quote:
Today we have boys and girls who make up the vast majority of smokers. They range from about age 14 to 40 and over, and have compromised their smoking rights with their "I'll smoke anywhere I damn well please" mentality. It is this juvenile attitude among today's smokers that has caused many non-smokers to resort to voting for and supporting government interventionism. As a result, the rude majority of smokers have created a popular cause, and that is empowering the nanny state to chastise today's smoker.
Chainsmoker, I must seriously disagree with that opinion that "rude majority" of smokers themselves are the cause of the intolerance we face today as alleged to be because of their own disrespectful actions. I don't know what caused this guy to formulate that opinion, but I never noticed any of the examples he cited to support his argument. You also have no clue if this guy is a smoker or even a Libertarian for that matter, unless of course, it was you who wrote that letter back in 1998. Many of these self-proclaimed "Libertarians" are anti-smokers even though to support an anti-smoker platform goes against the grain of Libertarian principles. Many are just Libertarians in name only just for the causes that effect them personally and to hell with every one else involved in any other issues. I can tell you that straight up, because I've fought with many so called Libertarians on freerepublic and places like
Strike the Root.
IMHO, smokers as a group on average as I've witnessed were much more polite before the anti-tobacco efforts heated up. It's only after more and more restrictions were put in place that smokers started copping the attitude that if there isn't a sign, ordinance, or a ban in place then I'll damn well smoke here because anti-smokers have taken over just about everywhere else.
To further illustrate how wrong his opinion is, this guy even wrote, "
Lighting up in restaurants and many other places was, for the most part, unheard of." If that was so, then why the need for smoking and non-smoking sections and other restrictions in restaurants anyway? I don't know what places he hung out, but there was always a definite haze in the blue collar diners and restaurants my family frequented in the 60's and 70's and NOBODY seemed to notice or care.
Heck, I don't even remember meeting many "anti-smokers" worrying about it way back when. And people who didn't smoke, surely didn't exhibit the crazy theatrics they do today. People just didn't fan their faces and cough when 30 yards upwind to try to make a point. They only did that when the wind shifted and smoke actually went right in their face. Heck, the vaste majority of non-smokers even graciously kept ashtrays in their houses for their guests. It was a rare event when they didn't pull out the ashtrays when entertaining.
My observations were that it wasn't until the concerted effort of the anti-smokers in the late 80's to push the EPA into writing their 1992 report on environmental tobacco smoke that the paranoia and hate speech that started this trend to assign blame on smokers' rudeness as a "cause" of the anti-smokers crusade that is indicative of this remark.
