People are all up in arms about Washington's new smoking ban. "How dare they" the smokers cry "How dare they make us stand 25 feet from a doorway? It's arbitraty, it's unfair!"
Yup, it's a pretty arbitrary number. Perhaps I'd have more sympathy if I had met more smokers who actually gave a damn about the people around them. I can't even start to count the number of times I've had to go through a gauntlet of smoke, just to go inside a building, or how many times I've had smoke blown at me deliberately, just because. Or the cluster of smokers on a sidewalk who make you walk through them to get anywhere.
I'm all for the right for you to do what ever you want with your body. You want to fill your lungs with soot and tar, that's peachy keen with me. But the right for you to pollute your body ends where my body begins, and that includes my being able to breathe.
And while we're at it, lets extend that to people who wear too much perfume. If I can smell you from 5 feet away, you're stinky. You want your scent to lightly waft, not roil over the area like a Chernobyl fallout cloud.
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I agree. The government doesn't need to tell people not to do things that are dangerous for them, but once smoking starts hurting another person (secondhand), then it becomes a type of assault and needs to be dealt with.
People do NOT have the right to give cancer to others.
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