+3
I don't smoke. Never have...other than a few odd butts as a drunken lad, and it never took. But I really have no problem with it, either. In interest of full disclosure my Special Lady Friend is a lifelong smoker, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. And while I do agree smoking should definitely and obviously remain banned in spaces like airplanes (hard to believe now there was ever a time when you could smoke on a plane, it seems like so very long ago) I think it's absolutely ridiculous to ban smoking in bars and pubs, which has become the norm here in America. You can't frippin' smoke in a bar?!? What's the point? Next will you not be able to drink alcohol in them either? It's what one does in a bar, and surely nobody goes into one thinking they're going to avoid smoke. Or at least, they shouldn't. Same thing for areas such as outdoor stadiums, which generally all ban smoking in the seats now. Ridiculous. Though I also think if smoking is allowed in a stadium, if it's bothering the people around you and they request you put it out the smoker shouldn't be a dick about it. There's a two-way street when it comes to smoking in public.
And I say all that as a non-smoker. I'm a staunch non-smoker and can't ever imagine doing it myself, but I'm not a Nazi about it when it comes to others. It seems to me there's a way to graft some common sense into the second-hand smoke hysteria. Not that I discount the science on second-hand smoke, I'm inclined to go with it, but to me it doesn't then follow that you can't smoke at a bar or a baseball game. That's extreme and silly.
I think.
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