Why is this second-hand smoking issue turning into, well basically, a witch hunt? Where is the witch hunt for drivers, who are polluting the air 10,000 times faster that a smoker does?
In my case, l was given puffs off of my mom and dad's smokes sometimes as a treat before bed, starting at the age of six. (Back then they didn't know of the dangers of smoking — and my mother was a nurse!) When l started smoking in my teens, it was a socially acceptable and a "hip" thing to do. 78 per cent of people at that time smoked and 22 per cent of people did not smoke. (Now the numbers are completely reversed.)
But automobiles are one of the top three reasons for our greenhouse gases and global warming, (smoking is way down the list). Yet, owners don't have to cover three-quarters of their cars in advertising the harms of driving ... why do cigarette packs have to? The person who is buying the cigarettes usually already knows its dangers. Automobiles cause so many deaths that Henry Ford said: "If l had known of how many deaths the automobile would cause, l never would have invented it."
Another thing is that tobacco itself is relatively harmless, it's the chemicals the government says need to be used in the tobacco, that are the real killers, so it's the government that everyone should rally against, not the smokers.
So, next time you go to make a smoker feel demoralized (and that is a hard thing for me because l desperately want to quit), think first: "Do l know this person's history? Are they trying to quit already?"
By the way, if the government were to take all the cigarettes off the shelves in the stores, l would cheer it on 100 per cent. But then who, or what, would the government tax to keep the economy going?
D. Murray, Saanich, B.C