No, I understood what you meant and was being sarcastic. Actually, I am a little unclear on one thing. You think legislators who ban activities that only an idiot would do are themselves idiots? That seems a little, um, idiotic.
Here’s a tip then–sarcasm is 90% nonverbal. So unless you find a way to express that in text, you’re probably better off trying not to be too sarcastic.
I am a non-smoker. I have never had the urge, or seen the allure of smoking.
That doesn’t mean that my personal choice should be used as a hammer to curtail someone else’s personal choice.
I may (and do) find smoking repugnant. But a smoker may have the opposite opinion–as is their right. Government has no business trying to control an individuals choice in a private setting.
Ban smoking in public venues–that’s fine. But a private auto? That’s arguably an extension of one’s home. (And in somecases *is* someone’s home.) Stay out of it.
Your attempt at word redirection re: idiots, etc. is…really nonsensical…and a straw man at best.
March 16, 2012 at 6:04 pm
Anejo says:
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0
I would have loved this law as a child. I grew up asthmatic. I used to plead with my father not to smoke during the 20 minute drives to church or grandma’s house. He couldn’t do it and I always ened up wheezing and hacking because of his right to smoke. Of course, there aren’t any parents today that would do such a thing.
In other news, MD police have noticed an increasing trend of parents getting rid of their car seats and having their children sit on milk crates in an apparent attempt to make them look older. MD police and legislators are baffled by this trend.
I can’t believe that this is the United States of America. Why are the American people putting up with this sort of “baby sitting”? Next month the government will say it is against the law to wear sandals before July 4th, or say we can’t sit out on the front porch after 4:00. Why don’t they do something about the high price of gas instead of telling us where and when we can do something that isn’t illegal? People aren’t going be able to afford to drive to work and that means increased numbers of people collecting unemployment. Do something that the people really need, instead of sticking your nose into the personal choices of the American people.
I’m afraid that the proposal to ban smoking in cars occupied by children represents an
unwarranted intrusion into the privacy and autonomy of parenthood. The autonomy to
make one’s own decision about risks to subject a child to is not to be interfered with lightly.
It should only be done in cases where there is a substantial threat of severe harm
to the child. Interfering with parental autonomy in a case where there is only minor
risk involved is unwarranted.
Most of these respones demonstrate the utter lunacy of the Right wing in this country.
Protect unborn fetuses from harm, but to Hell with the living innocent toddlers who have no choice but to suck up the second hand smoke.
Jon’s argument is typical. I’ve seen these arguments floating around in emails about how kids who grew up “back in the day” without safety regulations in place are doing “just fine.” But that’s only true if you’re alive today to read it! Sure, lot’s of us survived car accidents before improved safety standards were in place, but a lot of folks didn’t survive.
Sure, you may be “doing fine” today, but a lot of people die every day from lung cancer caused by second hand smoke.
So, tell me, what’s wrong with a law that aims to protect toddlers from physical harm? Is it a parent’s right to injure their children?
Just because my argument may be “typical,” it doesn’t mean it isn’t correct as well.
Watching TV is bad for you. (Leads to ADHD, obesity, and watching to much reality TV.”
Ergo, Congress should make TV illegal.
Kids can have access to porn on the internet. Ban the internet.
Okay, now I realize those *are* straw man arguments, but they’re just as ludicrous as telling someone they can’t smoke in the car if a child is also present.
My parents smoked like chimneys. All that did was encourage me to *never* try smoking.
What I want is a government that is hands off for the most part. I don’t consider myself a republican or a democrat. Too many buckets of crazy in both parties.
What you’re arguing here is a further degradation of personal rights and freedom. And you’re just as wrong as the ultra conservatives are, albeit from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The government can stay the hell out of my private life, thank you very much.
What you’re defending is the gradual move to becoming a socialist state. No thanks.
Jon, just because a law is passed making somthing illegal doesn’t
mean that before the law was passed, you had “right” to do it. All it means is you couldn’t be prosecuted for doing it.
This is what happens when people use the terms “rights and freedoms” so loosely. You wind up diluting the value of your “rights and freedoms.”
March 19, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Jon says:
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@TOPoV:
Um, according to the laws of this country, that’s *exactly* the definition of a right.
Now, what you are arguing is whether or not it’s a moral *right* in this instance. (At least, per the way you’re writing your argument.)
Until the laws of the country (or state, etc) prohibit you otherwise, then yes, by default, it is a legal “right.”
And there is nothing I wrote that dilutes “rights and freedoms.” You’re starting to climb pretty high on that soap box now.
March 19, 2012 at 2:06 pm
The Other Point of View says:
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Jon, sorry, but you never had the right or freedom to poison your children with your cigarette smoke.
My position (and that of the Maryland Legislature) does not advocate for the loss of a freedom that you never had to begin with.
Dear The Other Point of View….I want to be the first to let you know that not only I agree with you, but would totally support you if you ever ran for office. I am sure the comments to follow ours will be negative and full of the usual “koolaid”, “liberals”, “socialists”, and “progressives” words, but I can let them rant and rave all they want….you and I both know we will be smiling in November. Please keep up the “other point of view”. It gives me such hope during the day. Thank you!!!!
I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Jon here in almost every respect. However I disagree with the statement that a personal auto is “arguably an extension of one’s home”. It is not, and there are numerous legal distinctions between them in terms of rights. Also issuing a yellow card for excessive and inappropriate use of the term “strawman”.
OPOV, just because someone SHOULDN’T do something doesn’t provide evidence of the need for a law preventing it. Feeding your kids chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner every night is just as bad for them as second hand smoke, but it would be preposterous to enact a law to the same effect.
Wow, yeah that is odd. No sarcasm implied or intended either.
In some cases, a personal auto *is* someone’s home. (IE they are homeless and living out of their car.) Other people live out of their mobile homes, and arguably the anti smoking law would apply there as well. (Even if the officer couldn’t see if there was a child in the vehicle.)
And I readily admitted my analogies were straw man…but I’ll take the yellow card in leiu of a red card that normally would’ve been earned.
You can’t put chicken nuggets and smoking on the same level. Many health professionals will begrudgingly say fast food, eaten in moderation, can be part of a healthy lifestyle. But you would be hard-pressed to find a SINGLE health professional who would say the same of cigarettes. Not to mention that chicken nuggets hurt only the individual consumming them, while the cigarettes impact all who are in the car.
I know you can’t legislate common sense, but let’s be real here. Can’t you wait until the car ride is over to light up your cancer stick?
Right, that’s why I said “every night”. So let’s enact a law defining “moderation” and limiting consumption of chicken nuggets by minors to, let’s say, twice a week. After all, we have to protect the children!
It’s difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a person who takes a simple statement and pushes it to extremes.
The main intent of this law has been forgetten in these posts. Everyone seems to be more concerned with their own personal freedoms and not the personal freedoms of children. They too have a right; a right to breathe smoke free air. So, how do we protect the children from the stupidity of their parents / caregivers who continue to smoke in their presence? I certainly don’t want more gov’t in my life, so I would be curious to hear your suggestions.
Aren’t you the one who said “you can’t legislate common sense”? There is a limit to what the legal and law enforcement systems can protect us from. We are too dependent on our institutions and have developed the unreasonable expectation that they should protect us from all bad things; meanwhile we have developed the attitude that “it isn’t my problem, it isn’t my business, let the authorities handle it”.
How do we protect the children from the stupidity of their parents/caregivers? Mostly, we don’t. We can’t. Parents have the authority to decide how to raise their children and what risks they will be exposed to. Furthermore, there is a system in place to judge whether a parent’s judgement is flawed enough such that the state will remove the child from their care for their own safety.
If you don’t like something someone else is doing, do what they did back in the day and make a scene. If more people were willing to get up in each others business we would be much better off.
March 20, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Whatever says:
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I am a smoker…..but have always found myself looking at people who smoke around their children as ignorant, uneducated and just plain stupid. Why in this day and age with the information that is out there to show how harmful smoking really is would you still choose to smoke around your or anyone elses child? However, this DOES NOT justify government to keep comming up with laws that little by little start taking away individual freedoms.
It should be my job (and freedom) to continue looking at people who smoke around their children as complete and total idiots but not the governments job to dictate laws that prevent it from happening!
I’m on board with whatever. I am a smoker and I hate when I see someone smoke in their home which children share, or in their car with children present. The problem lies with the parenting. If you are too stupid to realize/care that it’s bad for your kids, then that is a shame. Quit being greedy and smoke somewhere else or some other time. On the same hand, the government does not need to step in here. I’d rather see a public service announcement urging people to step up and make an effort to not smoke around children. That would be a better way to spend money than making more laws that we do not need.
We’re hearing more about bans on smoking in cars with kids aboard, smoking bans in rental cars, and even bans on smoking while driving alone. It’s a Brave New World.
One must wonder about the expertise, if not the sanity and humanity, of those who concoct such laws. It takes no effort to just search up “Symptoms of tobacco withdrawal”. If this information is not acted upon by automobile safety organizations, at least, everyone on or near the roads when these laws kick in is endangered—if, that is, anyone obeys the laws. Lawmakers must love law-breakers; they create tens of thousands of them almost every day.
Here’s one item from a British medical web site about tobacco withdrawal symptoms. It may be better to have a beer-drinking cel- phone-user driving near you—or passing your kids on the sidewalk—than an obedient smoke-abstaining driver.
” A smoker’s nervous system becomes accustomed to functioning with nicotine.
When you stop smoking, the reduced nicotine intake will disturb the balance of the central nervous system, causing withdrawal symptoms.
The most common withdrawal symptoms are:
• cravings for tobacco
• irritation
• anger
• weight gain
• concentration problems
• depression
• headaches
• fatigue
• constipation
• restlessness
• insomnia
• dizziness
• anxiety.
Fortunately, the majority of these symptoms tend to disappear after a few of weeks. Some people may experience cravings, concentration problems and an increased appetite over a longer time period. ”
Here’s another web gleaning that includes drowsiness…but personal experience has been that the sleep, while driving, came on without the usual tired eyes and head-nodding warnings. I happened to give up smoking that morning because the price went up to about a dollar a pack. We survived only because there was a “we”…as my frantic passenger woke me up in time with her fists and serious screams. And this was not late at night or after a long tiring drive.
” Withdrawal symptoms can include anxiety, irritability, poor concentration, restlessness, craving nicotine, stomach problems, headaches and drowsiness. ”
Compare all that to the physiological benefits of tobacco…the reasons the plant has been smoked for about ten thousand years.
Appetite Suppression
Alertness
Stress Relief
Digestive Relief
Pain Relief
Anti-blood clotting.
(and more recently discovered…) Symptomatic relief for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other such pathologies
Additionally, having snacks, coffee and juice, changing radio stations—and having smokes—on long drives are ways to keep the drive interesting—to prevent “highway hypnosis” that can put you right up the tailpipe of the vehicle in front. Since tobacco is an appetite suppressant, it likely has positive bearing on the syndrome where one becomes drowsy after big meals.
Because it is currently heresy to even think of tobacco health benefits, one must pretty much search up each benefit separately—then wade through the anti-smoking “science” to get anything objective. Top clues to objectivity are if tobacco pesticides or dioxins in the smoke are mentioned. If a scientist doesn’t know about, or fails to mention those inconvenient, though integral, topics, that’s it for any chance of trustworthiness.
A bottom line here is that the benefits of smoking remain despite contamination of typical cigarettes with some of the most health-damaging industrial substances on the planet, including dioxin-delivering chlorine and even carcinogenic levels of radiation from certain fertilizers.
Bottom line II is that making smokers go Cold Turkey when they get behind the wheel of an inherently dangerous vehicle presents a certifiable danger to that driver, passengers, other drivers and passengers, and any nearby pedestrians—or livestock, trees, or utility poles.
If police are to be exempted from any Smoking-In-Cars laws for the sake of stress relief, as U.S. troops have been exempted by the Pentagon for the same reason, officials will have their work cut out explaining that police can have the stress relief and other benefits, but civilian drivers cannot.
On the other hand, if police are barred from smoking in their cruisers, we will all be faced with Cold Turkey cops, irritable, angry, anxious, dizzy, constipated, hungry and the works. Also, a brand new door will have been opened for another “probable cause” reason to stop and check cars—even if the driver has an unlit cigarette or a lollipop stuck in his or her mouth.
And then, what about smoking in convertibles?
Will traffic accident inspectors be obliged to record that the cause may be “TWS”– Tobacco Withdrawal Syndrome”?
Can road-rage perpetrators use that ban-created syndrome as a defense?
These unintended (?) consequences are results of unjust and scientifically groundless laws—laws intended to scapegoat and punish the victims of horrifically-contaminated typical smoking products for the crimes of the perpetrators, namely, cigarette manufacturers, tobacco pesticide manufacturers, pharmaceuticals that make both tobacco pesticides and non-tobacco cigarette additives, fertilizer producers, chlorine interests, and all of their insurers, investors, and sold-out henchpersons in public government.
Blaming the victims is a distraction from those industrial crimes, but the war on smoking is also largely about removing nicotine from the public domain so that it becomes a Controlled Substance for exclusive use by pharmaceutical and related industries.
It is not far-fetched, in this prohibitionistic, Talibanesque climate—and considering the limitless power of those pharms, chemical firms, insurers, and other entities—to expect that one day, to respond to the nicotine withdrawal problems noted above, anyone who has smoked, lived with a smoker, or who got hit with whiffs of “second-hand smoke”, will simply be forbidden from driving until six months after exposure. Who can oppose laws that are “for our protection” or “for the kids”? Absurdity feeds on absurdity.
This kind of legislation is what is wrong with America.
Government needs to get out and stay out of my house, my car and my body!
I am waiting for the first governing body to ban flatulence in public
If your serious, I will “like” the comment, but it is too hard to tell! ;~)
Makes me glad I don’t live in MD. What a jaw-droppingly stupid legislation.
Because over a hundred million of us (or more) who grew up in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s are doing just fine with parents who smoked in the car…
Idiots.
Jon, that’s no way to talk about your parents.
Wow, did you fail reading comprehension. :P
“Idiots” is referring back to MD legislators…
No, I understood what you meant and was being sarcastic. Actually, I am a little unclear on one thing. You think legislators who ban activities that only an idiot would do are themselves idiots? That seems a little, um, idiotic.
Here’s a tip then–sarcasm is 90% nonverbal. So unless you find a way to express that in text, you’re probably better off trying not to be too sarcastic.
I am a non-smoker. I have never had the urge, or seen the allure of smoking.
That doesn’t mean that my personal choice should be used as a hammer to curtail someone else’s personal choice.
I may (and do) find smoking repugnant. But a smoker may have the opposite opinion–as is their right. Government has no business trying to control an individuals choice in a private setting.
Ban smoking in public venues–that’s fine. But a private auto? That’s arguably an extension of one’s home. (And in somecases *is* someone’s home.) Stay out of it.
Your attempt at word redirection re: idiots, etc. is…really nonsensical…and a straw man at best.
I would have loved this law as a child. I grew up asthmatic. I used to plead with my father not to smoke during the 20 minute drives to church or grandma’s house. He couldn’t do it and I always ened up wheezing and hacking because of his right to smoke. Of course, there aren’t any parents today that would do such a thing.
I guess after 8 years old, you are on your own…..
In other news, MD police have noticed an increasing trend of parents getting rid of their car seats and having their children sit on milk crates in an apparent attempt to make them look older. MD police and legislators are baffled by this trend.
I can’t believe that this is the United States of America. Why are the American people putting up with this sort of “baby sitting”? Next month the government will say it is against the law to wear sandals before July 4th, or say we can’t sit out on the front porch after 4:00. Why don’t they do something about the high price of gas instead of telling us where and when we can do something that isn’t illegal? People aren’t going be able to afford to drive to work and that means increased numbers of people collecting unemployment. Do something that the people really need, instead of sticking your nose into the personal choices of the American people.
I’m afraid that the proposal to ban smoking in cars occupied by children represents an
unwarranted intrusion into the privacy and autonomy of parenthood. The autonomy to
make one’s own decision about risks to subject a child to is not to be interfered with lightly.
It should only be done in cases where there is a substantial threat of severe harm
to the child. Interfering with parental autonomy in a case where there is only minor
risk involved is unwarranted.
Most of these respones demonstrate the utter lunacy of the Right wing in this country.
Protect unborn fetuses from harm, but to Hell with the living innocent toddlers who have no choice but to suck up the second hand smoke.
Jon’s argument is typical. I’ve seen these arguments floating around in emails about how kids who grew up “back in the day” without safety regulations in place are doing “just fine.” But that’s only true if you’re alive today to read it! Sure, lot’s of us survived car accidents before improved safety standards were in place, but a lot of folks didn’t survive.
Sure, you may be “doing fine” today, but a lot of people die every day from lung cancer caused by second hand smoke.
So, tell me, what’s wrong with a law that aims to protect toddlers from physical harm? Is it a parent’s right to injure their children?
Just because my argument may be “typical,” it doesn’t mean it isn’t correct as well.
Watching TV is bad for you. (Leads to ADHD, obesity, and watching to much reality TV.”
Ergo, Congress should make TV illegal.
Kids can have access to porn on the internet. Ban the internet.
Okay, now I realize those *are* straw man arguments, but they’re just as ludicrous as telling someone they can’t smoke in the car if a child is also present.
My parents smoked like chimneys. All that did was encourage me to *never* try smoking.
What I want is a government that is hands off for the most part. I don’t consider myself a republican or a democrat. Too many buckets of crazy in both parties.
What you’re arguing here is a further degradation of personal rights and freedom. And you’re just as wrong as the ultra conservatives are, albeit from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The government can stay the hell out of my private life, thank you very much.
What you’re defending is the gradual move to becoming a socialist state. No thanks.
Jon, sorry, but you never had the right or freedomn to poison your children with your cigarrette smoke.
My position (and that of the Maryland Legislature) does not advocate for the loss of a freedom that you never had to begin with.
Like they say in Maryland………Lets get the heck out of Maryland!
I have got to get a copy of the MD Legislature list that shows exactly what freedoms I do not have. LOL.
Jon, sorry, but you never had the right or freedom to poison your children with your cigarrette smoke.
My position (and that of the Maryland Legislature) does not advocate for the loss of a freedom that you never had to begin with.
Laws around the country say otherwise. Wait…sorry…the *LACK* of laws around the country.
The very fact that MD had to enact a law *proscribing* it means that prior to said law, it was perfectly acceptable and within a person’s rights.
And what part of “I don’t smoke” didn’t you understand?
“You” as in the proverbial “you.”
Jon, just because a law is passed making somthing illegal doesn’t
mean that before the law was passed, you had “right” to do it. All it means is you couldn’t be prosecuted for doing it.
This is what happens when people use the terms “rights and freedoms” so loosely. You wind up diluting the value of your “rights and freedoms.”
@TOPoV:
Um, according to the laws of this country, that’s *exactly* the definition of a right.
Now, what you are arguing is whether or not it’s a moral *right* in this instance. (At least, per the way you’re writing your argument.)
Until the laws of the country (or state, etc) prohibit you otherwise, then yes, by default, it is a legal “right.”
And there is nothing I wrote that dilutes “rights and freedoms.” You’re starting to climb pretty high on that soap box now.
Jon, sorry, but you never had the right or freedom to poison your children with your cigarette smoke.
My position (and that of the Maryland Legislature) does not advocate for the loss of a freedom that you never had to begin with.
Dear The Other Point of View….I want to be the first to let you know that not only I agree with you, but would totally support you if you ever ran for office. I am sure the comments to follow ours will be negative and full of the usual “koolaid”, “liberals”, “socialists”, and “progressives” words, but I can let them rant and rave all they want….you and I both know we will be smiling in November. Please keep up the “other point of view”. It gives me such hope during the day. Thank you!!!!
Not sure how the triple response happened. Apologies to all.
I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Jon here in almost every respect. However I disagree with the statement that a personal auto is “arguably an extension of one’s home”. It is not, and there are numerous legal distinctions between them in terms of rights. Also issuing a yellow card for excessive and inappropriate use of the term “strawman”.
OPOV, just because someone SHOULDN’T do something doesn’t provide evidence of the need for a law preventing it. Feeding your kids chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner every night is just as bad for them as second hand smoke, but it would be preposterous to enact a law to the same effect.
Wow, yeah that is odd. No sarcasm implied or intended either.
In some cases, a personal auto *is* someone’s home. (IE they are homeless and living out of their car.) Other people live out of their mobile homes, and arguably the anti smoking law would apply there as well. (Even if the officer couldn’t see if there was a child in the vehicle.)
And I readily admitted my analogies were straw man…but I’ll take the yellow card in leiu of a red card that normally would’ve been earned.
You can’t put chicken nuggets and smoking on the same level. Many health professionals will begrudgingly say fast food, eaten in moderation, can be part of a healthy lifestyle. But you would be hard-pressed to find a SINGLE health professional who would say the same of cigarettes. Not to mention that chicken nuggets hurt only the individual consumming them, while the cigarettes impact all who are in the car.
I know you can’t legislate common sense, but let’s be real here. Can’t you wait until the car ride is over to light up your cancer stick?
Right, that’s why I said “every night”. So let’s enact a law defining “moderation” and limiting consumption of chicken nuggets by minors to, let’s say, twice a week. After all, we have to protect the children!
It’s difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a person who takes a simple statement and pushes it to extremes.
The main intent of this law has been forgetten in these posts. Everyone seems to be more concerned with their own personal freedoms and not the personal freedoms of children. They too have a right; a right to breathe smoke free air. So, how do we protect the children from the stupidity of their parents / caregivers who continue to smoke in their presence? I certainly don’t want more gov’t in my life, so I would be curious to hear your suggestions.
Aren’t you the one who said “you can’t legislate common sense”? There is a limit to what the legal and law enforcement systems can protect us from. We are too dependent on our institutions and have developed the unreasonable expectation that they should protect us from all bad things; meanwhile we have developed the attitude that “it isn’t my problem, it isn’t my business, let the authorities handle it”.
How do we protect the children from the stupidity of their parents/caregivers? Mostly, we don’t. We can’t. Parents have the authority to decide how to raise their children and what risks they will be exposed to. Furthermore, there is a system in place to judge whether a parent’s judgement is flawed enough such that the state will remove the child from their care for their own safety.
If you don’t like something someone else is doing, do what they did back in the day and make a scene. If more people were willing to get up in each others business we would be much better off.
I am a smoker…..but have always found myself looking at people who smoke around their children as ignorant, uneducated and just plain stupid. Why in this day and age with the information that is out there to show how harmful smoking really is would you still choose to smoke around your or anyone elses child? However, this DOES NOT justify government to keep comming up with laws that little by little start taking away individual freedoms.
It should be my job (and freedom) to continue looking at people who smoke around their children as complete and total idiots but not the governments job to dictate laws that prevent it from happening!
I’m on board with whatever. I am a smoker and I hate when I see someone smoke in their home which children share, or in their car with children present. The problem lies with the parenting. If you are too stupid to realize/care that it’s bad for your kids, then that is a shame. Quit being greedy and smoke somewhere else or some other time. On the same hand, the government does not need to step in here. I’d rather see a public service announcement urging people to step up and make an effort to not smoke around children. That would be a better way to spend money than making more laws that we do not need.
We’re hearing more about bans on smoking in cars with kids aboard, smoking bans in rental cars, and even bans on smoking while driving alone. It’s a Brave New World.
One must wonder about the expertise, if not the sanity and humanity, of those who concoct such laws. It takes no effort to just search up “Symptoms of tobacco withdrawal”. If this information is not acted upon by automobile safety organizations, at least, everyone on or near the roads when these laws kick in is endangered—if, that is, anyone obeys the laws. Lawmakers must love law-breakers; they create tens of thousands of them almost every day.
Here’s one item from a British medical web site about tobacco withdrawal symptoms. It may be better to have a beer-drinking cel- phone-user driving near you—or passing your kids on the sidewalk—than an obedient smoke-abstaining driver.
” A smoker’s nervous system becomes accustomed to functioning with nicotine.
When you stop smoking, the reduced nicotine intake will disturb the balance of the central nervous system, causing withdrawal symptoms.
The most common withdrawal symptoms are:
• cravings for tobacco
• irritation
• anger
• weight gain
• concentration problems
• depression
• headaches
• fatigue
• constipation
• restlessness
• insomnia
• dizziness
• anxiety.
Fortunately, the majority of these symptoms tend to disappear after a few of weeks. Some people may experience cravings, concentration problems and an increased appetite over a longer time period. ”
Here’s another web gleaning that includes drowsiness…but personal experience has been that the sleep, while driving, came on without the usual tired eyes and head-nodding warnings. I happened to give up smoking that morning because the price went up to about a dollar a pack. We survived only because there was a “we”…as my frantic passenger woke me up in time with her fists and serious screams. And this was not late at night or after a long tiring drive.
” Withdrawal symptoms can include anxiety, irritability, poor concentration, restlessness, craving nicotine, stomach problems, headaches and drowsiness. ”
Compare all that to the physiological benefits of tobacco…the reasons the plant has been smoked for about ten thousand years.
Appetite Suppression
Alertness
Stress Relief
Digestive Relief
Pain Relief
Anti-blood clotting.
(and more recently discovered…) Symptomatic relief for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other such pathologies
Additionally, having snacks, coffee and juice, changing radio stations—and having smokes—on long drives are ways to keep the drive interesting—to prevent “highway hypnosis” that can put you right up the tailpipe of the vehicle in front. Since tobacco is an appetite suppressant, it likely has positive bearing on the syndrome where one becomes drowsy after big meals.
Because it is currently heresy to even think of tobacco health benefits, one must pretty much search up each benefit separately—then wade through the anti-smoking “science” to get anything objective. Top clues to objectivity are if tobacco pesticides or dioxins in the smoke are mentioned. If a scientist doesn’t know about, or fails to mention those inconvenient, though integral, topics, that’s it for any chance of trustworthiness.
A bottom line here is that the benefits of smoking remain despite contamination of typical cigarettes with some of the most health-damaging industrial substances on the planet, including dioxin-delivering chlorine and even carcinogenic levels of radiation from certain fertilizers.
Bottom line II is that making smokers go Cold Turkey when they get behind the wheel of an inherently dangerous vehicle presents a certifiable danger to that driver, passengers, other drivers and passengers, and any nearby pedestrians—or livestock, trees, or utility poles.
If police are to be exempted from any Smoking-In-Cars laws for the sake of stress relief, as U.S. troops have been exempted by the Pentagon for the same reason, officials will have their work cut out explaining that police can have the stress relief and other benefits, but civilian drivers cannot.
On the other hand, if police are barred from smoking in their cruisers, we will all be faced with Cold Turkey cops, irritable, angry, anxious, dizzy, constipated, hungry and the works. Also, a brand new door will have been opened for another “probable cause” reason to stop and check cars—even if the driver has an unlit cigarette or a lollipop stuck in his or her mouth.
And then, what about smoking in convertibles?
Will traffic accident inspectors be obliged to record that the cause may be “TWS”– Tobacco Withdrawal Syndrome”?
Can road-rage perpetrators use that ban-created syndrome as a defense?
These unintended (?) consequences are results of unjust and scientifically groundless laws—laws intended to scapegoat and punish the victims of horrifically-contaminated typical smoking products for the crimes of the perpetrators, namely, cigarette manufacturers, tobacco pesticide manufacturers, pharmaceuticals that make both tobacco pesticides and non-tobacco cigarette additives, fertilizer producers, chlorine interests, and all of their insurers, investors, and sold-out henchpersons in public government.
Blaming the victims is a distraction from those industrial crimes, but the war on smoking is also largely about removing nicotine from the public domain so that it becomes a Controlled Substance for exclusive use by pharmaceutical and related industries.
It is not far-fetched, in this prohibitionistic, Talibanesque climate—and considering the limitless power of those pharms, chemical firms, insurers, and other entities—to expect that one day, to respond to the nicotine withdrawal problems noted above, anyone who has smoked, lived with a smoker, or who got hit with whiffs of “second-hand smoke”, will simply be forbidden from driving until six months after exposure. Who can oppose laws that are “for our protection” or “for the kids”? Absurdity feeds on absurdity.
Jesse Ventura quote: (Hope I got it right.)
“When government says they’re going to protect your security, Look Out. You’re gonna lose your rights.”