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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site crystal.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!uwvax!crystal!shp
From: shp@crystal.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: LIGHTING UP
Message-ID: <462@crystal.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 16:35:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: crystal.462
Posted: Thu May 23 16:35:39 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 22:28:45 EDT
References: <3126@dartvax.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: The Life Is A Rock Foundation
Lines: 61

[Edited for retransmission]
>                This is a free, repeat, free country. If I wanna smoke in it I
> can. And do. 
>                                                              Oh, we'd cost you
> millions of dollars in medicare and welfare. Bullshit. We'd cost you even more
> if your state no longer got its revenue from its tobacco tax. 

	Sad.  But true.  The man DOES have a point.  However, how much is
    the other guy's state making on the federal subsidy for tobacco growers?

>                                                               Yeah, and you're
> polluting *my* air. Right. Then just get the hell away from me. If you're so
> concerned about the atmosphere stop driving your car.

	I don't have a car.  Piss off.

>                                                       A five-minute drive puts
> thousands of times more pollutants in the air than one cigarette. 

	People don't drive their cars in my terminal room/doctor's office/
    restaraunt/etc.

>                                                                   The one I like
> best is the one that says I'm going to kill myself. Great. That makes one less
> smoker in the world. All you guys should be bloody ecstatic.

	I am.  One of the basic rights of every human being should be the right
    to self-destruct.  If smokers started chainsmoking at the tender age of six,
    they'd probably be dead before passing on their chromosomes (and anyone
    genetically incapable of parsing the sentence "The Surgeon General has
    determined that smoking is hazardous to your health" -- or whatever it says
    -- probably ought not to).

>                                                                Look. You don't
> like my smoke? Get the fuck away from me. 

	Gladly.  But when you walk into the laundromat, where I must remain for
    another twenty minutes, and light up under the NO SMOKING sign, you're
    impinging on MY rights.  And stinking up my bedsheets.  And causing me to
    vomit on your shoes, when you walk over and breath that shit in my face as
    you try to cadge a dime for the dryer.  
	I don't mind your smoke, as long as it's YOURS.  But when you inflict
    it on me, I do.  Greatly.

>                                           If you're the kind of person who can
> see past the surface at the person behind the cigarette you won't.  But if you're
> the sort of superficial ass hole currently clogging the net who will judge me for
> the sole reason that I have a cigarette in my hand, I don't want you near
> me anyway.
>                                               --Ross

	I shall re-iterate.  I maintain that you DO have the right to smoke,
    drink, swear, drive, masturbate, and anything else that you want, as long
    as you don't force ME into the same boat with you.  You may be a really
    terrific person (and this flame isn't directed at you, personally, but
    the attitude you expressed is typical of what I run into from smokers who
    ARE obnoxious about it), and if you are, you're not going to breath that
    rot on me.  If you DO go around hacking on other people, then I don't care
    how many testimonial dinners you've been to, you're still an ass.

	=shp