The “nanny state” has arrived…well, it arrived long ago about as soon as any government decided to take personal citizen-decisions away from citizens, thus protecting them from themselves. This might make some sense with regard to illegal activities or substances or hardware, though even then one might presume to make decisions regarding himself as long as his actions don’t impact adversely the welfare of other citizens. A guy should be able to booze his liver into oblivion as long as he doesn’t drive his car while turning himself yellow and endangering other folks. Whether it should be or not (should not, in this corner), the bubbly is legal.
Cigarettes are legal, too, but the government-nanny has declared that citizens who turn their lungs into leather-bags shouldn’t, and that they certainly shouldn’t expose other citizens to their allegedly carcinogenic fumes. Okay, agreed, though drivers are not usually charged with DUI for strange moves they make unless they have an alcohol blood-rating of more than .0799999 in probably most states, so the strange law presumes to quantify drunkenness while not quantifying the amount of fumes a smoker may introduce into the cosmos or into a building, there to endanger organisms of all kinds.
Question: Should private citizens have the right to make use of or deny use of or prescribe use of or determine location of smoking? In Lexington, Ky., the law is that no smoking can be allowed in public buildings, whether government-owned or privately-owned. This introduces the subject of secondary smoke, said to be harmful to the non-smokers exposed to it, whether it actually is or not (probably not, unless exposure is constant).
Well…okay, at least up to a point. Some folks are allergic to tobacco smoke, and that’s reason enough to protect them in places governed by the governing. But what about the restaurateur or bar-owner who decides to cater to the crowd that is not choosy about the matter…or even the grocery-owner, for that matter? If their customers don’t mind and/or even enjoy a tobacco ambience, why should anyone else care? After all, it’s their lungs.
But nanny is watching, not that this curmudgeon is much affected since he quit smoking 50 years ago, suspecting then the deleterious effects of same. The latest rumblings by the city fathers/mothers/nannies in Lexington have concerned the banning of smoking outdoors on hospital grounds. Getting ahead of the curve, some facilities have declared those grounds – open to the sky – as soon-to-be non-smoking areas, never mind that they touch the city’s main arteries upon which thousands of cars spew CO2 and all kinds of other greenhouse/carcinogenic gasses into the air 24/7. There are rumblings, also, with regard to the legislature simply banning smoking here-and-there statewide…a sort of super-nanny thing, one supposes.
This is not a brief for smoking, a bad, most-often addictive habit. Just a whiff of cigarette smoke causes drooling to this writer, even after 50 years of total abstinence. One puff would likely send him over the edge. It’s merely to remind that government has no business controlling any behavior and choice unless the public is willfully threatened. Smoking a cigarette on the lawn or a sidewalk threatens no one, especially as compared to the gas-spewing diesel locomotive or truck beside which the smoker may be standing. People should have the right to make choices with respect to other places. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child, notwithstanding Hillary’s contention, and it doesn’t take the City Council to wipe everyone’s nose with regard to most anything legal.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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