[Mpls] St. Paul considers smoking ban - should Mpls?

[Eric Oines]

As an ex-smoker and an ex-"a-lot-of-other-things" as well, I say that 
coddling junkies just because it's a legal addiction is no way to run public 
health policy.  Tobacco smoke is nasty.  And it's even nastier after they 
put all the other stuff in it to make manufactured cigs.

Don't worry about the smokers.  Nicotine junkies will find an outlet for 
their addiction.  They always do - because they care more about their fix 
than about your health... or their health... or their family's health... or 
just about anything else.

It's the nature of addiction (insert turtle & scorpion parable here).

As to the comparison with obesity, the difference is, you have to eat to 
live.  You don't have to smoke.  But, in fact, there is a movement to get 
sugar, caffeine and other junk food crap out of our schools, because it's 
killing our kids, literally.  The processed food industry is owned by the 
same corporations and have many of the same board members as the tobacco 
companies.  Coincidence?  Doubtful.

Ban it.  You'll do the non-smoking public, and the junkies, a favor.

Eric Oines
North Minneapolis

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we 
seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue 
peaceful ends through peaceful means."
  ~ Martin Luther King Jr., Agitator