Smoking: Worst Goddamned Habit Ever

Smoking has become a hot-button issue as bans slowly creep across the landscape. I cynical enough to believe that the government cares about this because smoking is so goddamned expensive on a public health level; workers get sick, the workers' compensation system gets swamped, and the complaints must be endless. I'd prefer smoking be banned everywhere except private residences, and that health care be denied for smoke related illness contracted due to tobacco use (tough to enforce, but put it on the books).

Do people actually believe they have a right to smoke? Smoking in public or quasi-public (privately owned bars) facilities is a legitimate area of public concern. Second smoke affects a broad spectrum of public interests; employee rights/safety, nuisance law, environmental law (trash and smoke), safety issues, etc. There are no "smoking rights" that I'm aware of, nor should there be.

I am stunned that people believe that the proper employee response to an unsafe work environment is "to quit". That is nonsensical, eighteen century bullshit that I hoped we had discarded by the late 1930s. On a personal level, I find smoking to be a vile, nasty habit that I equate with continously farting in my general direction while simultaneously ejecting radioactive waste onto my skin and clothes. If you are going to smoke, the proper etiquette would be to ask every person who could possibly inhale your noxious effulgences if they object.