Reply #53: Hmm.

[joshcryer]

"I enjoy giving my grandkids ice cream cones. I enjoy it more when they drop it on the ground, but that's another flame war."

You do realize diet is the #1 contributing factor to the USAs life expectancy being below some third world countries, don't you? I hope you don't feed them soda and french fries, too. Otherwise your complaining about "unhealthy smoke" is completely misplaced. Japan has twice as many smokers as the US per capita, yet the US has 10 times as many smoker related deaths. It's not "just" cigarette smoke. It's diet and pollution that are much more pressing factors.

This is not to say it doesn't kill at all, merely that in the USA the environmental constraints are significantly different to prove that cigarette smoke alone is not the sole contributing factor, thus the hatred for cigarette smokers is clearly utterly misplaced.

"Have you ever been around children? Were you oozed a fully grown adult from some sort of tube?"

You take a kid to McDonalds they aren't ordering a salad.

"So you're saying that since I can't smoke in a hospital, then therefore the state can do anything?"

No, I'm saying that if the state can mandate your behavior with regards to one percieved unhealthy scenario, then there is no argument why they can't do it in other very similar scenarios.

In other words, if the state doesn't want you blowing unhealthy smoke in your kids face, it would then be completely justified in not wanting you to give your kid an unhealthy ice cream cone covered in dirt.