Peggy Noonan (whom I have never read before now) writes a piece in the OpinionJournal entitled “Them“:
I saw them again the other day, shivering in the cold, in the rain, without jackets or coats. The looked out, expressionless, as the great world, busy and purposeful, hurried by on the street. They were lined up along the wall of a business office. At their feet were a small mountain of cigarette butts and litter.
They are the punished, the shamed. They are the Smokers.
[ ... ] A short word on smokers. They are people who’ve made a deal. They are old-fashioned, and it’s an old-fashioned deal. Their sense of life is essentially conservative: They know it is short, they know part of how you say thank you for it is to really feel it and enjoy it, and they know this life isn’t the most transcendent and important one you’ll be living. Smokers are disproportionately Catholic, did you know that? They know that eventually something will kill them. They accept death and illness as part of the equation. They love smoking so much, it so enhances their enjoyment of each day, that they’ll gamble. Some of them, they know, will die in a car accident next year, so it won’t matter if they smoked; some will die of old age at 97; some will get emphysema or lung cancer at 50 and pay the price. Fine. You buys your smokes and takes your chances.
I don’t agree with the entire article. I think that each establishment should make their own choices regarding employees and the option to smoke indoors. I don’t have a problem with restaurants and bars and coffee houses banning smoking in their place of business. I don’t have a problem visiting someone else’s home to find out that they do not allow smoking indoors. These are individual choices.
I do, however, have a problem with these choices being mandated by government. Second-hand smoke doesn’t really hurt the people who experience it in bars, restaurants, and at concerts. I get very tired of city and state governments passing law that forbids smoking in public places. I get tired of seeing cigarettes taxed beyond belief simply because the government knows it can. The market should be allowed to dictate its own rules. Sitting next to a smoker at a bar is not going to kill you. Sure, cigarette smoke stinks. Maybe it even burns your eyes. If you don’t like that, go to a bar or restaurant that forbids its patrons from smoking. You can’t find one? Maybe there’s a reason for that. This is America, open one yourself and see how well it does.
I think cigarette smoke stinks. Especially in heavy concentration. However, I don’t think it smells any worse than the woman in my office who can’t seem to figure out exactly how much perfume is enough. And I don’t think it smells any worse than the sicky-sodium smell of the microwave dinners and soups that my co-workers eat for lunch every day.
Sometimes I had a very hard time explaining to people exactly why it was that I smoked. She says it perfectly. I’m going to die. Period. I may as well die enjoying life. And if enjoying life means smoking, then so be it. Some people complain that smoking raises the costs of health care for everyone. They’re right. It does. And so does everything else. Sure, smoking isn’t healthy. But neither is eating greasy hamburgers, watching TV instead of exercising, or sky diving. The giant SUV you drive pollutes the air I breathe, and that isn’t healthy. If we all wanted to be perfectly healthy, we’d live in plastic bubbles, we’d have our nutrients delivered via IV, and we’d do nothing but sleep and exercise (but not too much, or it can be bad for you). Is that what you want? Leave the smokers alone.
The truth is, life is bad for you. That’s why we all die.