Right to Smoke? Not in My Air!

Ok folks, I have a proposal: ban smoking in public.

I've mentioned this to a few people, most of whom have professed to think my idea silly at best, un-American at worst. "But people have a right to smoke, a right to do whatever they want to their bodies," they tell me.

I agree completely. It's none of my business if people want to kill themselves slowly with their cancer sticks. We all know that smoking is horrible for your health and disgusting besides, but if that's not enough of a deterrent for some people, so be it. (Just don't try to get me to pay for the long-term health care costs... but that's a different story.)

I don't object to the smoke that winds up in a smoker's lungs. What I object to is the smoke from a smoker's cigarette or exhalation that winds up in my lungs. I have made the choice to not smoke, but any smoker I encounter is negating my right to make that choice.

It's commonly said that "your right to throw a punch ends at my nose", meaning that the rights of an individual extend up to but not beyond the point where exercising those rights would infringe upon the rights of another individual. Let me phrase this another way: your right to smoke a cigarette ends at my air supply. It's just plain rude to force nonsmokers to breathe your smoke.

I'm not the only one to come up with this idea. As the Ithaca Journal article (see post title for link) reports, the Common Council of Ithaca is considering a ban on smoking for the Commons and other public places around the city. As Annie Tegen, of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, is quoted as saying, "the right to breathe trumps the right to smoke."

In another article, an Ithaca College sophomore who is a smoker said that she would find going downtown to be annoying if the ban were enacted, because she wouldn't be able to smoke wherever she wanted. How's that for irony? I already find going downtown annoying because I'm not able to breathe wherever I go!

It's this simple: breathing is a need; smoking is a choice. Nobody can control where cigarette smoke drifts. Most people don't want to breathe it, and they shouldn't be forced to against their will. Smoke-free laws are going into effect all over the nation - let's hope Ithaca gets on that bandwagon!

EDIT: One more link: Tobacco Free Tompkins.