And another thing...

Brain-dead bylaws.

Recently a local constituency added a bylaw making it illegal to smoke in your car with a person under the age of 18. Score one for the tree huggers? Nope, sorry. It's a pointless law, created to appease high profile anti-smoking groups. Lip service if you will.

Just like the law they passed making it illegal to sell cigarettes to persons under the age of 19. Businesses who are caught (and by the way they have lots of 17 year olds on the payroll that do nothing but try and entrap local smoke store owners) face huge fines. (Payable to the government) It is not, however, illegal for persons under the age of 18 to smoke. It's just illegal for someone to sell the cigarettes to them.

Look, if you don't want to smoke, don't smoke. If it bothers you I won't smoke around you. But don't tell me I can't smoke. I am a grown woman. The government is not on your side, if they were, they would ban tobacco, but they are not and they never will. The only thing you have on your side is propaganda, junk science and general bullshit! Get a life, or just fuck off somewhere.

Don't get me wrong. I realize that smoking is bad for me. I am not an idiot. I am breathing in a burning substance directly into my lungs. But they are my lungs, fuck off. I am also breathing in the exhaust from your car, the smoke from your chimney and your ghastly perfume. Drop dead. Just don't get me started on second hand smoke.

Oh but they are trying to protect the estimated 400,000 people who die prematurely each year in smoking related deaths. Bullshit! There is no credible data that says second hand smoke really does hurt people. There are, however, dozens of studies that say they couldn't prove it has any effect.

Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs Software, Release II (SAMMEC II) has been developed for the Office on Smoking and Health, Public Health Service, to permit rapid calculation of deaths, years of potential life lost, direct health-care costs, indirect mortality costs, and disability costs associated with cigarette smoking.

Sounds impressive, don't it? If you are going to quote this piece of software, you should really find out how they come up with their numbers.

Some interesting articles on the subject:

Blowing Smoke About Tobacco-Related Deaths Just look at the chart on this one. How is dying at 85+ years premature?
The Facts About Second Hand Smoke
The Blunders of SAMMEC (1) 400,000 Killed by Smoking!? This article is written by a retired mathematician, its a little dry but you can't dispute the numbers.
The BIG LIE That Smoking is an Economic Burden to Society
Name Three James Repace did supply three names. However, of the three he named, One could not be verified. One had been ruled against by a jury. One was rejected by a jury.
The EPA Report

Governments keep passing laws banning smoking here and banning smoking there, but if they were truly concerned with it, they would just ban tobacco.

Oh wait! They can't ban tobacco, they make too much money on it.