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From: trisha@oddjob.UUCP (Trisha O Tuama)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Thank you for your flames
Message-ID: <751@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-May-85 18:50:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: oddjob.751
Posted: Sun May 26 18:50:59 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 07:37:19 EDT
References: <101@utastro.UUCP> <735@oddjob.UUCP> <1002@ames.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 31

> >The only problem with your reasoning (ie, I don't smoke in public)
> >is that you and all other smokers are forcing the rest of us to assume
> >the multi-billion dollar cost of your smoking tobacco:
> >
> 	Would you like to see this logic applied to junk food? Overeating?
> Booze? Sunbathing (skin cancer)? Skiing (my knee's getting better, thanks)?
> Promiscuity (health risks)? Need I go on?

Tobacco is the big killer -- it is the single most avoidable cause of
death in this country.  None of the other things you have mentioned even
comes close to matching the billions spent on repairing the damage 
caused by tobacco smoking, to say nothing of the money spend to ease
the agony of patients dying of lung cancer, etc.

> 	God help us when we lose our freedom to be wrong, to be stupid,
> and to act against our own best interests. I know no man is an island,
> and that I indirectly pay for the foolishness of others. But I'll pay
> that price willingly in return for the freedom to engage in a little
> foolishness of my own.

Calling your addiction "a little foolishness" is ludicrous.  

> 	I sometimes wonder if the really fanatic anti-smokers aren't
> secretly a little sorry that *all* us smokers don't die an early death
> from cancer or heart disease.

The overwhelming majority of smokers DO die an early death from the effects 
of smoking.  My father was one of them -- he was 56 when he died.

Trisha (get that stuff away from me) O Tuama