Senor Llama posted recently about his friend's (possibly satirical)
call to arms for smoker's rights. YL is usually a pretty clever guy but his past demands for smoker's rights have always struck me as quite silly; again, these may be a joke but I feel they raise some good points that I'll deal with here in utmost seriousness.
One of the points YL has made (I can't find a reference at the moment) is that the medical data about the health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke is exaggerated or misunderstood or perhaps even false. I'm not a health professional (and neither is YL) so I'll just set that aside for now. I'll even go one further and say that even if it is all true, it doesn't matter so much. It's not inconceivable that within 100 years medical science will have advanced so much that any negative effects of cigarette smoking can be reversed. Should the anti-smoking measures then be repealed? Of course not. And if the health effects are truly negative to the user, shouldn't people have the right to take their health into their hands? Of course they should. So let's concentrate upon the effects of smoke upon non-smokers.
It would be better for all sides if smoking is compared to something similar in effect: farting. Let's say you had a serious gas problem, one that made you break smelly wind at least once an hour (we'll say that it's silent for simplicity's sake). While it might be healthy and pleasureable for you to fart, you know that doing so will bring a horrible smell into the noses of others. You would probably do what you could to stop this, such as take some sort of pills to cut down on your gas production. You'd probably also feel bad about subjecting people to this horrible smell and take solace in the fact that you can't control it very much. Surely the guilt you feel at the discomfort of others would outweigh the great pleasure that you, like all people, take in the smell of your own farts.
Smokers, perhaps as a reaction to the villification they've faced in recent years, seem to think all their 'farts' smell like perfume (or
'pure Virginia pleasure'). They don't seem to realize that a non-smoker who attempts to breathe smoke will cough and can't tell the difference between their smoke and the neighbor's house burning down. Smokers aren't really talking about the right to take their own health into their hands or the right to enjoy something privately; they want the right to force strangers to smell their fecal matter.
Both sides of the debate would be served to take up this analogy. The anti-smoking crowd could point out the rudeness of the act, perhaps inspire a rebirth of manners that is certainly sorely lacking at the high school I work at. Or even inspire more research into
smokeless cigarettes (this might not work, however, as some have postulated that the attraction of smoking isn't the nicotine as much as it is the ability to have fire at your mouth).
The pro-smoking crowd should also adopt this analogy and direct their energies to making smelly farts publicly acceptable. Not only would we all be better off having less to annoy us, but maybe such smells are just an acquired taste. This would give the smokers a foot in the door that they could later use to make their own habit acceptable. As long as it's not around me.
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