“The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power --even the smallest and silliest kind of power -- out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class --the class that knows what´s good for us better than we do.”

Sounds like NY Bloomy Burg

Laws and control...that's what our government has become...nothing but laws and control. Which by the way is NOT what made America Great. Freedom is what made America great.

Amen to J Carlton.

If knowing what is good for us defines "dangerous class" then ipso facto is it not Parents that are the real dangerous class. Blowing smoke into someones face or filling a room with it is not an act of freedom but terror and actual, if but slow murder. PS: So is the insensitivity to global warming, forest destruction etcetera. We have killed off species and have saved some by reform, now wake people to our inhumnity to the non-human world. Oh! the hubris (wanton arrogance, recklessly inconsiderate) of that class who think they know more than everyone else and ignore people like Galileo, smoking and cancer researchers, weather and environmental sceince, and Al Gore.

Good points all Waffler...except fro Gore he is an opportunistic charlatan getting rich on falsehoods.

Smokers should be free to smoke wherever they want, as long as I can have to right extinguish their smoke without incurring censure, i.e. getting a slap in the face. And of course I should have the right to require business owners to install air handling equipment that would prevent me from inhaling any of the smoke already there. I look at smoking this way; someone has every right to own a gun but they can't walk into Walmart and shoot at the manikins for "practice".

The only real, statistically significant danger in societies are the arrogant, egotistical, intellectual elite class who yearn to be the dictators of other peoples lives. When they get the dictatorial control they so lust after, they find that the peasants are rebellious and they must be punished (for their own good of course) and when a little punishment doesn't work, a little more will be applied. Finally, they discover the only way to really control them is to kill them. Death is always the dictator's final solution.

Ken is unfortunately right. The issue is not smoking, it is power and control. Each new precedent is an excuse for another usurpation. Plus, the ruling class are hyporites when it comes to obeying their own rules. Soon exhaling CO2 will require a license.

You really don't care what I think for it seems your interest lies with a few that comment on the quotes daily, and occasionally argue with one another. I am wondering how wide spread this is...since so little is offered. Abigail Adams