Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Iowa's Smoking Ban

By Dana Boone

As we all know (but like to forget) smoking is a serious addiction that can be very destructive -- not only to those who smoke, but to others around them who don't have a choice.

There is still a lot of discussion about how Iowa's new smoking ban will be enforced and people looking for ways to go around it. Instead of looking for ways to quit.

If smokers spent time in an hospital ICU with someone battling a smoking-related illness, I guarantee you, they could not hold onto the idea that smoking is a right to be championed. That idea would disappear as quickly as a puff of smoke.

Smokers don't need to scrable to find NEW places to indulge; what they likely need is help (and prayers) so they can quit for good.

1 comment:

Denise V. Murphy said...

I quit smoking for nine years and than one day I went back to the pack. It was my choice. I had a Father who died from heart and lung problems and he had smoked for years. I watched him struggle to breath and put him in the hospital more times than I care to think about. I have lost three uncles to lung and brain cancer and aunts to ovarian and breast cancer. I know what I am risking by having that puff but it is my choice. I bought the pack and resent the fact that smokers are treated like we have no rights and that smoking a cigareete is a crime now. I work at a Walmart that did away with our smoking lounge and we have to smoke in our cars now or at the back of the building. We can't be with in 50 feet of the building, even in our ouwn cars. We have to walk out the front doors and clear around to the back to smoke why snide non-smokers make cracks about us. If we want to quit smoking that should be our right to say when. As for poluting a non smokers ir and their having no choice, what about Walmart being a giant babysitter for parents who don't watch their kids, the constant screaming of spoiled children who don't get their way, snide comments from customers who think that as employees of Walmart we have to take whatever they dish out. Yah, I work in the public eye and some days all that stands between me and going postal on some smuck who is taking is day out on me is smile and take a couple puffs to get my head on straight again and I'm not the only one. Pllease don't tell me God will help me either as I don't need preached at anymore than this new law is about. Lets see what the non-smokers think when one of their rights aimed at them goes up in a puff of smoke, forgive the pun!