We link to a feeble "smokers’ rights" piece that deserves mocking. The author says he is opposed to fanatical anti-smoking … but …
It’s a classic example of yet another inane initiative: man disagrees with smoking ban, campaigns against what he calls the persecution of smokers, and promises single-handedly to take the battle all the way to Parliament. Surely we agree with the fellow’s indignation, and his loathing of trash like ASH, but he is simply foolish, following a path forged by other fools headed nowhere. Faced with such aimless opposition ASH and its breed can rest on seven pillows. Similar lame initiatives pop up in every country at a crucial point in the escalation of smoker oppression. Perhaps men do not learn from history, not so much from lack of understanding, as from simple lack of reading.
Why is David Simmons’s effort certainly doomed? The answer is in his own words, full of self-defeating arguments that invalidate his position, and to which we shall provide straightforward responses.
“"I agree with 80 per cent of the ban, people should not be made to [inhale] passive smoke. But…”
But … WHAT? Simmons wants to be 80% pregnant. If passive smoke is harmful, then to the prohibitionist view it should be banned as much as tainted water should be banned, even if, let us say, bar patrons might prefer a choice to drink it or not. Of course, alcohol is itself a classified poison, and the prohibitionists are crazily cogitating along those lines too, but we’re not there yet with booze, we’re now dealing with ETS, the premier craziness of all time. The banners paint ETS as if it was mustard gas. Thus of course smokers should be made to stand outside in the freezing cold and pouring rain. It is surprising that smokers have not been charged yet with attempted murder – but we are getting there fast, thanks in part to faulty arguments like these.
The reality is, of course, that passive smoking does not harm anyone, so bans must be righteously opposed — one hundred percent and not even one percentile point less.
"Nicotine is a legally permissible addictive substance, and its withdrawal leads to stress and anxiety. Can this be described as torture then?"
Who, the banners will haughtily proclaim, could be blamed for “helping addicts” to get rid of their addiction and be healthy again? Setting the sinners onto the path of righteousness, and preferably doing so with righteous force, has been the fanatical cause of all the bug-eyed do-gooders in history! If nicotine is “as addictive as heroin” (as is said), then to the prohibitionists’ view Simmons would wish for legal shooting rooms for heroin addicts. He is saying addiction should be celebrated! The cad!
In fact a saner policy than that of a "war on drugs" is a good idea, but again, that’s not the battle here and now. Thanks to the criminal propaganda of “public health," smoking rooms and shooting rooms have become synonymous, as they both would imply the social acceptance of a pernicious self-indulgence that our neo-puritanical society rejects. In that light, “helping” smokers to get rid of their “addiction” becomes not torture, but a generous and humanitarian gesture – a “duty” of the “public health” heroes and a helping hand that the antismoking missionaries stretch to the pathetic smoking junkies. This is indeed how many think in these sick sanctimonious times. How boorish of Mister Simmons to think otherwise!
The reality is, of course, that nicotine is not addictive, and the proof is in the millions who have quit already. The “addictiveness” of nicotine is a callous lie circulated by the antismoking bastards to facilitate the use of the products marketed by Big Pharma, the moneybags promoter of hypochondria and prohibition, worldwide.
"In its present form the ban is a hateful, mindless piece of legislation.”
As opposed to what? … To a loving piece of legislation that bans smoking just 80%? … Prohibition legislation is, virtually by definition, hateful all the time. That’s the reason why there is prohibition in the first place – because the “people” (or the governments) hate what’s forbidden. Therefore it is quite natural that prohibition of smoking externalises hatred against smoking and, of course, against smokers. How can we hate at 80%? Either we do or we don’t. Simmons may never have heard of the Nazis.
The reality is that the hatred of smoking is stimulated artificially on the bases of: false causality of disease, false costs to society, and false harmfulness of passive smoking. In general, smokers have become the distracting focus of hatred to satisfy the human need to hate (which is as strong as that to love), and hatred itself has become a marketing tool for pharmaceutical smoking cessation and antidepressants trash.
"Passive smoking, we are told, kills around 1,000 people annually. Every one is a tragedy, but a drop in the ocean compared to the obesity crisis. What next, will it be illegal to sell food that has more than five per cent fat?"
Mister Simmons once again unintentionally encourages Healthism. The Healthists strut and boast as true heroes never would about all the lives they "save." They save nobody but Simmons says they do. Then he asks, what next? Then he answers: ban everything. The Healthists want to do that. They plan to do that. They may applaud Simmons for dutifully recognising the "obesity crisis," and for his oh-so progressive fat-free suggestion! Our godly protectors will "save" those 1,000 lives Simmons certifies and they will “help” the obese and the drinkers by making them social outcasts, refusing them operations, taking away their children, refusing employment, and by legislating any other egregious and vicious measure idiot critics such as Mister Simmons may helpfully suggest, anything, everything, to "help" the heretics get “well." Incidentally, we cannot read the writing on your T-shirt, Mister Simmons, but we can sure notice the beginning of the “obesity crisis” in yourself … and you need to be helped!
The reality, of course, is that not one person is “killed” by passive smoking, never was and never will be. So there is no “tragedy”. Also there is no “obesity crisis” with which, obviously, Mister Simmons agrees 100% rather than 80%. His foolish finger-pointing has just done a disservice to the next victims in the book, the fatsos for – yes – it will soon be illegal to sell food that has more than five per cent fat! The "challenge" that Simmons issues to common sense is as pathetic as that of so many others in the past and in the present because, thanks to propaganda and social engineering, "common sense" is, to Healthists, and to the many they influence, what the propaganda says it is. Real common sense is not dead but it is under attack. It will flourish once again after social engineering is forcibly stopped.
So we have examined a good example of how, stubbornly and in the silly attempt to appear “reasonable," many of those who fight smoking bans inevitably end up helping those they are fighting. Incoherence and self-defeating arguments do not help smokers’ rights. Simmons and his ilk should talk less, listen more, and learn. What will win this war is sticking with principles and scientific truth. Health Nazis are not conversational partners. They are crazies. They say "the debate is over." With regard to these fanatics it is over. Our reasons for believing in rationality, in freedom, in personal dignity, are fundamentally sound. "Compromising" reason with fanatical propaganda is foolish and wrong. Deviation from fundamental reasoning constitutes an error – never a “reasonable compromise” – and errors compound.
The fundamentals are that the "dangers" of passive smoking are an epidemiological fraud, that the right to smoke is unquestionable in contrast to that fraudulence, and that any and all smoking bans are an abuse to personal liberty: an abuse of trust on the part of government. Free and reasonable people have always found reasonable compromises amongst themselves. Finally, we say to the conceptually misguided Mister Simmons: being 80% pregnant is impossible – beside being a very bad idea.
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