Government intrusion

Also ban alcohol, since it contibutes...Ban certain foods, since they contibute...Ban certain activities, since they contibute...Ban until there are no more contributions...simple as that.

Sorry...I meant, contributes.

I agree government is intruding further and further into the rights of private citizens. I would love nothing better than to live on a remote island out in the middle of the pacific ocean, where I could then be truly free!

The nanny state empowers a bunch of nosy busybodies who want to impose their rules on others. Our representatives in the state and national legislatures love to take away our freedom while telling us it's for our own safety. But seat belt, booster seat, motorcycle helmet and no smoking laws have more to do with bending to the will of insurance companies than looking out for us. I would prefer to make these decisions for myself.

Are you people completely out of touch with the lethal effects of having to breathe second-hand smoke, or do you, as do the Missourian editors, just resist doing the responsible thing because the government wants you to do it?

I strongly suspect it's the latter.

I believe that as an American living in the 21st century, I should have the right to expect to breathe clean air without having to worry about the small minority of people who still smoke fouling up my own body.

And that's another thing: You conservatives always insist that the majority should rule, often at the expense of trampling on any minority. How do you reconcile this with your stance of allowing the minority of people who are smokers to poison the majority of us who are not?

I notice that when you don't like what a private individual is doing, such as going to bed with the wrong gender, you want government to "intrude" to the nth degree and forbid things that you don't like to see happen.

You, as well as the Missourian editors, are complete hypocrites who only want things to be the way you want them to be, and you don't mind any government "intrusion" to ensure that people behave like you think they should behave.

Jojax -- you need to stop smoking your herb because you come off half-baked.

leighann457: You have hit the nail right on the head, and have understood what this article is all about--our government slowly and meticulously taking us closer to complete government control. That should scare us all.

JoJax: You must have missed the paragraph about not choosing to frequent smoking-permitted businesses. Despite all the information and dis-information about second-hand smoke, you will never see the day when you are breathing clean air until we outlaw all gasoline-powered vehicles, lawn mowers, airplanes and all pollutant-producing manufacturing of goods.

As an aside to your rather off-the-subject comments: Do you have any idea how AIDS (in essence a death sentence) is primarily spread? Do you know that it is possible to contract it from saliva as well as blood and sexual contact?

In response: I don't smoke anything, but I used to smoke cigars for over twenty years, and I inhaled them. I finally came to my senses about smoking and quit. Again, you people apparently value your conservative ideology more than you value your health. And that's your right, too.

About not frequenting establishments that permit smoking: That would be pretty difficult, since most businesses DO permit smoking. And even when they don't, it's common to have to walk through those business doors, through the smoke put out by their employees who hang around the entrances, smoking.

And as for AIDS, you may not be in any danger, so long as you practice safe sex and abstain from known practices that could lead to your death. But you can't do that in relation to smokers: In Missouri, smokers presently have the right to infuse the air you're breathing with their personal toxic fumes. There's no way to completely abstain from breathing their filthy second-hand smokey air. Even if you don't breathe it, you have to stand in line beside them at places such as Wal-Mart, and they stink to high heaven. And you will also stink, after a period of being around smokers, even if they aren't smoking when you see them.

Smokers affect non-smokers in their pocketbook, too. They run up the cost of my insurance coverage by slowly dying and using up valuable medical care and dollars. I'm paying for their ignorance and their addictions, and I resent it tremendously.

We have laws such as seat-belt usage because some folks are too much in denial to admit that what they are doing or not doing is harmful to others, costly to others and risky to themselves.

Smokers, you are your own worst enemy, but I realize that these words just will not register with you. If they did, you'd then have to admit to yourselves that what you are doing is foolish, harmful to others and costly to us all.

JoJax,

I resent the statement that I cause you to pay higher costs for medical care. I pay my medical premiums as apparently you do. If I choose to smoke that is still my right as long as it is legal. My smoking is not causing you to pay higher premiums. Medicare and Medicade are causeing those problems. I know what Medicare and Medicade pay the local hospitals and Doctor's offices for treatments. You and I are charged full price if not more then it actually costs because of the lack of payment from Medicare and Medicade. Don't get me wrong, both those programs do wonders in helping those that have them. But don't blame me smoking on high cost of healtcare.

I bet you are one of lovely neighbors that burns his leaves without a thought of how the smoke you are putting into the air effect those around you. You drive a car that the exhaust has been proven can kill, but you don't seem to mind putting that in my air when you drive by me on the sidewalk. So please don't preach about how uncaring and selfish I am for smoking until you get rid of your car and anything else that emits fumes into the air that we all breath.

I wish everyone who is against smokers will take the time to stop and think about how much tax revenue comes from cigarettes. Do you really think states can just do without that kind of money? If non-smoking finatics get their way, I hope they don't mind when the lost revenue comes out of their pockets. Right now, the smokers pay it.

Hey, this is gettin' fun!

No, I don't burn leaves, since I live out in the country where there are no trees around my house. And as for driving a car, well, that seems the only way to get to a store, since the nearest one is about eight miles away. And I drive a Toyota Prius, which is just about all I can do to both drive and help save the environment at present.

Yes, mpreszler, you DO cause my insurance premiums to go up. What do you think those greedy insurance companies base their rates on? They take into account their predicted claims and then spread out those expenses evenly among all their policyholders. At least they do that in any group policy, and that's what nearly everybody has, since insurance premiums are too costly if purchased any other way. So when their anticipated costs are spread out evenly, your excessive claims as a dying smoker cause my premiums to be as high as they are. You can't get out of that, no matter how hard you try.

And as for personal freedoms, a learned jurist once said "Your personal freedom stops at the end of my nose". He was referring to being physically assaulted by one's fist, but having to inhale your poisonous fumes serves the same purpose. You retain a right to smoke, but you should not retain the right to make ME smoke, and yet that's what you do every time I'm in your presence and you're smoking.

Again, those smokers that wail about "government intrusion" into personal lives don't seem to have a problem governmental intrusion when they demand that the government ban abortion, ban gay marriage, ban euthanasia, or force students to listen to other students' prayers in school. Those actions would seem to me to be among the most personal ones an individual could undertake, yet you probably want the government to intrude into those folks' bedrooms, into their medical decisions and into their spiritual lives.

That's why I originally used the word "hypocrite" to describe your whining now about not wanting the government to ban public smoking.

unclehoover, your logic of lack of it is amazing. What smoking opponents like me would like the state to do is INREASE the tax on tobacco, to better fund all that free medical care that non-insured smokers get when the nicotine begins to slowly kill them. Hospitals don't get much, if any, money from non-insured patients, so who do you think pays the costs of treating dying smokers? We all do, once again helping to cause the cost of medical care in general to skyrocket for those of us who have done the responsible thing, and bought health insurance.

If we increased the tobacco taxes, we could fund better health care and generally help contain those costs at the point of delivery. And as other states are doing, we could also use that increased tax to fund anti-smoking programs directed at our kids. In states that have done that, fewer kids begin smoking, once again saving health care costs as well as saving lives. This would truly make the smokers pay their own way, which they certainly are not doing at present.

Again, I understand that you smokers are physically and emotionally addicted to nicotine, and you have my sympathy due to that addiction. Once you personally acknowledge that you are addicted to nicotine and take the responsibility to not burden the rest of us with your addiction, then maybe even more people will give you their sympathies. You'll still die prematurely, most likely, and your death will be a long, slow, painful, debilitating death, but you'll be held in less contempt.

Anyone who truly wants to stop smoking can now do so with few, if any, withdrawal symptoms. I know, hard to believe, but I swear to you it is true. Ask your doctor about Chantix. It is an absolute miracle drug. Google it and you will find tons of info and then, ASK YOUR DOCTOR!!

P.S. It is so true - after you quit, my Lord, cigarettes smell so bad!

JoJax,

It is very presumptuous of you to insinuate that smokers don't have health insurance. We are self-employed and have private insurance, so I would bet we pay much more for insurance than you. We are responsible as are many others. We also have life insurance that we pay for which is also not employer sponsored, obviously. The insurance companies must not be as informed as you are about the costs of smoking since there is not that much difference in health or life insurance premiums for smokers. I know this since we pay the full amount of our insurance bill and I inquired about the price differences. The difference on both was around 20%.

I hope you also lump overweight people into your category of people who cause you to pay more for health care. I believe obesity is actually more costly than smoking when it comes to health care.

I do admit that I am addicted to nicotene. I am also a very considerate smoker. I don't smoke indoors, except in my office at home where there are no other people exposed to it, or in the immediate vicinity of other people. I don't throw my butts on the ground, and I don't feel that I have a right to smoke no matter what. I don't sit in the smoking section in a restaurant either. I try to respect the rights of non-smokers, but I get a little irritated when my rights are not respected in turn. I seriously doubt my second-hand smoke in Wal-Mart's parking lot is going to hurt anyone, but if I'm standing outside smoking and someone comes and stands beside me, do they really have the right to complain? I don't believe so.

As for tax revenue, I bet you would be the one whining if there were a tax on Big Macs and other things that were considered damaging to our health if those things were something you enjoyed. Someone eating high-fat foods also contributes to the costs of health care, wouldn't you agree? If you look around and open you eyes and mind enough, I bet you will see more people who are overweight than the number of people who smoke.

JoJax,

I will agree to disagree. You as a former smoker and I as a smoker will never agree on banning smoking. What I find funny is when I'm told you are not stepping on my right to smoke, but in the same breath tell me I'm not allowed to. Just a thought.

Also, some of the people at work (not meaning you JoJax) that complain about how smoking smells and is bad for them. Are the same people that go to the smoke filled bars on Friday and Saturday and not once complains about the smoke. Just another thought.

And a final note, I have yet to find a single patient record in which the cause of death was smoking. Smoking is not a classification for death. Smoking may not help what did cause the death, but smoking is not the stated reason. So how do people die from smoking? Oh and before you rant on me... my mother died of CHF at the age of 69, and was not a smoker. And her children didn't smoke in her home or in theirs when she visited.

Those of you who compare smoking to eating too much are making a fair and reasoned comparison, I think. It very well may be true that overweight leads to more premature deaths than smoking....I don't really know. And it's also probably true that fat people also increase the cost of my health insurance. But let's scale away all the financial / insurance arguments for once and consider the primary point I've been trying to make: There's not any other vice or addiction that other people have that I cannot get away from or for the most part, protect myself against. Smoking is the one that most affects me as an innocent bystander. Fat people waddling out of Ryan's or McDonald's just don't personally and immediately cause me potential health problems, but smokers do. Second-hand smoke is real, it's dangerous, it's toxic and it's nauseating.

You just don't have a God-given right to foul up the air I breathe.

But.....as far as insurance goes, are you telling me that a 20% increase in your health insurance because you are a smoker is not a huge increase? That would amount to about $100 a month more for me, and as an old guy on a fixed income, that's a major amount of money for me.

I do believe that studies have shown that smokers are less likely to have health insurance than non-smokers. The reason is primarily not one of lack of responsibility on the part of the smokers. It's because as a group, smokers tend to fall into the lower socio-economic classes of Americans. They just cannot afford good health care in general, as well as good health insurance. Some of them, however, do make the choice to fund their nicotine habit instead of their health care responsibility. It's a hard choice, I know, but the ones who make that decision should have to live with it.

Ok......I agree to disagree without being so disagreeable in the future. Let's agree that smokers and those who detest having to deal with smokers will probably never see eye to eye on any of these issues.

But it's been eye-opening, intellectually challenging and sorta fun to have this elongated discussion on an issue that affects so many Americans, both smokers and non-smokers. My thanks to the Missourian for providing this forum for such a lively discussion.

I'd like to continue this, but I have to leave for awhile for a long-anticipated vacation. Y'all have fun!