Though to their credit, at least our newspapers are fighting it. From “A needless distraction for police”:
You probably shouldn’t smoke with your kids in the car. In fact, you probably shouldn’t smoke at all. But that doesn’t mean government should turn unhealthy habits into punishable offenses.
Unhappily, that notion is beyond the grasp of at least one member of the Aurora City Council who is proposing an ordinance that would establish a $50 fine for anyone smoking who has a minor child in the vehicle. It would be a primary offense, meaning police could pull that person over for no other reason than the smoke.
The suggestion comes, not surprisingly, from Bob “Penny Per Pop” FitzGerald. He made headlines last year suggesting that the city tax cans and bottles of high-fructose beverages in order to cut down on obesity. Oh, and to raise $1.8 million a year in revenues.
The proposal never made it into law, fortunately. The soft-drink industry didn’t like it and besides, it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare. Undeterred, FitzGerald is back with another ordinance that would turn cops into the Health Police.
The prognosis, fortunately, isn’t good. “This is not a groundswell for our council,” said Mayor Ed Tauer. “It’s irresponsible to smoke with kids in the car, but that doesn’t mean that’s what we should be using our police resources for.”
Besides, most people who smoke with their kids in the car also smoke with them present at home. How would the Health Police solve that one?
That last question—which appears open-ended—is, I fear, rather more rhetorical, particularly with regard to how it is likely to be viewed by the kinds of lawmakers who enjoy introducing such Big Brother legislation.
Because the fact is, we’ve seen in parts of California already attempts to make smoking in apartment buildings illegal—the fear being that a puff of menthol could drift down into the floor boards and, presumably, poison one’s neighbor while he or she is scrubbing their ceiling without an oxygen mask. So it is a matter of simple extension that the transgression be expanded, once lawmakers have their foot in the door, to include private residences.
Most troublesome about this—aside from how it speaks to a more general trend of goverment intrusiveness into the raising of families—is the very specific set of relief measures that are likely to be offered in response to the last question this editorial raises. Which is to say, the nightmare of having state bureaucracies such as the Department of Child and Family Services petitioning for the removal of children from the homes of smokers is, one can reasonably assume, just over the horizon.
And upon that slippery slope will follow other such abominations of social engineering—from punishing parents for keeping soda in the house, to fining them for having trans fats in the pantry, to removing children from homes where parental controls on the teevee or the web have not been activated.
Were these legislators truly concerned about children and health, why don’t they concentrate their efforts on making cigarettes illegal? Sure, that would cut out enormous tax revenue for their social engineering programs, but at least it would be principled.
You know. FOR THE CHILDREN!
Candles and Holiday Tree lights pose a hazard, too.
Funny comments can lead to beverages making contact with exposed wiring which can lead to electrocution. BAN HUMOR!
……..and don’t forget second-hand broccoli – the silent killer.
Were these legislators truly concerned about children and health, why don’t they concentrate their efforts on making cigarettes illegal? Sure, that would cut out enormous tax revenue for their social engineering programs, but at least it would be principled.
Yup. Tell that to King James II, and every other government since that’s treated tobacco like a “nice little earner”.
Minus state and federal excise taxes, a pack of butts would cost about $0.50
No chance you can get these slick urbanites to move back to California?
Funny how these bans start and trickle down. Last year, the City of San Clemente, banned smoking from all city beaches. At this point (46 days without smoking) I could care less. But when the ordinance passed, I was angry.
Trans fats you say, we”ll see whats next…..
That which is not forbidden is mandatory.
Just so long as they’ve got methadone in the fridge, man.
BECAUSE OF THE ROOT CAUSES!!!!
The next step is a ban on spanking kids, which raises an interesting question:
Could I spank my kid if I caught him smoking?
Only if he is a white male. And rich.
We are already (seriously) looking at legislation here that would criminalize spanking for children under 4.
I remain terribly conflicted on this. I live in a town that made all restaurants etc. smoke free, and I love it. I love to drop in and have a beer, and not come out smelling like an ashtray. The majority ruled, and our city is a better place for it.
Also, some years ago, it was summer, my son was waiting for heart surgery, and he was on oxygen with restricted breathing ability. Our new downstairs neighbors smoked constantly, and we had to shut the windows, and cook because we had no air conditioning.
We had no recourse but to move, so we did. An expensive process, with a medically vulnerable child. I think I would have liked to have had a law available.
I think. Like I said, I’m conflicted.
Smoking in the home- yech, but the kids can escape into the great outdoors, or shut their bedroom doors and open the windows.
Smoking in the car with parents who insist the windows remain up to keep their air conditioned comfort= suffocation. Prisoner status with air deprivation torture. Infants and toddlers don’t have a chance.
I know, I endured, and my lungs in xrays look as if I smoked a pack a day.
Did the legislature address flatuence? Because really, with the methane and its effects on both the air and global warming, it’s a nanny state two-fer.
One arguement is that it will reduce the risk of somebody falling asleep with a stoggie in their grasp and burn the building down. While it is a better arguement then the second hand smoke I am still not ready to agree with that kind of legislation.
I wonder if Hollywood types or the ACLU might be against that? That will be interesting.
At some point dont we have to quit trying so damn hard to fight againt natural selection. You can’t fix stupid(Stevexx,alphie,monkeyboy and the other pantywaste trolls) so why create legislation to save them from themselves? The lefties have progressed us to the point that we punish achievment and reward the lowest common denominator.
….or am I way off base here?
BECAUSE OF THE LOGIC
Another thing – what if the cigarette being smoked is medicinal marijuana?
What’s the equivalent of the “Bat Signal” for libertarians? Because this thread and a couple of the comments here are the lowest hanging fruit I’ve ever seen for some of our more libertarian minded friends to come in and pick.
One guy’s pleased that the “majority” has validated his desire to impose his preferences on private business owners. The other guy is trying to extrapolate his personal medical history onto the general population and thereby justify more government intrusion in private spheres.
Thats like waving a red cape in front of a bull, folks.
Hurry up. I’ve got popcorn popping and the ice is melting in my diet coke.
Percy–
Shhhhhh! Now you’re messing with my Guinness habit!
Libertarians, gotta love ‘em.
You guys develop your own internets yet?
National Safety Council statistics show that motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 1 and 24.
If the folks in Colorado were interested in protecting children and ensuring they enjoy (or even reach) a healthy adulthood, shouldn’t they ban children from riding in automobiles altogether, regardless of whether another occupant is smoking? Or will we eventually be forced by law to buy nothing but Volvos without ashtrays?
Like TODD, I’m a recent ex-smoker. But I’m more than a little alarmed by this on many levels.
What AFKAF said.
This problem is easily solved by technology. Every damn car on the planet will be fitted with a nicotine sensor wired to an ignition interlock. If any sorry bastard in the car lights up then whammo. The engine stops, ruining the transmission. Should the driver be able to maintain control and get the vehicle to the side of the road a siren will sound until the police arrive to haul the loser smoker off to the slammer. Should any children be present, they will immediately be adopted by Madonna.
This plan has been proven effective in Switzerland.
I’m a native of Los Angeles. My wife and I are beginning to decide where we’ll move once our third child reaches adulthood, in 10 years or so. Sounds like a long time, but it’ll be gone in a flash, and by then L.A. will be a strange hybrid of red carpet Hollywood glitz and Tijuana-esque slum, with 24-hr gridlock. In other words, it’ll be time to say “a-di-os!”.
This post has made me consider adding another category to our list of qualifications for ideal cities/states we can choose from, and that is: What percentage of recent migrants from other U.S. states have come from California? The answer to that will help determine what locales to avoid lest we end up in the very same situation we’re fleeing.
But wherever we go, it seems, we will always be serviced by cowardly politicians who justify their public service by championing issues like this one in Colorado. Has our PC culture, our fear of taking any risky and principled stand, brought our politicians to the point where they can only be productive looking after our health and our children? Jeff leaves out of this post a recent legislative effort here in CA to criminalize spanking of children under 4. Fortunately, the bill (sponsored by Democrat Sally Lieber) was beat back (no pun intended) by public opposition, it’ll be back, and will pass, because after all, it’s for the kids.
While I think a special place in hell should be reserved for these politicians, maybe it’s the monster we’ve created. Maybe the only way to do that job is to hit softballs. You look like you’re taking a stand for something, at least, but it’s something that’s recognized as being of good intention, and therefore acceptable as good law. Meanwhile, Rome burns.
I think this book addresses some of these issues. Not.
BTW- I think being a self-loathing-elitist-lefty can pose a serious threat to the mental health and emotional stability of not only the lefty but to those who he/she/heshe comes in contact with.
We must save them from themselves.
I need to go lie down, alphie just said something I agree with.
I don’t get alphie’s barb. I don’t think libertarians are averse to the government providing for defense. Isn’t that how the internet was born?
And would it not have come about by way of private industry at some point?
Still? My mother was a firsthand smoker for 40 years, and was an ex-smoker for 15 before she passed away. The doctors pronounced her lungs clean as a whistle long before she died.
Too bad about the untreated (until diagnosed) diabetes and the hereditary heart vulnerability (father dead at ~50), though. She only made it to 75.
“The other guy is trying to extrapolate his personal medical history onto the general population and thereby justify more government intrusion in private spheres.”
Sheesh. The personal medical history is from being forced to breathe cigarette smoke as a child. And from nothing else. If you think it a right to directly pollute the air of captive young kids, then I guess that’s just your politicized medical understanding of cause and no effect.
I would rather my chain-smoking parents had beat me than to force me to breathe the nasty contaminated air day in day out in air-conditioned hell. At least back then, no one really “knew” better. Now we know it’s harmful.
I say the same thing about Muslims forcing women to wear the veil. Those adolescents and women are getting poor quality air and that’s just not right. I’m willing to support a law against people imposing on others or submitting themselves to stifled, impaired breathing. But where stealing an adult’s good air is pretty low, stealing it from babies and young children degrades their health, mental function, and all of us in the end.
And, McGehee, good try, but I know cancer surgeons who’d find your testimonial dangerous. Some people don’t get cancer when exposed to friable asbestos, but would you justify daily exposing your kids to it based on some people’s good fortune or amazing invulnerability/ healing?
Many children exposed to heavy second-hand smoke suffer lung problems- such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc. which further scar the lungs. It’s cruel. Might as well lock them kids in the closet each night or feed them dirt and clay, as a parent with “rights.”
Amazing? Lungs heal. Mine did. I question your assertion, from behind a pseudonym with an email address that may or may not be real, that yours have not.
Jesus Christ, he’s like Waterboy, but with air….
Settle down, Bobby Boucher and tell me how humans ever reproduced and evolved living in those smokey, stuffy ol’ caves and huts?
Maybe I’m thinking about it wrong, but my interpretation is based on the notion that the internet would be classified as military spending that does not directly promote the national defense, and so would be out.
Then again, I tend to think of libertarians as the folks who would pull the plug on free and public education. Anarchists without all the broken windows.
McGehee,
Do you wish to email me?
Yes, my lungs still have scarring from the secondary bronchial infections and such, which is more problematic than, say, superficial scarring from parental punishment abuse… Guess it’s OK to inflict damage on kids as long as many of them might eventually heal?
Or have been activated, if they’re the wrong filters.
Do you have figures on how many of them don’t?
Also, I just noticed this from your previous comment:
How dangerous? War-crimes-tribunal dangerous?
Munchausen Syndrome with complications of Mystic Fibrosis.
It’s the new Princess and the Pea story:
“I am just soooo sensitive that any impurities in my environment cause me great distress! E-mail me and I’ll tell you all about it….”
My dad smoked my entire childhood. Sometimes even in the car with the windows only open a crack (during winter)!
As an aside, during those car rides, my negligent parents often had the temerity to allow me to ride without a seatbelt on. On the floor boards in the back. Or in that funky space between the back seat and the rear window. Talk about criminal negligence, eh? Oh, the cruelty!
I don’t plan to blame him if I ever come down with some lung issues.
Its borderline creepy that you appear to blame yours.
Hmm. I’d disagree with the idea that the internet is military spending that doesn’t / didn’t directly promote the national defense. I mean, wasn’t it devised as a way coordinate internally?
But anyway,the point is moot—as I think the private sector would have come up with something similar by now.
McGehee, now you’re just funning. Nothing’s dangerous unless it rises to the level of war crimes? Lol, an all this time I told my children to look before they crossed the street. Hell, they shouldn’t have to wear seatbelts in the car or a helmet on their bicycles and I shouldn’t have to lock up the poisons away from the little ones or make sure they don’t eat broken glass.
Gray, your logic and psychological insight are astounding. I vote Republican, take reasonable care not to pour poisons into my gardening soil and tell environmental groups I’ll contribute to them when they start protesting for more nuclear power and worry about Global Gravity which causes mankind’s footprint to be so much heavier…
Ha….
So you exercise personal responsibility: How come you want gov to enforce the smoking thing if you value personal responsibility?
What about loud noise/music, which is proven to impair hearing? When a cop sees a car, radio blaring, driving down the street with kids in it, should he pull them over?
Better yet: a minivan driving down the street with the little darlings in the backseat with headphones on, watching a DVD – should the cop pull the minivan over to see what the volume setting is?
Don’t even get me going on the issue of sedentary kids, and enforcing exercise. God, the slippery slope is more fun than smoking was.
Isn’t for kids,
You’re missing the whole point. Today it’s your issue, tomorrow it’s someone else’s, and many possibilities of these were shown in this thread. Your bugaboo is being addressed by the Aurora councilman – but who else’s is going to get addressed tomorrow? And where does it stop?
The fact is – if you have kids, and choose not to expose them to second hand smoke, good for you. You’re showing responsibility. However, it’s really NOT your issue if someone else doesn’t follow your rules. And please don’t get me started on health care costs being shared by all – that system’s not set up right either, and if it were, that’d be a moot point also.
The fact is that this is a symptom of nannyism gone amok. When will it stop? Will there be any freedoms to do what one wants when it DOES stop?
TV (Harry)
Fuck the children. They’re a bunch of damn little assholes anyway.
Mr. McGehee: Might I recommend you research the difference between anecdote and statistical trend?
Internets were developed to protect this hallowed country. Which means it is enumerated in the Constitution. Try again.
Percy—speaking of methane, has it ever occured to you that Jupiter and Saturn are basically massive–and I mean MASSIVE—farts? I guess its just as well we haven’t met the native inhabitants yet…..
When I was a child, I had severe asthma and allergies. I frequently would be stuck in cars, also, with 3-4-5 adults puffing away, all the windows up. I remember sometimes it was pretty hard to take. If I complained—rarely—a window would be opened a crack.
Now, interestingly, my lung issues went away once I stopped smoking, 30 odd years ago. I have quit several times but basically I like smoking. So, that’s that. Nor have I ever been seriously ill in that time frame.
I do think, in retrospect, that smoking limits in offices and restaurants are tolerable. If I need to do work that requires a lot of concentration I will usually work out of my hole in the wall at home, where I can smoke whenever I want.
The one limit that does seem absurd to me is banning smoking in bars. I mean, tobacco and alcohol go together like bacon and eggs. Another natural is coffee and tobacco.
I think it’s a great pity that one cannot have a coffee shop, a bar, or even a restaurant where you can light up if you choose too. I think that is too invasive of individual rights.
I think limiting the tobacco exposure of your children or children in general is just common sense, and I always tried to do that. I don’t need the police to make me love my kids.
There is a certain amount of hysteria about cancer and about tobacco. Yes, there are numerous people who die from the Big C, some because they smoke, and some because they don’t. The real idea here is that the people who get cancer who have never smoked must have been exposed to second hand smoke. I consider that silly, and also, dishonest. There are enough environmental pollutants under many circumstances that can cause cancer. But banning cigarettes, well, that’s easy.
Another factor that tends to get left out of this is that many (I think even most) cancer deaths directly attributed to tobacco occur in the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and ‘80’s, IOW, at a point where your body (and mind) is breaking down anyway. Yes, I enjoy being alive, but look at Reagan: he quit smoking when he was in his ‘40’s, and as a reward, he got to spend the last 10-15 years of his life in an Alzheimer’s fog. I know if I had to pick one or the other, I’d rather check out before my time.
Don’t smoke. Never have, never will (or if I do, at least I’m going to get high). But banning smoking in bars is just plain stupid. Like we’re going there for our health….
For now. Because there are a growing number of “concerned citizens” who find banning smoking in private residences “tolerable”.
I can remember when air travel was fun, because you could smoke. And drink. Get to the airport early, get a bit lit amidst the rebuffers in the bar, get on the plane, continue the party. Those were the days! I loved flying back then. Now it’s just one big prison visit.
Yeah, I’m aware. Well, before the anti-smoking zealots declare every space a “smoke free” zone, I would imagine that they would first ban cigarettes entirely. I’d like to see that. It would be Prohibition all over again. “Smokeasy” anyone?
I really don’t understand people who make it their life’s work to interfere in other people’s lives, whether it be tobacco, booze, many drugs, or speech or (victimless) conduct issues. I try to avoid such people and make sure I don’t vote for ‘em. What else can I do?
mishu,
You guys got a rationalization for everything.
At least you’re not as bad as tenured professors at public schools using the internet to hype libertarianism.
That’s like a 600 pound guy selling an exercise video.
Me and DG agree on something, who’d a thunk it?
You know, while we’re at it, let’s start fining all those parents with fat kids. Which is more dangerous, second-hand smoke (most parents do at least crack a window, or smoke in another room), or obesity starting at age five?
‘Cause, ya know, I see an awful lot of fat kids about.
I never smoked (my mom did, in the car and in the house, and in front of me – hell, she even smoked POT in front of me), don’t care for the fumes, but I have the sense to get up and MOVE if someone is smoking nearby. If a joint is to smokey, I don’t go in. Personal choice, man.
Gray,
There’s personal responsibility and then there is its absence at the expense of young children who aren’t old enough to seek refuge, remedy, etc. There isn’t any consistency over what we socially and legally control and don’t, but the fact remains that certain behaviors toward or negligence of children are deemed unlawful. You and I, you and virtually everyone here and I, simply draw the line differently, I suppose. Someone above said he thought the ‘No smoking’ rules in work environments reasonable. Yeah, me, too. But that’s for adults. What about young kids having to breathe heavy second-hand smoke and monoxide? Tough for them?
While we’re about it, are all of you OK about your babies and young kids subjected to heavy second-hand smoke for most of the day or in environs they can’t walk away from, such as car trips? If not, why not?
This is a good primer on the intertubes. In the early stages there was no clear military application, although I suppose the hope was that should the theory pan out it would prevent a crippling strike on our communication networks by linking together many smaller networks which could still work if one segment was disabled.
It didn’t have actual military applicability until later, when the scientists involved could split the network into military and non-military segments.
So perhaps alphie’s idiot bona fides are still intact, as are mine.
In any case, I believe you are right, Jeff, when you state that private industry would have worked it out in any case.
Libertarianism: The problem is that you are basing your moral indignation on a status that is unverifiable on the Internet.
Everyone has their hobby horses, and I guess exposing kids to smoke is yours.
You’re not going to find anyone here who (seriously) wants to blow smoke into infant’s faces. And your correlation of burqa-wearing with smoking is flat idiotic, although it may square the circle in Colorado (“Burqas banned because in Colorado because of Public Health risk!”)
The problem is that you seem to want to involve the police in ensuring that parents don’t fuck up. That’s a very invasive and obnoxious way of handling this kind of problem. I can guarantee you that most small children will be more traumatized by seeing their parents in cuffs than by being exposed to second hand smoke.
Let it go.
I’m sorry, but that is completely impossible without extraneous pathology.
I don’t think you could say the internet would have happened without government money, DG.
Some very determined people drove the project forward.
I see libertarians as people who don’t mind using stuff the government produces, they just don’t want to pay their share of production costs.
Does driving on public roads fit under the same excuse as the internet?
Do you know what libertarian means?
Have you ever read the Constitution?
Apparently not.
Yet you want to use gov power to set it as you see fit.
Because it’s easier to force us to behave than it is to admit you had shitty parents.
Grow up. Get over it and leave people alone.
Yeah. I smoke a pipe every evening and occasionally cigars. I have a 4 month old and a 9 year old.
I grew up with parents and grandparents who smoked. I’m a competitive powerlifter and a runner. I’m in the National Guard.
I have fond memories of my folks and grandparents when I smell cigarette and pipe smoke. Tough luck for you.
It’s not my fault your parents sucked. Leave me alone.
Like I’m supposed to stop smoking cigars ‘cuz his parents took turns blowing smoke in his face and calling him a whiney little bitch….
It ain’t the smoke that was your enemy. Cigarettes don’t light themselves y’know.
Now you’re on some kind of dumbass Holden Caufield, Catcher in the Rye mission to save kids of getting over your own problems.
TW: myself57? I like the smell ‘cuz I liked by parents ‘cuz I’m not a whiney little bitch.
Thanks all for your civil replies!
We used the “internet” to share 3D data of protein structure back in the day. 2400 baud was fast back then; yet misrably slow. I thought the earliest universities used it to share astronomical data.
I surrender to DG’s link for accuracy.
Eat my smoke!
You know an idea is really stupid when its too stupid for Tauer to endorse.
What exactly showed up on your radiographs to indicate excessive smoking?
Honestly I’ve always thought of the internet as an in-home pr0n delivery system. The rest is merely icing on that cake.
But please don’t tell my wife.
DWB
My first modem was 300 baud. The one where you took an analog phone off it’s cradle and jammed it into 2 rubber holes.
Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why I associate the internet with dirty, dirty images.
Sorry everyone, I am going to have to submit all your lungs for a digestion analysis – once I have them dissolved, I’ll let your heirs know what I find…line up over there please.
Heck, I remember what a debate took place when not having your seat belts fastened was made a “primary”. Probable Cause for everyone!
Oh, and JIm in KC – I remember flying from O’Hare to Schipol in a KLM plane full of smokers. And I can still drive myself to a murderous rage remembering it…
What I want to know: when did the opportunity to a public education become an obligation to a public education? Why did I have to put up with know-nothing trolls in classrooms because it was apparently unconstitutional or some shit to kick them out because they had a right to a public education, whether they wanted one or not.
I know this is off topic, sorry, but I am drunk as hell and this is where this thread led me.
It’s not my fault.
Go back and read it again.
Since I was responding to someone who was arguing from personal anecdote in the first place, might I suggest you kiss my ass?
Fuck all you smokers. Worse than Scientoligist heroin addicts. Nobody cares if you or your kids die.
You are arguing for the right to burn something and send your fumes out onto the public, and you are dumb assholes, and I have decided that I hereby want you officially repressed.
Crikey, I can’t randomly fire a pistol out the window, or drive on the sidewalk, dumb shit. And whining about seat belt laws is just retarded. Yeah, I grew up clambering around in the car, too. And people didn’t used to pasteurize foods, either. Your point?
When you idiots refuse to keep all of your shit in the same sack, don’t whine when people get sick of your shit and make you do it.
I hope one day to run across a Liberaltardian who is not just a Retardian.
And then I’ll back over his ass.
Cool. I guess you are against the law outlawing smoking in cars with kids.
I’ll bet you believe in Global Warmism too.
Thank God I quit. Coulda gone real bad for me.
That’s called ‘organic’ now.
I’m blowing fragrant english pipe smoke in your face right now….
I’ll have to bring a pipe to the Blogger Bash tomorrow. F**king nanny state bureaucratic mentality will soon turn us all into Belgians.
The correct answer is obvious. Just extend the proposition to its extreme.
Starting from somewhere in the middle, working forward and back:
We, as parents: inflict college debts on our children; they stress and accept some position less than their potential; we coerce them to accept our values; they get married; we ride roughshod over their judgements during those teenage years; they get in car accidents; they scrape their knees; they catch avoidable illnesses; we usher them through their painful birth experiences; they get old and die.
We inflict all this pain on THE CHILDREN. So, the Marcotte introduced bill: “Don’t punish yourself,” will be the ultimate in avoiding anything possible that can go wrong in a person’s life: by not having that person.
‘Course, then we miss all the good stuff too. Maybe them there libertarians have something.
If you think it’s bad now, just wait until we get universal healthcare.
Bane,
I bet you’re the same guy that wants to legalize pot, right?
Perhaps you will feel better when we are all covered in helmets, bubble-wrap and kevlar, locked in rubber rooms. Filtered air of course.
Our diets carefully restricted to doctor prescribed meals with strict calorie limits.
Completly free of items small enough to put in your mouth, or pointed in any way.
Those athourized to drive must, before starting their golf cart equipped with full roll cage and 5 point harness, submit to a medical diagnosis to screen out anyone not following dietery law, before donning their fireproof suit and crash helmet.
more prohibited activities:
rollerskating
skydiving
rock climbing
competitive sports
horse riding
swimming
I just can’t wait til we live in a gauranteed safe world!
alphie:
I’d suspect that alphie was confusing libertarians with anarchists but since we are talking about alphie, I’ll just assume that he is arguing in bad faith/trolling.
OT: I also started out with a 300baud modem, in my case it was attached to my Commodore 64.
no you don’t. That is one of the dumbest fucking things I have read.
Alas, poor Yorick, you know me not.
So how do you all feel about pregnant women smoking, drinking and/or doing drugs? How much different is that from smoking in close proximity to children?
Hey, fuck you too. I mean, who are you anyway? Nobody.
Pregnant women shouldn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs until after the abortion.
Compuserve is the ‘internet’ private industry was giving us. Shudder.
Seriously: we are dealing with human beings here.
Women who want to have babies usually want their babies to be healthy, and better than they are, and better than their dumbshit husbands.
They know that if they smoke baby will get a lower APGAR score, so, they often stop, but nobody’s perfect. They usually cut drinking way down, because they know that can hurt the baby. Most people don’t “do drugs.”
Women do all kinds of weird things when they’re pregnant. Such as putting headphones on their belly so the baby can listen to Mozart or Bob Marley. Whatever.
Let’s leave them alone. So much of this is common sense! Yet a pregnant woman who occasionally drinks or smokes while preggers is immediately equated with the mother of a crack baby.
Your ignorance is surpassed only by your arrogance.My parents smoked nonstop. Occasionally they would take a breather to beat the shit out of me and my sister in a drunken rage.
My parents could have hot-boxed me every day with 10 packs for all I care. However, I could have done without the mental, emotional, and yes, physical damage(superficial my ass you fucking prick).
Yeah, and now look at it. This thing kicks ass, doesn’t it?
Its the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.
There is no comparison.
Has anybody here noticed that all these Liberal Lawmaking efforts in Colorado only started after Jeff bought a house there, becoming a Land Owner (which makes it harder to Vote With Your Feet), and a Real Estate Taxpayer (which gets him noticed by the Gummint)?
Sorta like the Al Gore Effect, ain’t it?…
I can’t say about the drugs, but back in the 40’s and 50’s and much of the 60’s, many women smoked and had a few nips while pregnant.
Then again, their offspring became the Baby Boomers, so perhaps this is proof that smoking indeed causes irreperable harm to the young’uns.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. It was all Al Gore…I mean before he went nuts.
I’m surprised though that you use the Internet at all Alphie, seeing as how it’s tainted by being developed by the military and all. Damn Militaristic-Fascists, just invented the thing so they could control us with porn.
Welcome to Colorado… This is the place where the police are incapable of finding and prosecuting murderers so they are expected to spend their time being hunting the tobacco criminals.
BTW: Why do the same people that demonize smoking tobacco support smoking pot. I’ve actually listened to some jacka$$ in the People’s Republic (excuse me, Boulder) discuss the hazards of tobacco and then extol the benefits of pot. Go figure….