I am in a ranting mood today, it seems.
Oakland, California has just approved a measure that will ban smoking in public parks, ATM lines, bus stops and a half dozen other public places.
Now I can understand banning the weed in airplanes, restaurants and other ENCLOSED public places. Being a non-smoker, albeit a person who is, ahem, sympathetic to smoker's interests, I can understand the rationale behind that.
But when we are in the great outdoors, your smoke is not going to have any effect on my health unless you are standing within an inch of my face and we stay that way for about 40 years. It just isn't. Most smokers -- indeed, EVERY smoker that I've ever met -- will bend over backwards to be polite, especially if they get any inkling that you don't want to be around their smoke, making the likelihood of a shared outdoor exhale almost non-existent.
So we are not talking public health here. We are talking about lawmakers who simply don't want to SEE people smoking anymore in public.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Oakland's stupid idea
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5 comments:
They go for little people because they can not win with the big company.
It is a world of hypocracy.
It is raining on west coast. How is the east?
Perhaps the gods are shedding tears over Your west coast -- alas, in the east it is dry and we are contemplating water restrictions again.
But of course, the big golf courses, including the one that was built, against the wishes of the community, by a private company in one of our public parks, obliterating an old growth forest, can spray all the water they want on their precious sod.
Sorry, I'm being grouchy again. Maybe I need to go eat some lunch. (o:
One of those days, when one needs to be grouchy.
It is true though, money means everything, but will not, one day.
They shed tears every year at this time.
ps. don't tell the golf industry,aah too late, they are already here.
maybe it is all about people needing to feel oh so surperior to others
it is not acceptable today to discriminate against a pletheora of groups.... and people who might harbor such desires against some particular grouping, knowing that it is politically incorrect to do so and not advantageous to their own personal well-being to do so.... have now found an outlet for their need to gang up against someone....and all such people have come together now to gang up on one particular group of individuals....to regain their smug sense of superiority (and if one needs such it reveals a true deep sense of real inferiority btw).... so we can now have a set of people all can rail against.... the smoker
I wonder how it is that all these people who claim to have such health concerns are not roused to stand up en masse to fight for other health concerns in the environment..... are they en masse making real laws and bans for industrial carcinogens and the toxins of pesticides....the contaminations of food and water???
no, these don't have a "face" to feel surperior to....
no, taking these concerns on might inconvenience themselves in their own lifestyle and pocketbook...
I would advise anyone contemplating smoking to reconsider...
I would applaud ayone's efforts to stop....
but this other stuff comes from some other deeper darker place in the human psyche that gives me the shudders to contemplate
Kat: You are right.
I would rather inhale twenty packs of secondhand smoke than spend one minute subjecting my eardrums to the ravings of the intolerant.
And of course, if the smoker was as lovely a person as You, I would count the experience a genuine pleasure.
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