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I sleep fine at night Avro. What do you mean procrastination? Because I haven't taken a non-running vehicle to the junkyard yet? If I needed it right now, it would have a new motor. If I need it in the future, it will have a new motor.

[quote]What was asked is should the government tell people not to smoke with children in the car .[quote]

No the government should not get involved in that sort of legislation. A car is private property. The police cannot see into all of the vehicles (darkened windows, higher vehicles etc.) so they would have to do random checks.

What would that entail? If there are butts in the ashtray? They wouldn't be able to prove those cigarettes were smoked with children in the car. The car smells like smoke? Same thing.

The law is unenforcable as long as it focuses on children being in the car.

So the law will quickly become, "No smoking in vehicles." Guess what? I don't have any kids. When I travel I travel hard...I don't even like to stop for gas, so I'm sure as hell not going to pull over every hour or so for a cigarette. Guess what else? It's my damned car!

   

And there is the crux of the issue. It will only be applied to those who are flagrantly showing disregard for this law.

It'll be like jay walking. Don't do it in front of a cruiser

   

More likely it will applied for those cops want a closer look at...a chance to do some fishing.

Laws like this are often used as an excuse to hassle minorities, young people, poor people...anybody identifiable that the police have decided to target. Why? Because we are afraid to confront the real issues of what is making people, not just children, sick.

   

Whether you are a smoker or not, there is nothing to defend...it is simply a fact..

As I said before, I smoke...but don't think it is fair to judge me or anyone else because of it. It is a habit that is all... I know many people who have quit and I think that is terrific...I truly do...it's no easy task. I don't see myself smoking forever either... but right now I do...

I didn't post this article to read people put other people down, and I apologize if I have done so myself...

It was just to reflect on the question of


Simply put I think this is going past the point of governing.. it's bullying.
A bit ironic when you think about it, and it makes me wonder how much is too much...

   

are in the yard of the house next to my dad's house. I took a picture of Pop a couple of days ago. You can see one of the obscenity screaming little thieves over his shoulder.

   

I never said that, Avro. I have said, and will say again, that secondhand smoke is only one component of a much larger issue and that addressing only one component is worse than useless because it takes attention away from the whole of the problem.

I have further said that this proposed law is unenforceable and will lead to specific groups (visible minorities more often than not) being targeted by police for their race-based fishing expeditions. To make the law enforceable you'll have to ban smoking in cars whether there are children in them or not. That is extremely unfair to those of us who do not have children.

I have a little story for you Avro. You'll like it...it happened in the big green truck. I was coming home after working all day. It was about thirty degrees and humid as hell. I'd been mixing concrete in a portable mixer for about ten hours. I was hot and sweaty and none too happy with the world.

I was stopped at a traffic light and I lit a cigarette. The woman beside me rolled down the tinted power window of her SUV and yelled at me, "Would you mind not smoking in front of my children, it sets a bad example."

Now never mind that yuppie women shouldn't be pissing off construction workers in pick-up trucks for no good reason. Never mind the fact that if this woman's kids are looking to the sweaty long-haired stranger in the beat up truck beside them for a role model they have far more serious problems than cigarette smoke. The fact is that our society has degraded to the point where this bitch thought that she had every right to ask me to put out my cigarette even though the smoke could not have possibly been reaching her or her precious brats.

Our whole society is becoming that woman. Too stupid to mind their own business and too willing to try to impose their personal choices on the rest of us.

   

Keep on like that and they'll promote you to Pope_Blair. That is exactly what is wrong with society. One of my particularly sad tales is of me walking home from work one afternoon in my security officer uniform. OK, here I am, dressed as a security officer, a childrens' writer of both literature and songs, performer, person who does all kinds of volunteer work in the community. I see a little girl who is usually playing in her yard and with whom I've tossed a ball back and forth over the hedge a number of times. This day her mommy is in the yard with her. The kid hollers a hello and tosses the ball. I holler back and toss the ball back. The mother takes a swipe at the kid and starts yelling about talking to bad men.

Yeah, with role models like that who needs enemies?

   

This should be about helping people to stop smoking, if they want to, not about turning yet another innocent segment of our society, smokers, into criminals as we have done with gun owners.

My parents smoked wherever and whenever they liked. So did I for most of forty years. Pop doesn't smoke now, nor do I. Mom died. I don't care that they smoked, or that they smoked in the car with me. I smoked in the car with them too.

If anyone wants to address this situation, and I'm not calling it a problem as I don't see it as a problem, they will do their best to help the people who want to quit smoking to do so, not to make them in puff felonists. A proper ad campaign backed with free Zyban for as long that anyone who wanted it cared to take it would work for me. It did work for me!

   

Well, if the kids are smoking why the hell wouldn't I?

I don't have kids, so it's not a valid question, Avro. When I'm around people who have kids, I follow whatever their rules are. If they don't smoke in their house, neither do I. They are discouraged from bringing their kids to my house because it is my house and will never be place for children, I do not hesitate to smoke if they do bring their kids here.

I don't think I'm reading too much into this law at all. When I started smoking, I could smoke anywhere except in school. That's been slowly changing to the point where I now can hardly smoke anyplace but my own car and my own home. This proposed law seriously threatens that.

As for your appraisal that the cops won't abuse such a law to target people they weant to have a closer look at...they do it with every other like this, so there is no reason to suspect they wouldn;t do the same in this case.

I could have been Pope Blair, Fig...the ULC lets you pick your own title when they ordain you.

   

To my mind springs "Underwriters' Laboratories of Canada".

   

United Life Church...they've been ordaining people for years, including one or two big time television preachers. They used to do it mail order, but now they do it through the internet.





I'm actually kind of shocked at how willing you are to judge other people based on a very small bit of information. In spite of your rather puritanical stance, smoking is a legal activity that puts billions into the tax coffers each year. Tobacco smoke is neutral as an emitter of greenhouse gasses and the pollutants produced by tobacco smoke every year are so minute that they cannot be detected in the larger mix of emissions in the atmosphere.

I caught this thing on TV a few days ago. Here's a few uncomfortable facts for you. If every smoker in Canada quit smoking immediately, the average life expectancy would only increase by one year. If none of those smokers had ever started, if tobacco didn't exist, that number would stretch all the way to 1.3 years. 1 year and 4 months...that's it.

Considering that the best estimates say that if we were to cut environmental pollutants by only 25% we could expect the life expectancy numbers to jump by two years and 50% may get us another 5 years, it kind of points to what is doing the most damage to our health.

   

If none of those smokers had ever started, if tobacco didn't exist, that number would stretch all the way to 1.3 years. 1 year and 4 months...that's it.
Do me a favor and keep smoking I have a jig and a kidney full for everyone that is unwilling to help children.
And chanches are that I will be around long enough to have a dance and a pee on you.

   

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