Smoking is liberty

I don't smoke, and I don't like it. I'm not trying to glorify it. But Smoking is liberty. It is someone doing something I don't like or support personally, but in a free country, it means people get to do things I don't like (as long as it doesn't endanger anyone else). And if we are informed, we know that Secondhand Smoke risks are bullshit and exaggerated. It doesn't hurt anyone but themselves, and they should have the choice over their bodies.

• Private businesses should be allowed to decide what market they want to cater to (without govt. control). So while I prefer it if they offer smoking and non-smoking sections (with good ventilation.... I hate smoke as well, and I have pretty bad allergies to it), it is the owners choice: not governments.
• Nobody is ever forced to breathe anyone else's second hand smoke. Some people have a choice to leave where there is smoking or not, but that's not the same thing. If people are loud, too crowded, or too drunk, I sometimes have the same choice and have to leave. Suck it up buttercup -- you can control your own behavior and be a good person. But when you try to control others, you're a dick.
• While smoking is annoying (I don't like the smell), I don't like people who don't bathe, wear too much perfume, dress with their pants hanging down, and a dozen other things that are their business. Just because I don't like something, doesn't mean I get to regulate it. To those who say otherwise, I say "grow the fuck up". Do you want to live in a society where people micromanage everything they don't like? If not, lead by example and suck it up.
• Most anti-smokers are ruder than most smokers I know. Smokers seem to feel a little shame and try to do it away from others and are not dicks. Many vocal anti-smokers are willing to get into other people's face to tell them what to do, or lecture them. If I had to support a group or think which is better for society, it is the smokers more than the fascists.
  
  

So there are two groups: (a) those that support liberty and (b) those that support smoking bans. Everything else is just the latter group trying to rationalize their benevolent fascism.

Smoking

Persecuting smoking and smokers is a modern witch hunt among the left, as proven by the intolerance of progressive areas (California, Oregon, Washington, NY, Mass., etc). Of course that's anti-Science. While smoking isn't healthy it's not as unhealthy as a bad genes, not exercising, bad diet, or bad attitude (stress) -- if you can regulate smoking based on public health claims then the state could regulate all those others (and some are trying. Many of the studies were fraudulent to get the laws, doubly so for the second hand smoke scares, or the false (unsupported) claims that it increases healthcare costs (they die quicker so it saves money). It was all flim-flam to allow the anti-liberty fascists to tell us what to do with our bodies, in our property, "for our own good". more...