just another liberty vanishing (Should smoking be banned in public places?)

Member Name: dukecrook

Product:	Should smoking be banned in public places?
Date:	04/08/02 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: more people would be encouraged to give up, risks of passive smoking curbed, less risk of fires started by disgarded ciggarette ends

Disadvantages: lack of revenue, infringement of personal freedoms, the favour of one group of citizens over another

o. k this time i'm prepared with a spell check to evade the neb brigade, so, where to start, should smoking be banned in public? as far as i am aware it already is,isnt it? well at least if you would wish to travel by plane train bus or boat, it is if you wish to do it in certain restraunts and eateries and it is if you happen to work in most office blocks or factories, so what else would an outright ban on smoking actually achieve?,no smoking in the streets?,not much of a leap forward is it? would the cost of legislation actually be worth what it would achieve? and how would it be enforced? should we give first time offenders monetary penalty's maybe we could make it like driving fines and let the police keep the revenue raised, in which case you could expect plenty of eagle eyed cops, just perched like vultures waiting for some unlucky soul to light up, so they could pounce and fill the bulging coffers?
Of course not, and all this is without remembering the revenue that cigarette smokers pay, i read somewhere that the average smoker pays for theirs and another 4 peoples healthcare for their entire lives during the term of their smoking life by the revenue their addiction generates.
I personally feel just now that smokers are being discriminated against and treated like second class citizens, we pay for the same seats on public transport, but we aren't afforded in the main the same level of attention to our personal needs and comfort as non-smokers are, there used to be smoking carriages/compartments/areas on public transport and in restraunts/eatries,we used to be able to light up without worry, now were peering around us, sometimes when i light up in public area's i have to suffer the indignity of stares from the non-smokers, so that's why i feel that it's already being slipped in the backdoor now as we speak.

And what would be the consequences? if smoking were banned in public?,i suppose that it woul
d encourage more people to give up smoking all together, which would in turn save a few lives but drastically cut revenue. You see in my opinion the Government are like narcotics dealers under a thinly veiled cloak of legality, as the narcotics dealer has his customers hooked on heroin or cocaine, and knows that these drugs are physically addictive then he can be sure of a steady income from the addicts who must buy this product from him to stop withdrawal and the pain and discomfort that goes with it, can you see my point? governments know that nicotine is highly addictive (mg for mg more than heroin) and they know they can get away with charging basically whatever they like in terms of tax on this product, so, no i dont think smoking in public will ever be or should be made illegal, as it might just be the straw that breaks the camels back and could potentially bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

Summary: