Residual Forces

So Pawlenty is going to sign the freedom squashing smoking ban, and I hope he realizes this will not sit well with many people. Myself included. (To clear up confusion from the previous post on the subject, I didn’t mean Pawlenty was a Smoke-nazi. But rather the people pushing it. But he sounds a lot like them, so well … but to be clear, I am referring to Lung Ass Bob and the others who were vocal advocates of it and led to this bill getting through the Legislature.)

A better way:

If the aim is to clean up the air in workplaces, the stated goal of the ban, why allow any exemptions? Why are some employees, expendable, if smoke is that deadly? Don’t they matter?

As to Pawlenty’s silly meat reference. Well, the Health Departments put in place strict handling and storing procedures so that meat doesn’t become poisonous. They didn’t, if memory serves, ban poisonous meat, but rather ensured it wouldn’t spoil and if it did, that then it wouldn’t be served.

Why didn’t the smoke hatas admit that they just don’t want to smell it? because there are better ways to ensure the health of employees and patrons. And who is going to enforce this? Do we now need smoke police to drive around? I know Lung Ass Bob will be frequenting every single bar now that they’ll be ’smoke free’, but he can’t possibly be everywhere all the time.

They could have pushed for air quality standards in bars and restaurants that would have made the air verifiably safe to breath. Why not impose levels for the air quality in these places? Why not say the air has to meet a specific air quality?

What if it was possible to filter or treat the air in an establishment so that it met or exceeded such certain standards? If these places could put in the proper equipment to remove the problem, chemicals from the air, wouldn’t that be the proper way to “protect the public”?

All this ban is doing is fulfilling the dream of annoyed people who don’t care for something. No one has a right to go where ever they please. If smoking is so damn dangerous, then why in the heck are cigarettes legal in the first place?

Seriously, if Government is going to try to delve into people’s lives to make them safer, why not just go all the way and quit playing around? Just ban tobacco altogether. Why not? If it is soooooo dangerous, it is the right thing to do.

But this isn’t about that. this is about a few people thinking their perceived rights supersede other’s. This is about people thinking the world revolves around them. There are some people who think they know better, others who are just plain arsehats, and some who are the behavior police.

I’m sorry, I just thought we were a better society than this. I thought that maybe we could find a way to coexist. But nope.

I mean we could have created smoking permits, just like alcohol permits. We could have required surgeon general’s warnings on the doors to these places warning the squeamish at mentality from entering. There could be some places where people may be allowed to allow their patrons to do certain things, and others where they could prohibit them. Hmmm, that sounds eerily like the way we treat many many other behaviors.

We could have found a way to compromise, but instead we get a bill that didn’t go far enough according to some, but way too far for others.

What is next?

Can we ban lilac bushes too? I happen to be allergic, and every time I walk by one or some dufus has a blossom on their desk, my eyelids feel like they turn into sandpaper and my nose starts running. Or how about flowers in general? I also have allergic reactions to them too.

I have a long list of annoyances that I would just love to see done away with for my satisfaction, where do I send it?