Now this is something I have been wanting to put into writing for a while now. Recently certain groups of people, namely smokers and fox-hunters (but I’m not going to talk about that), have been campaigning against various degrees of bans on their activities. I personally don’t agree with either but I shall try and keep this aside. What I want to do is focus upon what I see as some of the very dubious justifications used by the participants.
The first one of two I’m going to talk/(moan) about is the one used by smokers. In the Times recently (can’t remember which day) the age-old argument of ‘why do smokers get to take smoking breaks but I don’t get fresh-air breaks’ resurfaced. I don’t want to get too deep into it but one of the justifications used by the smokers interested me. Apparently smokers only spend around 10 minutes three times a day (or whatever) smoking and the rest of the time working solidly with no interruption of wavering. The argument that ‘non-smoking colleagues chat to their mates so I can smoke’ doesn’t work unless all smokers only have smokers as friends and are capable of super-human acts of concentration. Whilst some of the 10 minutes smoking might replace other breaks I’m fairly certain not all of it does.
The second point is choice. Smokers say, ‘it’s my choice’. The point being as John Donne said “No man is an island, entire of itself”. I find cigarette smoke entirely unpleasant and I really hate people smoking near me. What choice do I have in that? I accept that a ban in pubs and clubs would be silly but anywhere else it would make my life more pleasant, again not quite the point though however I think ethics is on my side since even secondary smoking causes health problems. The idea of choice is fine until real life comes into the equation. I don’t want to have to breathe in other peoples cigarette smoke even if they would choose to do it themselves. In an age when one can’t even choose to play loud music late at night without having environmental health coming round how is smoking allowed? I might just try that next time someone is smoking next to me….
