Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Commissioners, smokers’ rights stop at my nose

In response to commissioners Pfeifer’s and Dunn’s idiotic comments over the past week about smoking, I would like to point out a few things that these worldly men may not know. First, Mr. Dunn in your comment, “If we tell people not to smoke, are we going to tell them not to drink as well?” Alcohol doesn’t float around in the air and get into everyone’s blood stream when I buy a drink. Also I have to be a certain age and hopefully be responsible enough when I go buy a drink. When someone smokes in an enclosed area he/she is affecting the lives of everyone around them. “We cannot tell people how to run their personal lives.” But when the smoker’s personal habits infringe on how I run my “personal life,” which person’s personal life wins? Are the smoker’s personal freedoms more important than mine? Commissioner Pfeifer, your comment in The Citizen “We’re being compared to California and Massachusetts, which are two places I don’t want to be compared to”: I’m not sure if the news has actually spread all the way to Fayette County yet, (as we rank 50th out of 50 states in SAT scores, reading, etc., but we do average 3.5 TVs per household). Second-hand smoke is more dangerous than the smoke that is inhaled. These two states actually did something to help the health of their citizens so I most certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with them. There is nothing better than going into a restaurant and shelling out $40 to $50 per meal and have someone three tables over smoking the whole meal, not in another room, but some imaginary line that the restaurant has drawn on the floor. I believe that it may be going too far to ban it from restaurants because this would have a huge impact on the local economy. But what needs to be done is make smoking “rooms” with superior ventilation and other amenities (like signs they can wear that say I don’t care about my health or anyone I’m sitting with). As a parent who has a child with pediatric pulmonary disease and who has watched a father pass away from lung cancer because of smoking I have seen first-hand the effects that nicotine has on people. The people of Fayette County elected you to not duck the big issues. We are talking about the health of our citizens. A.G. VanLandingham has stepped up; will you?

J.N. Clausen

Tyrone, Ga.