The Slate has a great article up about how
ridiculous smoking bans have gotten in the world. A few of the choice portions of the article are:
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.
...
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.
