By Neil Macaulay
Santa Monica should concentrate on its major problem of homeless people whose appearance and behavior are anti-social. What right have they to intrude on a restaurant patio, interrupt conversations without “excuse me” and ask for money? Most normal, social, law abiding people wouldn’t dream of doing this. Society only works when you have consideration for others. Don’t diners on patios of restaurants have rights? Are homeless people above the law and exempt from our social customs? Santa Monica should not waste time on trivialities like smoking in parks. What next? Chewing gum in parks? Look at the mess on all sidewalks due to gum. Bums can sleep in parks but hard working law abiding people can’t smoke! What nonsense! California has already gone over the top with the banning of smoking in all pubs and restaurants and this is just a further example of the PC majority seeking to display their moral superiority by persecuting a law abiding minority. If bums have civil rights then why don’t smokers? I don’t believe there are any statistics which show smoking in strict moderation ever harmed anyone.
Democracy does not consist of the majority forcing its opinions and behaviors on the minority. On some matters e.g. defense etc., we must have a single policy but on other matters e.g. religion, smoking etc., we should be free to choose for ourselves. It should be live and let live. Any fair-minded person can see that it is perfectly possible to have pubs and restaurants which offer smoking. You pay your money and you take your choice. What about the poor non-smoking employees? They go to a non-smoking place. By the way, take a look at the back of a restaurant from time to time. Guess what you’re going to see? Employees out back taking a smoke!
I have studied the science of statistics and data have to be evaluated very carefully in order to understand what they say. I don’t believe 90 percent percent of what is reported in the press about smoking studies. I agree with Winston Churchill “There are lies, there are damned lies and then there are statistics!” I believe that the problem with smoking is the same as for drinking, gambling, eating, etc. It is very harmful in excess. Eating in excess, which most people in this country do, will also kill many people. I suspect in future there will be far more people dying from the results of over eating than from over smoking. I’m much more offended by overweight people who go to a restaurant for recreational eating and leave large parts of their meal uneaten.
The reports I have read about the dangers of side smoke are grossly exaggerated. My parents both smoked like chimneys all through my childhood and it did me no harm whatsoever. I am in far better health than the vast majority of people my age. If the statistics on the dangers of side smoke had any truth, I would have been dead by the time I was 10 years old. If you don’t like side smoke that’s fine. No one should be obliged to suffer it. But don’t invent statistics to enforce your point — just say you don’t like smoke and that’s good enough.
Let’s start using our common sense and reject all the silly far fetched statistics which the press try to give us. Almost every type of food has some study which says it’s bad for us. If this is true then obviously the human race would have died out centuries ago.
The basic problem is the neo-fascism of the PC majority which has a need to make itself feel morally superior by inflicting its dubious morality on a law abiding minority. This is not democracy. Democracy is live and let live where ever possible, which in the case of smoking can easily be done. Let the market decide which pubs can be smoking or smoke free. That’s democracy.
We frown on excessive drinking and excessive smoking so why not stigmatize excessive eating? Let’s bar overweight people from restaurants. The last thing they need is a big meal. Let’s run them round the parks and make them pick up the litter. OK, I'm only kidding but it’s the same mentality which seeks to persecute moderate smokers.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 27, 2002. Read the original PDF.