(Not) The Great Yinzer Smokeout

I have absolutely no sympathy for the smoking population, especially since they have leveraged yet another injunction against enforcement of Allegheny County's indoor smoking ban. They cry about their rights being infringed. I'm all for individual rights. . . that is until they start infringing on the rights of others. In this case, my right to not breathe that garbage you're blowing in my face.
I consider it an assault.

Smokers are pigs.

While I imagine there may be some smokers out there who are considerate and responsible (it is statistically possible), I have never seen such a person. I have never witnessed a smoker go out of his way to deposit his butt in an appropriate garbage receptacle. If it's more that one or two steps to a garbage can, the butt goes on the sidewalk or in the street. Particularly "considerate" are those that flick them into bushes in an attempt to conceal their litter. My own father, a long time smoker, didn't seem to have any problem flicking his butts into the yard of the house I had just bought on his first visit.

Take a walk downtown and you will see smokers clustered around the
entrances to their workplaces, happily standing in front of numerous "No Smoking" signs to fill the entryway with pollution.

Some smokers extinguish their cigarettes in the conveniently placed
receptacles before entering a building, but many just drop the half-smoked cigarettes just before going through door. Almost all take one last long drag before going through, exhaling once the enter the building or filling the revolving door. The same sort of things happens at bus stops.

Smokers seem to have little problem trapping their children inside their cars while they smoke. Sometimes, they crack a window but I know from experience, that doesn't do shit. I would go so far as to say that parents who smoke inside their homes are committing an act of child abuse. I grew up in that environment and thought it was normal to be sick all winter long until I got out to college and started breathing clean air. After that, I only ever got sick when I went home for a holiday.

The smokers cry about freedom but they are not free. I see guys downtown picking up half-smoked cigarettes from the gutter to feed their addiction. This is not freedom, it's slavery.

And these slaves to their own addictions have held the rest of us in bondage for far too long with dire warnings of economic collapse should they not be allowed to inflict their so-called rights on their employees and customers.