Stop the Lies Behind the Smoking Bans

Kevin,

Great post and thank you for putting the article up for download. If you've never read the essay by Joe Jackson (yep, the singer) here is a link to his Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State article. It's a good read that might help when dealing with the anti-crowd. Thought it may be worth sharing.
http://www.joejackson.com/pdf/5smokingpdf_jj_smoke_lies.pdf

Joe Jackson's essay is fascinating (and well written).
I thought this quote of his was telling:

When any risk is associated with a pleasure, though, we struggle to relinquish that pleasure, and we turn life into a stressed-out obstacle course.

Click to expand...

Reminds me of this one:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

-H. L. Mencken

Click to expand...

My standard response has become, "If you don't like it, go away!"

There is no dealing with the anti's. I think chuckw's response is a good one. When people tell me that smoking is bad from my health I tell usually respond, "So's not minding your own business."

Thank you Kevin. As a newer member I hadn't seen this. It's now downloaded so that I can refer to it as needed

(which in Washington state will be often). Thanks again!

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli, and later, Mark Twain.

Ah, excellent - hadn't seen this particular set of essays yet, so I look forward to digesting them shortly.
As I started investigating pipe smoking and its risks, it was a little disconcerting to find out just how much bad information I'd absorbed as a disinterested non-smoker.

Just enjoying a bowl of Dunhill Nightcap while reading Joe Jackson's essay. Coincidently, I'd recently been wondering what he'd been up to all these years. What a fabulous read.

And we all thought we lived in a 'free' society.. PFFFT!! Antis are everywhere, they all think they are right and will never change. Being a hunter I experience it first hand. It sucks and I wish they would all just STFU about things that they don't like. People don't like things about them but they don't go around complaining to the gov and others in society about it....

The goose stepping Nazi's are everywhere. Soon they'll break your door down and arrest you for the simple pleasure of enjoying yourself. :twisted:

Thanks for the link!

In PA there's an exception for bars based on the amount of food they sell and actually just filling out some paperwork. My wife is a bartender in a smoking bar, when the law was passed most of the bars had to ban smoking. She works in one of the few smoking bars left, the business has doubled and so has her income. The amount of cigar/pipe shops have doubled with more of the space devoted to decked out lounges for smokers to gather. It's not your little B&M anymore but places with private boxes to store both your tobacco and high end liquor. So when I want to go out on the town, it's to a nicer place, higher quality people with 12 year single malt being passed around.
Unfortunately no matter what we do it's only going to get worse and nothing is going to change that. It's only going to get increasingly more expensive, regulated, taxed and step all over our civil rights. It would be nice if something actually could be done, even the President has to step outside to have a smoke. The good news for our hobby actually comes from non-smokers with pipe collecting continuing to rise. We'll always have the choice to smoke, it will just be harder and more expensive.
Craig