Frothing At the Mouth
Yesterday’s release of a US Surgeon General’s report titled “The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke” has the ‘Smoking Police’ frothing at the mouth in their desire to enact a total prohibition on smoking in Oklahoma.
Immediately after the release of the Surgeon General’s report, which is nothing more than a rehash of previous reports, studies and speculation, and which falsely claims there is no longer any scientific debate regarding secondhand smoke, Wes Glinsmann, chairman of the Oklahoma Alliance on Health or Tobacco, at a public press conference at the state capitol said:
The restaurant smoking ban was a big first step. But we have a duty to protect all workers from the dangers of secondhand smoke. There’s simply no reason that anyone should have to breathe toxins in secondhand smoke to earn a paycheck or as a consequence of patronizing a bar or other venue.
Pat Marshall, government relations director for the American Cancer Society and another ‘Smoking Police’ member chimed in on the issue stating:
We’ve heard the tired, old argument that if someone doesn’t like working around smoke, they can just get a different job. But not everyone has the luxury of just quitting a job and moving on.
She said legislation is needed to protect all workers, including those working in the entertainment and hospitality industries. Marshall is of course referring to greatly expanding the smoking ban enacted in 2003 that allows smoking in bars, veterans halls and separately ventilated rooms in restaurants.
Jim Hopper of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, in a limp-wristed response indicative of how his organization meekly accepted the smoking ban in restaurants, says changing state law under guidelines proposed by the health advocates would be unfair.
There can be no mistake about it. The anti-smoking zealots such as Glinsmann and Marshall have an agenda, one intended to totally eliminate all smokers rights and the right to choose in the state of Oklahoma. That these proponents of big government couch their biases against and hatred for smokers under a guise of ‘protecting workers’ is as obvious as the noon-day sun.
Not once do the anti-smoking zealots acknowledge the fact that the vast majority, if not all , restaurant employees currently working in the few ’smoking rooms’ currently allowed to exist in Oklahoma are smokers themselves and that as such they want to work the smoking rooms.
Of course truth is the very last thing the anti-smoking zealots, oh what the heck, let’s call them what they are, the anti-smoking nazis want to do is acknowledge the truth that not only do some people want to smoke, others also want to work in a place where smoking is permitted.
Freedom of choice, it’s a scary concept for the anti-smoking nazis. In their own minds they are conviced that they and they alone should be permitted to make the decisions for consenting adults and their view is that no adult to be allowed to consent to being in the presence of tobacco smoke.
That they resort to seeking to use the power of government to force everyone to comply with their view is simply an acknowledgement that their view is not capable of standing on its own and their message is insufficient to convince adults to give up their right to choose to smoke or to be in the presence of tobacco smoke.
Beware of anyone that tries to tell you that they are better qualified to make your decisions than you are. Everyone that tries to convince you to give up your freedom of choice is in reality a thief simply trying to steal your freedom of choice on the theory that they know ‘what’s best for you’.
No one should be exposed to tobacco smoke without their consent. That is a fact.
The other side of the coin, that side that people like Glinsmann and Marshall try to ignore, is that adults have the inherent right to consent to be exposed to tobacco smoke, either as a smoker themselves or to consent to being in the presence of smokers.
The right to choose, that is what Glinsmann, Marshall and their fellow anti-smoking nazis are trying to stamp out, along with all smoking in Oklahoma.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Thank you for having this website. I am very pleased that you are on line. As a smoker I can tell you that the only real way to get people to stop is to change their hearts not to use the steal fist of the state to make us stop. Please keep up the fight. If we allow these Nazis to do this to us the gun owner won’t be far behind.