I hope Charlie's tongue is firmly in his cheek when he writes this. Yes,
children at home are probably at a higher risk of getting cancer than
bartenders and waitresses in bars. I readily concede your point. As I have
written here twice before, (and I won't bore the audience again), but I am
absolutely convinced that my Uncle killed my aunt with his pipe. She never
smoked a day in her life, but she died of throat cancer, after being around him
forever with his pipe, while her two sisters, who were smokers contracted
breast and colan cancer.
But let's look at the policy implications of banning tobacco. With tobacco sold
legally, it can be regulated by the state. We, supposedly, restrict sales to
minors and collect taxes off of every sale, raising millions of dollars every
year. If we criminalize tobacco, we lose the ability to regulate this drug.
First, instead of getting millions of tax dollars each year from the sale of
tobacco, we would have to start paying law enforcement officers to try and get
tobacco off the streets. What police function, would you want to see cut, to
increase a ban on tobacco use? Traffic enforcement, homicide investigations?
Our law enforcement officers are streached to the breaking point now, the last
thing I would want them to start doing is breaking into people's homes because
they want to smoke a pipe or cigarette.
What programs should we cut because of the lost tax dollars from tobacco?
I grew up in a house where my mother smoked until I was about 13. Fortunately,
neither I nor my three brothers have come down with cancer or any other lung
ailment and we are all now well into our 50's. Do I think parents smoking in
their homes with their children is good, definitely not. But I don't want cops
busting into people's homes either. We allow parents to do a lot of things with
their children I disagree with; speed with their kids in the car, spank them,
home school them, let them play violent video games, not tell them about the
facts of life or that "sex is evil", but I'm not about to propose that the
state regulate those parents either.
Sorry Charlie, but that's the price of living in a free society. At some point
we have to draw a line, and while I support a ban on the use of tobacco in
public buildings, I think banning tobacco buys us a lot more problems than it
will ever solve.
Dann Dobson
Saint Paul
M Charles Swope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- Dan Dobson
wrote:
"People should still be permitted to kill themselves
in their homes..."
Yes, but should they be allowed to kill their children
too? A child living with a chain smoker is at much
more risk than a patron of a bar filled with cigarette
smoke.
Charlie Swope
Ward 1
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