Dallas Tobacco Madness

The Dallas Observer blog reports the powers-that-be in Dallas are having a final hearing today on an ordinance to ban smoking from just about every conceivable public place in that fair city except private homes: "bars, pool halls, parks, tobacco shops and your car if there's a kid inside or on the sidewalks or restaurant patios."

Your Head Trucker has been unashamedly enjoying his smokes for over 35 years now, and he wholeheartedly believes that every man and woman ought to have at least one vice - to keep themselves humble. Way too many people make a religion out of "healthy living," and they get just as nasty and dogmatic as fundies about it. Which sucks big time, especially when it comes to crossing the bounds of civil liberties.

I don't live in Big D, so I can't vote on the matter. But here's a comment I left on that blog:

In every era, there's somebody or something that we just have to demonize. One hundred years ago, it was alcohol, Demon Rum. Our great-grandparents were so het up about the evils of drink that they kept on and kept on until they finally changed the Constitution of the United States to make the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcohol illegal everywhere in the country.

Now we look back and smugly smile at how silly they were. Yes, we know alcohol causes lots of serious problems, physical, mental, social, etc. But how many people are demanding the total eradication of alcohol from the landscape? Do you turn up your nose and make a sneering comment every time a friend of yours pops open a beer? Is anyone proposing to shut down all the bars and liquor stores "to protect our children"?

Actually, there are still some dry counties out here in rural Texas, a legacy of that hundred-year-old campaign against alcohol; but we all know the dry-county routine is just an exercise in hypocrisy, don't we?

Furthermore, a big influential group of college presidents - yeah - is now advocating lowering, not raising the drinking age. I thought we had that debate and settled it back in the 70's; lower drinking age = more auto accidents and deaths, no?

And of course, it's entirely likely that sometime in the next 10 years, certainly the next 20, we will see marijuana legalized all over the country, even here in Bible-believing Texas.

So if we get out of the self-righteous, I'm-so-pure, Health Nazi mode, we see that our own attitudes are likely very inconsistent. Hypocritical. Intolerant.

Except when it comes down to what we like. The fashionable vices. Oh then it's just okay - pot, beer, booze, you name it. Not a problem. "Leave me alone. It's my body. My sacred choice."

Yeah, well, think about that in terms of the tobacco thing, guys. Is it really necessary, especially out in the open air, or indoors where adults congregate, with big machines to sweep the air clean? Or does it just make you feel all warm and Sunday-school-righteous inside to kick somebody else's freedom into the gutter?

Is the other guy's health the real motive here? Or is it something else? I ask you.