I think laws work best which have local responsibility and rights addressed. The whole smoking ban issue is quite heated, but for solid reasons.
First, noone can argue that cigarettes are dangerous, addictive, unhealthy and one angle everyone forgets -- massive fire starters. Cigarettes are responsible for more forest fires than lightning and arson combined. That idiot throwing a burning butt out the window or onto the street might be dumb enough to assume it's going to go out. Heck, y'all, there's no wind! How could it possibly start a fire?
Well, I'm witnesses to discarded butts setting leaves, outdoor trash, indoor trash, on fire. These incindiary fuses are dangerous, and arsonists use them to trigger fires because of their dependability. 'Nuff said about that.
Now obviously the most in-your-face concern is that of nonsmokers being exposed to nicotene smoke. Nicotene is poisonous...plain and simple. So, they are blowing a toxic and noxious compoud into your "air space" (more about this later). You are forced to breathe it, or move. If you move, you might not be able to return. People with serious asthma can die from one single puff of nicotene -- it's that powerful.
So you have a powerful fuse linked with a powerful toxic compound that can be used to debilitate people. Sound like a taser to you?
Ok, who has been hit by a taser? Anyone? Alright, now imagine that feeling when you get hit by the little needles in your chest...you drop to the ground and start twitching uncontrollably (people might think you're having an epileptic seizure, and some folks who get zapped start to drool...I've been zapped a lot...so I'm used to it by now). That twitching is caused by your autonomic nerves kicking in...they are programmed to do that when thousands of volts of static electricity are coursing through them. Also not very healthy. I DO NOT recommend getting tased. Or starting forest fires with carelessly-discarded butts. Fucking blatantly irresponsible, and that person should get 5 years to teach them a lesson. That kills people.
So does cancer of course and we all know a lot about that. Few companies except for tobacco companies would ever even feign to argue that cigarettes do not cause permanent health problems. Permanent damage. People learn to live with that (or they don't, which is worse), but it's hard to live with if you're a restaurant person (there are millions of these...one of the most popular jobs on the planet!!!) and you have to suck in tail pipe fumes for 8 or a double shift. Fahgetaboutit...you're going to be wheezing something fierce at the end of each day. Not fun.
Now we have bars, and cards, and yards, and arms-reach, personal spaces and that's what I mean by AIR SPACE.
Everyone has a "zone", which extends in a general radius where that person feels comfortable about those in one's zone. This can be loosely referred to as "air space". We can generalize this somewhat and talk about areas, regions, territories, planets and galaxies, but the concept of space is a very important one, which I will tie in with air and explain this as best as I can. Hope I don't lose too many people.
We talk about government and I think that would have to include some observation of the rule of written government (as it sets us apart from animals...perhaps...though we know many other primates can write). In the essence of most stable world governments, those which have written laws in the form of some kind of Constitution seem to have the best chance at long-term survival [this is just a theory...but one that's hard to prove or refute].
Well, when we agree to something verbally, that's maybe not as valid as something written. The thing written is only as good as the paper upon which it resides...and that takes into account sovereignity, which is an absolutely critical concept in all forms of government (written or verbal, but less verbally as everything contract related).
Ok, so a whole down votes to eradicate smoking. They must still allow it to occur within one's domicile. If someone at a bar sets up a smoking room, and they can prove the smoke is filtered and the nonsmokers have a clean air area, I think they should be allowed for that exception. If you don't like the smoke, go to the smoke-free room. This works great in Casinos, but not all of them. Depends heavily on how good the ventilation system is, of course. Even sports bars with their lofty claims of "the air in this room is cleared every fifteen nanoseconds..." don't maintain the equipment well enough to clean the air to normal health standards.
Now let's talk about health standards. Obviously, we know that defacating in public may and probably should get you arrested (at least a hefty ticket). It's not fun to step in poo-poo, and I totally support the clean up after your pets laws..particularly in congested municipalities (if Rover takes a big freshie in a park off a trail, not a big deal...but if that freshie is in the middle of a popular frisbee lawn...it's like a little fecal land-mine waiting to trip someone up...even make them wipe out and hurt themselves -- I've seen it happen and it's not pretty -- worse for a giant cow pie -- but let's move along...). Maybe I'd support crapping on the sidewalk if it were a political statement, but how hard is the alley or tree to find? Or just a bar or a restaurant...I've had little trouble finding crappers in my life...maybe once or twice I really thought about the street...but very, very rare. We are sort of a civilized society. Bathrooms are taken more or less seriously in different neighborhoods, though. Just like laws.
Which brings me back to what is "air space". With regards to smoking, this air space all of a sudden (without warning), becomes a larger area...and at times a larger issue. Someone might say "excuse me ma'am, could you please wait until I'm done my tofu sundae before you spark up that camel light?" And that girl says, "yeah, sure, sorry I'll wait". Which is a beautiful thing. Two perfectly sane humans worked out a small dilemma, made a verbal agreement, and went about their lives, probably both smiling that they accomplished something. Compromise often can be a beautiful thing. It's the middle ground and par for the course. It's more importantly two people deciding for themselves they can work on a joint (heh heh) decision and not take it personally. Noone's air space was violated.
Now there's all sorts of scenarios I can think of with regards to violation of air space, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident that helped spark the Vietnam War (Conflict if you're a Warhawk). These are obviously far beyond the scope of this dissertation, but I reserve the right to bring them into the discussion at a later date.
So, cows, pigs, wars and witches...anyone read that one?
We were looking at cigarettes versus fecal matter and I gotta say I find it's hard to light devices with fecal matter and you can't fertilize a garden with cigarettes. The nicotene is also toxic to most plants. Good herbicide, sort of like Agent Orange (oh, am I bringing that into the deal again?). So you got this killer plant that people smoke to get a light buzz on and something we all hold inside and get rid of when we should, but hopefully not to the chagrin of parents walking their dogs shitting on the street and children who maybe are doing all sorts of things on the street.
Now that I think of it, our dogs crap on the street and their owners are supposed to pick it up. Does that mean it should be ok to have that same right as the dog...only we have to pick up after ourselves? I think that would be the responsible compromise (there are others).
Incarceration is not a compromise (generally), but fines are. A parking ticket is no big deal...unless it's downtown Manhattan. Then it's more than your whole beer and food bill for the weekend (sometimes). Heavy duty fines await the corporate robber-barons (maybe 1/10th of what they stole, if society is so lucky to even be able to convict them in the first place)...I guess fines change a lot based on what society deems is illegal, but not worth going to court since they want the majority to pay each fine. It's a barter system also. But I digreess.
So, we might not fine people smoking outside, but if they're in a restaurant, I can see how a town would levy a fine (justifiably). I think neighboring towns also have a right to make their own laws--as long as it doesn't interfere with the neighbors or greater jurisdictions. States should be allowed to override federal taxes on certain key important consumer and energy items (coats, food, electricity...necessities...gas I think should be fed as well as state tax). They should be allowed to tax cigarettes (they do), but how do these billions of dollars in taxes levied help the non-smoker????
Aye, there's the rub!!! That is one of the big problems with our whole massively bureaucratized government. It's so huge that laws and money go hand in hand (quite literally, we all read the stories) and you get the insurance companies involved, major food corporations, and it gets huge and ugly all at the same time. Hard to reconcile that complexity with some little local town ordinance(s).
Noice comes to mind. How loud can your stereo go? Mine goes to 11. I'm not sure my neighbors would love me if I kept it on 11 all night long. I've tried this...it works to a certain point. Somewhere around breakfast (or earlier), you'll get that knock on the door. Could be your bleary-eyed neighbors on their way to work who now hate you, or could be one of those guys in blue who are there to levy a fine or drag you away. I've rarely seen anyone arrested for a first-time noise complaint, but I have for a second and once because the idiot gave the nice cop too much lip. He even gave the drunken fool another chance, but this hockey player type wasn't interested in negotiation. He was on a rager.
Ok, so someone on a rager takes their dog, gets him drunk, he craps on this guy's pack of cigarettes so the town makes a law, no drunken-dog-crapping-on-butts and fine is levied at $100 for first incident, yada yada yada.
That's sort of how law works, but not everywhere. Maybe a town is so inbred that they can ban smoking everywhere...maybe the giant state of Utah is next. I guess I'd move unless the state next-door did it too. That is where another rub sets in...and the mote in your eye...and all that jazz.
The deal is we were definitely heading tragically towards a right-winger-happy haven, but the whole power pendulum is swinging back the other way, and with the right plans that inertia can create lasting benefits (I'll take even short term at this point). Maybe health concerns are winning over corporate tobacco lobbies.
That's my final point: if you smoke, then you are directly supporting this multi-trillion dollar industry, and that right there should freeze you in your tracks. Basically smokers who still wail out against Mcky D's or Mickey Mouse or even Mickey Roarke are still supporting the giagantic megalopoly killer complex whose sole purpose is to reap enormous profits at the expense of smokers and non-smokers alike (we're all the same in that regard, same with gasoline, just works more slowly..same with insurance and taxes).
I think it's completely ridiculous and constitutionally wrong to ban smoking on one's own home (or yard, unless it's right next to the neighbor's). If they burned down their house (and the neighbors) from smoking in bed, that might not make the neighborhood ban smoking...the first time. But if it happens 10 times in 13 weeks, they may consider it.
So the laws also sometimes fit the frequency of the thing, or we'd like to think so (plenty of exceptions, archaic laws, etc). Maybe sidewalk dog crap is so bad in NYC that they ban pet pooping except in parks. I can think if all the owners also crapped in the street, the problem would quickly escalate to a national crisis (in less than an hour...the country would declare a state of emergenshitcy!!!
).
Now if people made fecal catapaults and used them to attack their neighborhood smokers they hate, we'd really be in trouble. Or imagine instead your smoking neighbors lobbing back volleys of incindiary cartons, all that plastic making it stink even worse than the fido feces.
I'll also argue that some laws are bullshit, and obviously we have an obligation to correct them. Maybe this law was too extreme and it will be adjusted. Can we say any law is ever perfect?
Some would argue that bills-of-rights are the most important component of any civilized constitution. This gets into heavy deep political theory, but I think it's also a factor when talking about the right to smoke versus the right to breathe clean air.
What about water? What about food? Shouldn't these be in the Bill of Rights? Well, back in the day you could go find clean drinking water in any well and hunt whatever you needed to eat without worries about overpopulation, but as the world becomes tragically overpopulated (to the point of collapse, again stating the obvious to any real scientist)...the scarcity of resources forces people to basically kill to survive. That's where cows, pigs, wars and witches enters the scene. I won't go over the whole meaning and plot of the book, but it's sort of about social necessity and evolution and how these relate...there are many books on this subject but I found that one fun to read.
So, if someone has to kill for a cigarette, they have something terribly wrong. Maybe they were in prison for too long...but if they really do kill someone for a cigarette, they should be thrown in jail (for a while, not sure how long).
If you ask a smoker "hey, can you blow that the other way?" or "can you move the ash tray?" or "put the fucking butt away or I'm going to ram it down your throat!!!", you are trying to negotiate a compromise, with varying degrees of tact and subtlety. These may or may not be successful or even effective, and likely will result in greatly varying degrees of reponse. I do not recommend the third tactic. Especially with someone bigger than you are.
Here's where we get into the line that's drawn in the sand, and that's always going to shift as the wind and tides pull the sand around. The law is sort of like sand (quicksand sometimes) and social forces like the wind and rain can even break mountains into boulders, no matter if the laws are chiseled on stone.
That's a biblical reference for anyone not paying attention.
Now was smoking tolerated or unaccepted in the Bible? I'm curious.
Anyhow, we're not talking religion here, we're talking about laws (maybe ethics, maybe a little history, maybe some poetic liberties
).
Does a group of people have a write to make a law that is unfair to a minority? What is fair or unfair with regards to smoking? I think that question is hard to answer, so laws are hard to make.
When you talk about water or air instead of smoke, you see the complexity. Health standards supposedly legislate what is proper air and water, but as we know, many impurities vary widely and certain city water is downright undrinkable...though the locals might get used to it (I don't recommend water containing digoxyn, but it's everywhere...though not as much as lead and critters). We have all these laws to protect our air and water (from a conservation standpoint), but are we winning the battle?
If not, we do have to make certain laws stricter, but not at the expensive of civil rights and liberty. Obviously there will be compromises needed if a smoker lights up next to a nonsmoker who is bothered enough to say something or do something (whether levy a fine, or levy a blow...which I do not recommend!!!). The laws will try to make sense of the local customs and beliefs (smokum wampum if you're on a reservation, or whatever your reservations says is kosher with the chief, capiche?). Or the people will try to make sense of the laws, then adjust according to the changing beliefs.
Now don't go and tell me beliefs don't change.
Then again, some beliefs last thousands of years. So there's another problem. Law may only be good as the group social memory...look at all the archaic laws that aren't enforced anymore. Like the one about dogs and cats living under the same roof. And civil unions. Yeah, fun stuff.
The reality is most people don't have the attention span to wait three minutes before lighting another cigarette, so how can we ask for five or ten minutes of their time to talk about law and society? They don't want to be bothered. They're driving a Hummer at McD's getting a giant coffee and a huge million-calorie gigantic burger, smoking butts so they can keep their caffeine buzz sharp...listening to some god-awful music and dumping ash trays in parking lots. Definitely some problems there, too, but whether they should be arrested for wanting to kill themselves slowly, I don't know. However, we know that second-hand smoke also causes cancer, so the nonsmokers should be reserved the right to politely ask someone to take a break for ten minutes at least...and if eating, I think smoking is completely disgusting like kissing after smoking...and some would disagree with that (I guess certain folks like ash tray mouth...I don't see that as sexy at all).
I urinate in public all the time, but I try to keep my weenie out of the public eye (less I scare anyone or be called a terrorist! ;-}). You ever have one of those long interstate drives in the middle of nowhere and not a tree in sight and you just have to pull over and take care of business? I think in an emergency, someone shouldn't risk their own health to hold it in. You can cause serious damage to your kidneys (and liver) by holding that shit in too long. Even have an aneurism. Can be fatal if swallowed.
Now because cigarettes are so multifaceted, the laws concerning them are also complex and always shifting. Somehow we can try to reach consensues, or otherwise we have to learn compromise. For even a ticket is a form of compromise. A verbal agreement also works great in most cases when people are civil. But smokers and nonsmokers have trouble getting along civilly when they both think each other is stepping on their toes or otherwise invading their personal space. And that can have tragic consequences (it often does).
If I ask you to kindly not smoke and take the time to actually ask you, please think carefully why I would bother to take that time and consider your response. I might not react as you expect if you are not as polite as I can muster. I also reserve the right to take your cigarette if you have it within a foot of my face. That's my right and I usually just try to say get your ciggie out of my face, then I add you fool, then I take it after the third warning. It is not appropriate to smoke in such proximity to someone, even if you think it's your god-given right. If you know about ciggies and the Bible, lay it on me bro 'cuz I got your testament right here.
However, I think it's also in our human rights to have clean air and water (ciggies can interfere with both), as well as food, clothing and shelter. The founding rich guys never thought about basic necessities because they had tons of money and people waiting on them to worry about pipe tobacco.
Then again, there weren't so many people on this planet back then, either.
I'll get into the whole topic of "good smoke" versus "bad smoke" and "inert smoke" and cloud patterns further on up the road.
-Smoke 'em if you got 'em,
Phrazz
P.S.: I'll proofread and edit this later.
Actually, I do have the answer: Smoking helmets that keep the smoker's smoke in the smoker and edible cigarette butts in a variety of flavors. Sugar-free too! We'll use Splenda or NutraSweet or some other artificial sweetener that has no calories but gets metabolized as formaldehyde. That way each cig gets followed by a delicious snack without the resulting weight gain! 