Hi Steve and Paula,
I'm not a smoker either but I absolutely agree with your comment concerning private business rights. If there is such a massive (non-captured) market out there for non-smoking establishments, private business owners should be jumping at the chance to cater to and capture this totally open market. In this country that would seem to be a better solution than forced smoking bans.
Plus.......
The surgeon general report and the studies he bases his report on do not carry a great amount of weight in my opinion. I put little trust in most studies because most appear bias with a predetermined outcome before the study even begins. I believe and experience has taught me that there are usually THREE sides to every story.........your side, their side, and the THIRD side. And......somewhere out there ( the third side) lies the real truth in most cases. However, a lie that is told long enough has a way of becoming the truth. I'm afraid this may be the case with the second hand smoke issues while laws are being forced upon private businesses based on lies and junk science.
Also..... here is some food for thought..................
Of all the damage that is being caused by smoking bans, the worst is the damage being done to the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution protects property rights above all other rights, yet we have state legislatures consistently passing smoking bans that violate this very right. In so doing, they also are trampling on our personal freedoms of choice and expression. As Ayn Rand put it, "The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others." Our legislators would tell you that this is a health issue that they are doing it for the benefit of our children, and that non-smokers have rights too. This sophomoric sophistry would be laughable were it not for the fact that these same arguments were used, with tragic consequences, almost 70 years ago in another country.
That country was Germany and the chief architects of their smoking ban was Chancellor Adolph Hitler and Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels. In Hitlers Mein Kampf he wrote, "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people." In writing about the holocaust, Rabbi Daniel Lapin noted that Hitler believed that as long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation
. In the name of the children, incursions into the private lives of American citizens have been made that (the) Nazis would have gazed at with open mouthed admiration. Does we have to do it for the children, sound familiar? In promoting the smoking ban of the Third Reich, Dr. Goebbels made good use of his own idea that, If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the new truth. It was these two concepts that allowed the German government to forward their
smoking ban and later, their far more infamous deeds of social engineering.
This quote from C.S. Lewis sums it up pretty well, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep; his cupidity may at some point be satiated: but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Nita
Not for nothing, but quite frankly, the non-smokers could prevent being
affected by NOT patronizing a PRIVATE business that allows smoking
<<<<With the recent report from the surgeon general, the casinos should
realize that lawsuits are on the horizon from non smokers afflicted by
smoking in casinos that the owners could have prevented. The employees and
patrons will want to take action when they are affected by tobacco users.
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with any intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways -- Chardonnay in one hand -- chocolate in the other -- body thoroughly used up , totally worn out and screaming " WOO HOO, WHAT A RIDE"
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Steve & Paula <Shamilton5@comcast.net> wrote:
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