Here is a fact: people who smoke are rude. They don't think they are. Of course not. Smokers believe, in fact, that those of us who prefer smoke-free air everywhere we go-including bars and restaurants-are the rude ones. We're the ones who expect too much, who ask what we should not ask, who encroach upon their rights as human beings. As smoking human beings.
We all know the data. People who smoke are at high-risk for lung cancer. Pregnant women who smoke put their baby at risk. This information can be found right there, on the pack. We've heard the about the cigarette companies. They purposefully put addictive properties into cigarettes that will ensure that twelve-year-old kid who picks up a cigarette to look cool will still be picking them up when he's seventy-two-and on oxygen. They advertise to children. They market to minorities. We've heard about the high-dollar lawsuits. Suing these same companies for getting them hooked and causing their lung cancer.
We also know the effects of second hand smoke. They are only a step away from the same effects someone gets from smoking him or herself. Now let's take a cocktail waitress. Say she's in her early twenties, got pregnant too young, has a child to support, a babysitter to pay. She spends her nights working at the local bar, choosing to spend her days at home with the baby, feeling she's missing less if she's at work while her baby's asleep with the sitter. She's chosen not to smoke-when she was a teenager, a young adult, and pregnant. Yet night after night, as she serves the drinks and hopes for a decent tip, she's sucking in smoke-filled air that corrupts her once-clean lungs. And yet smokers say smoking bans infringe on their rights.
It's not just the smoking, though. Smokers seem to have no qualms finishing a cigarette, dropping it on the ground, stomping it out and l
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