Billowin' Smoke

*hic*

I'm not a regular smoker.

*hic*

I'm really not. I'm a regular drinker with side-effects, one of which would be tobacco ignition.

However, I really do think that banning smoking is really a rather stupid idea. And yes, this may be coming from the girl that just spent the last 3 hours burning obscene pictures onto the underside of the table using a lighter. And another side-effect of that may be that she now has a slightly strangely shaped and incinerated thumb nail, as well as a thoroughly inspired pyramid of chairs in her kitchen, but honestly. This seems like a thorougly crap and unrealistic prospective prohibition.

Infringement of civil liberties, man, like, totally.

What are they going to ban next, caffeine? Paracetemol? Alka-Seltzer?

Dear lord, they better not bloody do. I'm going to need all three of those come next morning.

*checks time*

Ok, later this morning. I'm going to need all three of those later this morning. If I manage to get up sometime before noon. Alright then, stop being so damn fussy, it'll probably be sometime this afternoon. Like it really makes any culturally significant difference.

People should be trusted to make decisions regarding their health themselves. Seeing as I always seem to fall back on West Wing quotes to get me through opinion stuff, I'm going to stick to this. In the words of the ever-wise, if abominally blonde, Donatella Moss, "In a free society you need a reason to make something illegal."

Rather than the other way around.

It would be funny if we finally succeeded in legalising marijuana just in time to criminalise tobacco. Complete bummer. We'll be stuck with nothing but dodgy cookies forever more.

*hic*

There are certain times and places where smoking is evidentally not socially acceptable. Enclosed spaces. Bus stations. Restaurants. Mothercare, and my personal pet target of revilement, smoking in bathrooms/toilets/restrooms/whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-call-them. Smoking, like alcohol and caffeine and loud music, is an inescapably unhealthy and often unsavoury part of various subsections of our culture. If someone wants to smoke all by themselves in a dark room in a closed off house, then why the hell shouldn't they? In fact, why shouldn't they smoke in a pub, either? If you are truly so averted to smoky environments, then don't go in those particular pubs, or find a relatively smoke-free place to drink. Or go sit in the garden. Or the no-smokers area. It's not like places that are going to be smoky are hard to spot. General knowledge and experience and junk like that.

I always used to follow the doctrine passed down to me that smoking was worse than alcohol, because every single cigarette you smoke you know is killing you. Whereas a single drink is potentially harmless. However, from a social perspective, excessive drinking is far more harmful and offensive.

So far, I have never encountered a bloke whilst walking down the street that has grabbed my arse due to an obvious over-indulgence in the quality concentrated nicotine he has allowed himself to absorb through his lungs into his blood-stream. How many relationships have been ruined due to alcohol? How much damage to personal property can be attributed to the liquid past-time? How many bar fights? How much grievous bodily harm and even manslaughter?

If people want to kill themselves so slowly, then that's their choice. As long as they pay for their eventual stay at the NHS, which according to my permanently overdrawn smokin' housemates, they do, via the high taxation thingy, then they should be allowed to just go ahead and light up.

I've been meaning to check. Is suicide illegal in anyway?

*hic*

Shit, I really need to make sure I sober up before blogging in the future.

Posted by Missiedith at December 6, 2003 5:39 AM