Davis contradicts itself regarding tobacco
There are 2 comments for this page [ View ]Friday, April 25, 2008
With three news articles in less than a week about restricting and regulating the use of tobacco, I must throw in my 2 cents' worth. If I am to believe what has been reported, secondhand smoke is so absolutely horrific that to even catch a whiff of it in an outdoor area will cause me cancer.
That is the truth, and according to U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. This is the most obvious reason that Davis County has banned smoking in public and some private outdoor areas. So, why doesn't our government at the federal, state and local levels ban tobacco altogether?
The answer, of course, is that we are addicted as a society to tobacco, smokers physically and non-smokers to the tax revenues. Who can expect the federal government to give up $7.8 billion annually? Utah alone earns about $25 million a year from tobacco sales.
No, it is better if we just ban the public use of tobacco indoors and out, than take any real action to eliminate the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. -- an estimated 438,000 deaths annually. The reality is that tobacco kills and as a nation we have decided we can live with that.
So, welcome to Davis County, where is it legal to publicly purchase tobacco, but illegal to smoke it where anyone can get a whiff of it.
Tharen Blue
Layton
Comments
Comedian George Burns smoked up to 10 cigars a day. He once said that if he had taken his doctors advice and quit smoking, he wouldn't have been able to attend that doctor's funeral.
If you bother to check out all of the studies on the dangers of second hand smoke, you will find that they are all statistically insignificant - they prove nothing!
But that doesn't prevent politicians from using them for propaganda purposes.
Smoking is not a good thing. I'm not defending it. I just think that it should be fought with Truth, no half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies.
Text 
I'm with Spike on this one.
This is a control issue. Non-smokers get incensed that some people continue to engage in the 'dirty' activity of smoking, so they look for any reason to make smoking uncomfortable and inconvenient for smokers. The fact that the average person fears becoming ill from second hand smoke, yet balks at any mention of stricter emission standards on automobiles shows how unreasonably biased our society has become towards tobacco. And the letter writer's reference to tax dependency is spot on and highlights the hypocrisy.
I'm a non-smoker who feels sorry for smokers being punished for engaging in a perfectly legal activity.