| Smokers are people too |
| This rant relates just as much to the act of smoking and the people who do it as it does to my dismay with the downfall of society and the lack of potent idealisms we have in the world. We live in a society where people are obsessed with fairly trivial nonsense and are unwilling to stand up against more serious issues that cause much more serious problems. Where your opinions are valueless only because the people who preach that we aren't allowed our different views are the same people who don't want to listen to yours. And these are the same exact people who want to make cigarettes a narcotic... and so far, they're winning. Since California passed a public smoking ban, many states around the nation have issued similar laws. here in New York State over 750 businesses, mostly bars and small diners, have reported massive losses since the smoking ban has been set in place and most of those have gone out of business. In Massachusetts and Florida you can no longer smoke in most public places, and many more states are lining up to soon follow. In many of these states (and New York in particular) the taxes on tobacco products have tripled every year, forcing smokers to either quit or flee the state to buy cigarettes over the border or from internet websites. So why are all of these laws coming to be? Why are smokers being looked down upon by society all of the sudden? It's not that smokers might be causing harm to themselves, it's that they might be causing harm to others around them... and the funny thing is, most diseases blamed for cigarette smoking have yet to be proven as caused by smoking. Cancer, for example, the #1 "if you smoke it you'll get it" disease, has yet to have a single well-documented study that proves tobacco products cause any type of cancer. Cigarettes have been proven to cause some diseases, such as Emphyzema, but cancer? Not yet. And second-hand smoke has not yet been proven to cause any disease whatsoever. Research at Oxford in the UK a few years ago proved that certain individuals with specific blood deficiencies receive headaches in a smoke-laden environment, but that's it. The EPA has for almost a decade searched for an excuse to kill smoking... but they have yet to turn anything up after countless related studies. So if there's no evidence that second-hand smoke is a health hazard to anyone, why is it being banned all over the nation? I'll tell you why... whiny morons who don't like the smell and are easily startled by intense media-marketing propoganda that claims it's going to kill you. People who never take the time out of their busy lives to perform their own research into a topic, and instead rely on the mass concept of the public. Well, when the mass of the public are all getting their concept from the same rumors and falsehoods, does their opinion really matter? Unfortunately, yes. Know what I love? Cigarette's are just one tiny vice in a world full of obsession, greed, and, well, other vices. Did you know that alchohol has been scientifically proven to cause more diseases than cigarettes? Did you know that 46% of cancer victims who die yearly weren't smokers? Did you know that more people die yearly from obesity or fat-cell invoked diseases such as heart attacks than from diseases caused by cigarettes? So why can we drink all night in a bar and get sloshed, then get into a fist fight, and then drive home and kill ourselves (and probably others) in an accident, something 90% of us have seen happen, but we can't smoke a Camel in the same pub? Because beer doesn't smell bad? Can someone explain the logic of this to me? Do you know what I say? If we're going to attack cigarette smoking we might as well go after everything else that's rotten in the world at the same time. I don't like looking at fat people, so let's ban cake! I hate listening to morons blasting their music from their boombox-cars, so lets ban car stereos! I hate it when my friends call me at all hours of the night drunk and biligerent telling me about crap I couldn't care any less about, and I hate it when I lose someone I love because some other drunken idiot decided to go for a cruise, so let's ban alchohol... re-instate the prohibition. If we're going to take out one vice we may as well take them all out. We'll have to ban casinos, and video games, and movies, and music, and profanity, and industrialism, and smog-emitting vehicles, and fatty foods, and NASCAR (on second thought, why don't we do that anyway?), and caffeine, and everything else until the citizenry of this nation is 100% vice-free... so that when a nasty new virus comes along we're all too weak to fight it off and everyone in this silly country bites the big one. Wanna know what else I say? Banning cigarette smoking in bars is like passing a law that say's horse stables need to smell like roses... you can't expect people to comply, and if they do, they aren't going to be happy about it. a bartender saying he doesn't want to be around cigarette smoke is like a gynocologist with vaginal phobias... it's just one of those things that doesn't make any sense. And if you go to a bar, cigarette smoke is something you deal with. We don't like the music you play in the jukebox, but we sit at the bar and listen anyway, and why? Because if we skipped "Piano Man" right when the song was at your favourite part you'd throw a hissy fit and scream at everyone in the joint. We don't like that you pretend to be intellectual and act like you're the all-knowing force in the universe... in fact we often times wish you had a mute feature... but we listen anyway, don't we? So if we need to put up with your trash why is it you're so unwilling to put up with ours? I'm pretty sure your musical tastes are just as bad for my health as second hand smoke is to yours. -Matt Rock |
| October 17, 2003 |
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