The problem with tobacco all along was that politicians and the public didn't recognize it as a drug. They called it a tradition, a "crop," and a "legal product." As though coca and marijuana weren't crops. As though a product's legality should decide its morality, instead of the other way around. When it came to smoking, culture overpowered reason.
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Likewise, the point of recognizing tobacco as a drug was to regulate it as strictly as comparable drugs, not more so. Five months ago, a report by a British commission found that the financial health costs of alcohol and tobacco were equal. Tobacco was by far the bigger killer, but when the analysis moved beyond self-destruction to harming others, the annual death toll from alcohol-related car accidents exceeded the toll from secondhand smoke in the workplace. Drinking, unlike smoking, played a role in 78 percent of assaults and 88 percent of criminal damage. The commission concluded that if legal drugs were classified like illegal ones, alcohol would be judged more serious than tobacco. Instead, British law allows advertising of booze but not cigarettes.
This is something that I have been saying for years, there is no difference between smoking tobacco, drinking, coffee, marajuana, etc etc etc. They are all addictive, they all alter your body in some fashion, and they all have the POSSIBILITY of killing you.
I'm sorry folks, maybe it's the Gonzo in me, maybe it's my realistic view of one's life, but no matter what you do you cannot out run death. At some point in your life, you will die. Hell, I even heard one beautiful saying once, "The point of life is death." How true it is, the moment you are born you are slowing beginning your journey towards death.
The difference between myself and others is I don't see that as a bad thing, I see it as a natural thing. I do not fear death, I also am not rushing to it. I am though going to enjoy my life and attempt to live it at the fullest. Now you could very well complain about secondhand smoke, yet you breath in worse fumes from vehicles the smoking can ever do damage to you. It's funny how certain folks are effected by secondhand smoke, get cancer from it, but others who are around it more never do. It goes to my belief that no matter what, when it is your time, it's your time.
The fates have determined when your time will be, nothing you can do will alter that fact. You could eat nothing but fruits and berries, job seven miles a day, and be the peak of physical prowess and health. That won't help you when you're hit by a bus, struck by lightning or eaten by land-shark. So, to that, I plan to live and love. To revel in life, it is to be enjoyed and it shouldn't be a full time job.
3 comments:
I agree, its gotten way out of hand with the bans. I dont think its the "fear of killing yourself" that concerns people. Its that they inadvertantly kill other people.
I dont choose to die from someone else smoking or drunk driving and i think thats where I would disagree with your argument. We will all die this is true, but if i die it should be by my actions and my choices, Not Mel Gibson or every other fool who finds it funny to puff smoke in my face or drive drunk. I like to think I have some control over my own destiny.
Not meaning to be preachy, but your argument struck a nerve.
I understand that point, but there is also a point of if you know a place has a heavy concentration of smokers, why not avoid it? They have just as every right to be there, why infringe upon their rights just because you don't enjoy it?
Allow bars to chose if they wish to be smoking friendly or not. Don't ban them at all of them, make them one way or another, but let it be the owner's choice.
I agree, Owners should make the decision without government intervention.
However, an infringment on rights works both ways. Why should a non-smoker goto a different bar or inhale someone elses smoke. Thats a mirror image of Crowe Laws.
You know me tho, it doesnt bother me one bit and for the most part im in favor of it. But the actual argument was what caught my eye.
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