You're excited that the DC smoking ban goes into effect next week, making it illegal to smoke cigarettes in bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and pretty much everywhere else. You're an idiot.
I understand that smoking stinks. I get that you hate the way it smells in your clothes, in your hair, in your inflated sense of self importance. You'd go out more often, but you just can't stand all the young people with their chain smoking indifference to the obviously catastrophic health consequences associated with even being near a lit cigarette. You smoked until you were damn near thirty years old, but the important part is that right now you currently do not smoke, so therefore you have every right to demand that everyone else quit at once.
By your reasoning, cigarettes may as well be loaded guns pointed at the poor, innocent bar patrons who are simply trying to get their hands on yet another alcohol-loaded drink that is obviously not nearly as dangerous (well, except for the whole domestic violence, drunk driving, ruined liver thing) as something so terrible as a smoke. If we take a moment to ignore the bodies you've left in your wake as you puffed away until last call from the moment you entered college til the minute you bought your condo, we'll surely see what a victim you've become, trapped in your house while the young people are out enjoying themselves.
But what about the poor bartenders who are forced to work in that environment? Won't someone think of them? Someone as conscientious and aware as you, lawyer/analyst/researcher/human resources coordinator, someone with the foresight and compassion to make decisions for other members of the workforce relegated to such lowly jobs as taking your cash for your booze. Surely those poor souls didn't have the mental capacity to understand that, oh my god, people are actually fucking smoking at these bars where I've decided to work! Why didn't I think of that!? Thank you, dear upper-middle class patron saint of the service industry, for fixing the wrongs of the world. Perhaps you can help me get health insurance? Wait, where are you going? Come back!
So, you've gotten your wish. Starting next week, you'll be able to rejoin the cool kids again. You'll be free to restrict the rights of strangers, rights you yourself once enjoyed with absolutely no regard for people in your current position, just to further your own, selfish goal of extending your own health-conscience, miserable life a few precious days. Won't it be great? Bars full of late thirty-somethings dying to reclaim the night from those awful hipster kids who've been polluting the air these long years. Once we get Prohibition up and running again, this town might actually start to be fun again.
I, for one, can't wait.
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6 comments:
Meh. Go hyperventilate in Arlington.
No, YOU go to Arlington.
Bitch.
Bitter much? Maybe that's why you've stereotyped the proponents of the smoking ban as people who are bitter themselves.
I'm 26, have never smoked even one cigarette, despite growing up in a family of smokers. Being around smoke for as little as an evening gives me chest pains... which might be tolerable once in awhile if it weren't for the fact that I train regularly for marathons and triathlons, and being able to breathe is kind of integral to that.
No one is keeping you from sucking smoke into your own lungs, we just don't want it in ours. When people drink, at least there's no such thing as second-hand alcohol poisoning. If more people got off their asses once in awhile, fewer people would feel the need to smoke. I've trained smokers before, and never nagged them about their personal habits, because I knew that as soon as they felt better and more confident in themselves through exercise, the smoking would naturally subside. And it usually did.
Maybe being outside more often will temper your cravings and you'll find out that the ban was the best thing that ever happened to you.
Here's the thing, my anonymous friend. Your smug, self-centered notion that your rights are more important than mine is what's bothering me.
There is an obvious solution to this problem. Make the smoking ban optional. If there was this massive outpouring of support for the ban (there isn't), there would be a considerable market for bars and clubs that catered to your type. Put an ad in Rock Climbing magazine or whatever you kids read that trumpets the opening of a bar where you can't smoke, and watch the profits roll in. See how everybody wins in that scenario? You get rid of your smokers, and we get rid of you.
The problem, as you might not realize, is that most people are pretty apathetic on the issue. Sure, most people (even smokers) don't like the smell. And sure, smoke free bars would be nice. But I'm not sure you could find enough people out there who are willing to say, "My right to be smoke free means I get to tell smokers they can't smoke." What we have here is a very vocal minority who has pushed their agenda onto everyone else. You're the Evangelicals of second-hand smoke.
Poor guy, growing up in that house of smokers. But you've overcome those terrible setbacks and now you can run marathons. Even better, you can brag about how you run marathons. Congratulations! Your nicotine-flavored cookie is in the mail. You can't miss it, it's the one stapled to the pictures of me fucking your mom.
(Same person from above, here)
I don't like people telling me what to do, either. I know it's frustrating. But your point of one person's rights trumping another's isn't completely logical - You have the right to wave your hands around wildly in public, but I have the right to not be smacked in the face. My rights trump yours when your rights threaten my safety.
P.S. I can run marathons, but not fast. Childhood of secondhand smoke = lifetime of asthma. Their right to smoke and raise their kids however they wanted trumped my right to a healthy life. Is that more fair?
I think you're making a mistake using your personal experience as the basis for supporting this law. It's certainly fucked up that you're sick today because of what your parents did then- it's not your fault and you're the victim of those circumstances. I'm definitely sympathetic to that. If I ever found out what gave me leukemia, you can bet I'd be bitter about whatever (if anything) it was.
There are millions of things that are both legal and a direct threat to your safety. Guns are the obvious example, but there are more subtle ones. For example, I could make a pretty good argument that cars pose a threat to my safety, as pedestrians like me are often struck and killed in traffic. Am I arguing that cars should be outlawed in DC to protect my safety? I don't drive, so I have nothing to lose by such a law. And getting home would be a hell of a lot easier if there weren't idiots driving through the city talking on their cell phones and running red lights. But I'm not about to advocate a ban on driving, am I?
I can't see how anyone could argue that a compromise wasn't the proper solution here. Smoke free places for people who want that, smokey places for people who want that. And if you're a non-smoker who wants to go to a smoking bar, then suck it up. You haven't done a very good job of explaining to me how that is a bad idea.
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