harm in a non-proven way if conditions were met. I'm taking about the "gay marriage destroys families" argument here.
I'm arguing that there's an equal percentage of people trying to prove that this seemingly-unlikely event is what triggered their horrible problem. Trying to pin secondhand smoke as the culprit for lung cancer in non-smokers is just as improbable as pinning gay marriage as the culprit for the lack of value of the sacrament of marriage itself.
After all, while being gay is NOT a choice that can be turned on or off, deciding to couple and deciding to want to get married is TOTALLY a choice. You can be gay and do whatever you want to other gay people for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the institution of marriage, that apparently affects OTHER people in the bond of marriage and some see it as possibly destructive.
Likewise, while nicotine addiction is not as much of a choice (at serious levels of addiction), it is TOTALLY a choice to start smoking. And you can smoke whatever kinds of cigars and cigarettes you want for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the air space of other people indoors, that apparently affects OTHER people in the room and some see it as possibly destructive to their health.
Can you agree on the similarities in the arguments?? One is just as ridiculous as the other! And yet the insane one about SMOKING is easily thrown together as actual legislation by the liberals, while the insane one about GAY MARRIAGE is a rallying point liberals AGAINST the same argument!
Sorry, liberals, but you can't have it both ways. One fauly argument becoming law should equate to more laws backed by the same argument - whether it's something you believe in or not. Smokers believe they have the right to smoke. You argue it threatens the health of others and besides, "smoking is bad for you anyway so maybe this'll help people to quit." Gays believe they have the right to get married. Others argue it threatens the sanctity of marriage and besides, "being gay is morally wrong anyway so maybe this'll help people to get right with God."
Are you starting to see how absurd it all is?
You don't have the right to quash someone's liberties because you're afraid people could get hurt and die. If that were the case all around for everything, people shouldn't be allowed to play sports because there's a high risk of steroid use, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars because they can't be trusted to not crash and kill people, and farmers shouldn't be allowed to grow peanuts anymore because so many people are allergic to them and they kill so many people.
You have the right to defend yourself from imminent danger.
You don't have the right to legislate a ban on anything that could potentially be dangerous.
Because people have the right to do dangerous things - to themselves especially, and potentially to others. You can drink alcohol. You can own a gun. You can drive a car. You can bungee jump and parasail and skydive. You can also smoke a cigarette.
And if people are going to take away that liberty for such a stupid reason, I'm just saying that the things THEY believe they have the liberty to do should be taken away just as easily.
And please don't try to turn this into me being a homophobe or against gay marriage. I have several gay friends and I'm not against gay marriage. If you read this piece properly, you'd see that I'm trying to NOT ban gay marriage by trying to get this smoking ban lifted due to the ridiculous reasoning that brought it into existance. It just usually gets a hot-button topic to get people to actually notice the NOT-hot-button topics.
Read more!
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Liberals Taking Away More Liberties!
You know, I always thought that the word "liberal" was supposed to be about liberty - about making sure we citizens had the liberties and rights to live our lives as we saw fit without having the government come in and trample those rights.
Turns out I was wrong. Because everyone else seems to be wrong. These people we call "Liberals" - the Democrats who blue up the blue states with their anti-Republican stances - aren't the ones who are protecting our liberties. They're the ones taking them away. And Gov. Blagojevich just pulled down his pants and made a bowel movement all over another liberty on Monday.
The liberty to smoke.
Thanks to the new law signed by the governor, on Jan 1st, 2008, smoking will be restricted to private homes and outside (more than 15 feet from a public building entrance). No more smoking in taverns or restaurants with bar areas. Can't smoke in a dormitory, either. Can't smoke in a PRIVATE home if there's a business open to the public operating out of the same space.
Face it - your liberties have just been written off.
You know what? I'm not even a smoker. I loathe the smell of cigarette smoke, it doesn't take much for me to start coughing, and I'm sure several branches of my family tree have been affected by smokers and the cancers they PROBABLY got from all of their smoking. (Yea, that's right - I'm still not totally convinced. I mean I'm convinced that smoking can cause cancer - but at the rate of other things scientists keep coming up with that ALSO cause cancer, I'm not as sure you can pin any of it directly on the smoking itself.) Even so, I am fully aware that they have every right to smoke and do whatever they want to themselves for themselves. You know what I have the right to do?
Go stand somewhere else.
Which is why I can understand why some places SHOULD be non-smoking, or rather that they should have designated non-smoking areas and designated smoking areas. Workplaces, because there you don't have the right to go somewhere else. Eateries, so you can have the CHOICE to be in one or the other section. Gas stations, so you don't make things explode.
Other than that (and probably some other places, but I'm not here to make a list of hypothetical exceptions to my own rule), smoke wherever and whenever! And if I've got a problem with that, I can stand somewhere else! This goes right along with the idiots who don't realize the have the option to change the channel or station when something they don't like is on the TV or radio. Stop taking away our freedom of speech and expression and go practice your freedom of choice and choose something else! These are our liberties, people! Stop letting those false advocates of liberty take them away!
The article I'm reading has a quote from a 70-year-old named Wally who says, "It's the General Assembly being our new nanny. After this they'll ban foods that are too fatty. You'll have to ask the state what you can eat and drink - they'll start regulating hamburgers." Oh, Wally... I guess you don't know/remember that they've already started with the trans fats... Your burgers ARE being regulated, Wally.
For those of you who want to argue "secondhand smoke", I'm going to refer you back to "go somewhere else" and leave it at that. These people are the ones arguing that since it affects them and endangers their health that they should be able to make it illegal. So here's one (or two) of my famously-crazy analogies:
I'm standing on the street with one leg placed out at an angle. I'm not trying to trip anyone at all - I'm just placing my leg out because I feel like it and I have every right to stand how I choose to. It's not MY fault if you don't have the wherewithall to, um, LOOK AROUND and notice it and trip over my leg that's been in the same position for the past three minutes. Lots of people didn't trip, because they walked somewhere else and paid attention and were vigilant about where their feet were walking. Just because you got hurt somehow doesn't mean what I did was illegal. I didn't do in in a malicious manner and I wasn't attacking someone. You just tripped. I am not at fault.
Let's try something even closer. I'm standing on the street with my dog, on a leash. Everything's legal with that. Dog's not even pooping on the sidewalk. And then you come along, with your horrible allergy to dogs, and maybe you didn't notice the dog or you didn't think you'd wind up that close to the dog, but you breathe in some dog hair from my dog and start having an allergic reaction. You're going to potentially die, even though the risk is low because it was just errant dog hair or something and worst case scenario we call 9-1-1 and they pump you full of epinephrine or something. Even so, I didn't do anything wrong - YOU did by not paying attention to your OWN problems. I'm allowed to have a dog and follow the laws. You shouldn't be allowed to blame me for your allergic reaction. See a dog - get the hell away from it.
You don't get to declare it illegal to have a dog out in public because people on the street might have an allergic reaction.
I don't have any advice as to how to fix this. My initial thought was a call to every smoker to follow every disgusted-look-giving non-smoker they encounter, blowing as much smoke at them as possible. Maybe if you could smoke inside, you wouldn't be out here, blowing smoke at people. Of course, that gives them argument to be extreme jackasses and try to ban smoking entirely.
My second thought was a smoking protest - lining up about fifty smokers in a ring 15 feet away from the entrance to an important building (like the Sears Tower where I work) and just smoking. As everyone outside tries to get in, say you can't move, because you can't get within 15 feet of the door. At first I threw out this idea because preventing entrance to a public building is probably an arrestable offense, but then I remembered - the place has two entrances! (Three, if you count the Skydeck, where the tourists are supposed to go to get up to the top but always wander into the office entrances instead.)
I just don't know what else to offer other than my condolences. I mean, I'm not a smoker, so this really doesn't affect me much more than my smoking friends getting a little grumpier over having nowhere nice to smoke. Let's face it, in the summer and the winter, the extreme temperatures are NOT helpful to smokers. This law is even LESS helpful.
And don't even get me started on "but maybe this will encourage them to quit." That's not for the government to decide. That's not for you to decide with a vote, either. That's for them and ONLY them to decide. They have that liberty to choose what to start and when to quit.
At least they used to. Until the "liberals" decided otherwise.
Read more!
Turns out I was wrong. Because everyone else seems to be wrong. These people we call "Liberals" - the Democrats who blue up the blue states with their anti-Republican stances - aren't the ones who are protecting our liberties. They're the ones taking them away. And Gov. Blagojevich just pulled down his pants and made a bowel movement all over another liberty on Monday.
The liberty to smoke.
Thanks to the new law signed by the governor, on Jan 1st, 2008, smoking will be restricted to private homes and outside (more than 15 feet from a public building entrance). No more smoking in taverns or restaurants with bar areas. Can't smoke in a dormitory, either. Can't smoke in a PRIVATE home if there's a business open to the public operating out of the same space.
Face it - your liberties have just been written off.
You know what? I'm not even a smoker. I loathe the smell of cigarette smoke, it doesn't take much for me to start coughing, and I'm sure several branches of my family tree have been affected by smokers and the cancers they PROBABLY got from all of their smoking. (Yea, that's right - I'm still not totally convinced. I mean I'm convinced that smoking can cause cancer - but at the rate of other things scientists keep coming up with that ALSO cause cancer, I'm not as sure you can pin any of it directly on the smoking itself.) Even so, I am fully aware that they have every right to smoke and do whatever they want to themselves for themselves. You know what I have the right to do?
Go stand somewhere else.
Which is why I can understand why some places SHOULD be non-smoking, or rather that they should have designated non-smoking areas and designated smoking areas. Workplaces, because there you don't have the right to go somewhere else. Eateries, so you can have the CHOICE to be in one or the other section. Gas stations, so you don't make things explode.
Other than that (and probably some other places, but I'm not here to make a list of hypothetical exceptions to my own rule), smoke wherever and whenever! And if I've got a problem with that, I can stand somewhere else! This goes right along with the idiots who don't realize the have the option to change the channel or station when something they don't like is on the TV or radio. Stop taking away our freedom of speech and expression and go practice your freedom of choice and choose something else! These are our liberties, people! Stop letting those false advocates of liberty take them away!
The article I'm reading has a quote from a 70-year-old named Wally who says, "It's the General Assembly being our new nanny. After this they'll ban foods that are too fatty. You'll have to ask the state what you can eat and drink - they'll start regulating hamburgers." Oh, Wally... I guess you don't know/remember that they've already started with the trans fats... Your burgers ARE being regulated, Wally.
For those of you who want to argue "secondhand smoke", I'm going to refer you back to "go somewhere else" and leave it at that. These people are the ones arguing that since it affects them and endangers their health that they should be able to make it illegal. So here's one (or two) of my famously-crazy analogies:
I'm standing on the street with one leg placed out at an angle. I'm not trying to trip anyone at all - I'm just placing my leg out because I feel like it and I have every right to stand how I choose to. It's not MY fault if you don't have the wherewithall to, um, LOOK AROUND and notice it and trip over my leg that's been in the same position for the past three minutes. Lots of people didn't trip, because they walked somewhere else and paid attention and were vigilant about where their feet were walking. Just because you got hurt somehow doesn't mean what I did was illegal. I didn't do in in a malicious manner and I wasn't attacking someone. You just tripped. I am not at fault.
Let's try something even closer. I'm standing on the street with my dog, on a leash. Everything's legal with that. Dog's not even pooping on the sidewalk. And then you come along, with your horrible allergy to dogs, and maybe you didn't notice the dog or you didn't think you'd wind up that close to the dog, but you breathe in some dog hair from my dog and start having an allergic reaction. You're going to potentially die, even though the risk is low because it was just errant dog hair or something and worst case scenario we call 9-1-1 and they pump you full of epinephrine or something. Even so, I didn't do anything wrong - YOU did by not paying attention to your OWN problems. I'm allowed to have a dog and follow the laws. You shouldn't be allowed to blame me for your allergic reaction. See a dog - get the hell away from it.
You don't get to declare it illegal to have a dog out in public because people on the street might have an allergic reaction.
I don't have any advice as to how to fix this. My initial thought was a call to every smoker to follow every disgusted-look-giving non-smoker they encounter, blowing as much smoke at them as possible. Maybe if you could smoke inside, you wouldn't be out here, blowing smoke at people. Of course, that gives them argument to be extreme jackasses and try to ban smoking entirely.
My second thought was a smoking protest - lining up about fifty smokers in a ring 15 feet away from the entrance to an important building (like the Sears Tower where I work) and just smoking. As everyone outside tries to get in, say you can't move, because you can't get within 15 feet of the door. At first I threw out this idea because preventing entrance to a public building is probably an arrestable offense, but then I remembered - the place has two entrances! (Three, if you count the Skydeck, where the tourists are supposed to go to get up to the top but always wander into the office entrances instead.)
I just don't know what else to offer other than my condolences. I mean, I'm not a smoker, so this really doesn't affect me much more than my smoking friends getting a little grumpier over having nowhere nice to smoke. Let's face it, in the summer and the winter, the extreme temperatures are NOT helpful to smokers. This law is even LESS helpful.
And don't even get me started on "but maybe this will encourage them to quit." That's not for the government to decide. That's not for you to decide with a vote, either. That's for them and ONLY them to decide. They have that liberty to choose what to start and when to quit.
At least they used to. Until the "liberals" decided otherwise.
Read more!
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