Horizon

"What enjoyment does a 21-year-old single mother of three living in a council sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they have is to have a cigarette."

I wonder how much enjoyment her children get from it, however. Particularly in the womb.

But is it the government's business?

I mean, by all means ban smoking in captive-audience places like welfare offices and public buses. But social clubs and apartment buildings are a different matter, aren't they?

--

I bought a second-hand anthology of 1976-1991 Herb Caen columns yesterday. J. found an item where he complains that a lady at the next table in a restaurant is blowing smoke at him. Says she's "contributing to the malignancy of a diner."

But is it the government's business?

When, e.g., children's health is involved? Sure, just as it's the government's business to make sure that parents send their kids to school and that they're not malnourished or mistreated. The evidence about tobacco's contribution to long-term health problems is so overwhelming that deliberate exposure of children to heavy quantities of cigarette smoke - especially during pregnancy - strikes me as borderline abuse.

> But is it the government's business?

>>When, e.g., children's health is involved? Sure, just as it's the
>>government's business to make sure that parents send their
>>kids to school and that they're not malnourished or
>>mistreated.

Interesting question. Did you see the story a couple of days ago, out of New Mexico?

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Living/US/mental_illness_treatment_kids_040607.html

Twelve-year-old boy. Parents don't like what Ritalin is doing to him so they stop the drug. Teachers complain. Police called.

"'The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect," Taylor said."

The anti smoking thing in the UK is the liberal elite attempting to inflict their ultra-comfortably off form of aceticism on people. Mrs Blair's former lifestyle guru Carole Caplin (she taught the greedy Cherie deportment and how not to eat bread when raking millions in from the British taxpayer in ambulance chasing 'human rights' cases) writes a column in the Daily Mail: she urges people to eat mainly fruit, avoid alcohol and cigarettes and spend the lion share of their time exercising in the gym. This of course goes over the head of the millions working fifty hour weeks mopping floors and prodding check-out tills for minimum wage.

Interesting question. Did you see the story a couple of days ago, out of New Mexico?

Yuck, thanks. Not a pleasant story at all. But surely we ought to be able to draw a line between faddish and vaguely diagnosed 'problems' like ADD and cigarette smoking, which even the tobacco companies have been shamed/cajoled into admitting is a serious health risk for kids.

The very bottom of this best-of-the-web-today column notes that the school district has a history of high-handed jackassery:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005195

Ben - don't forget that you can insert links into comments using "a href""/a" tags.

Thanks, Alan. Is there a link anywhere to the subset of HTML that MT allows?

I'm always careful about these things -- for the blogging system I wrote last fall, we stripped out any HTML, but did auto-convert strings starting with "http" into anchor tags.

Returning to cigarettes, what about the "unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated" argument?

Returning to cigarettes, what about the "unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated" argument?

"According to Ash, men in socio-economic groups AB are twice as likely to reach the age of 70 as those in groups DE, with smoking being the biggest contributing factor." Emphysema is miserable too, though it certainly comes to an end soon enough.

Thanks, Alan. Is there a link anywhere to the subset of HTML that MT allows?

Dunno Ben. (Any ideas, Alan H?) Maybe I'll experiment a little to see what one can do.

Automated spam machines seem to be singling out this thread, hence I'm going to close comment here.