In tobacco-loving Virginia, bars give up the habit - Washington Times

In tobacco-loving Virginia, bars give up the habit - Washington Times

I know that there are many who don't smoke or don't like the smell of the smoke in bars and restaurants but there was always the choice as to whether to go into the bar or restaurant if it allowed smoking. So now the shoe is on the other foot thanks to the ever present, liberal-progressive Smoke Nazis. Those who smoke will have to make the choice as to whether to indulge in their habit or stay inside where it is warm. Equal treatment under the law is not mandated so those who have the habit will have to endure. They have, after all, a nasty, filthy habit so they deserve to be treated as second-class citizens.

I do love my cigars and don't like to smoke where I can't sit and enjoy my hour with Kipling's first love, thus I smoke less in the winter than in the warmer months. I've always thought that it was proper not to offend others with my enjoyment, for enjoyment, rather than habit, it is. But there is something exceedingly unfair about the way the "No Smoking" bans have been put in place. Like Global Warming, specious statistics were published and repeated often and loudly until they became unalterable "facts." Like Global Warming, tolerance was never an option. The only answer was the outright banning of that which was offensive to the Chardonnay crowd.

In the midst of this clamor by the perfumed set--after all, the perfume smelled better than cigarettes--along came the politicians with ideas on how to use the tax system to reshape society. They enacted a health bill to be funded largely by a tax on tobacco products for, as everybody already knew, tobacco products were the cause of all evil. This liberal-progressive campaign for ever more restrictive laws over the use of tobacco (as to when and where NOT to use) oddly enough coincided with the liberal-progressive campaign to allow the use of marijuana (everywhere). I guess the perfumed set finds that the smell of marijuana is complimentary to their perfumes and colognes.

In the end, however, I see my conservative values of personal choice and freedom gaining its' revenge. First, the ever more restrictive laws and taxes governing the use of tobacco will motivate more and more people to quit using tobacco. This combined with the natural mortality of unreformed, freedom loving, cigar enjoying people like myself, will cause a drastic drop in tax revenues so the politicians will be forced to rethink the funding of the State Children's Health Program (SCHIP). At that point they will switch the funding to either an increase in tax on all the non-smokers or maybe just a tax on perfumes and colognes. That will cause some consternation, I am sure, because liberal-progressives, being basically socialist in their mentality, will have to actually have to pay for things with their own money. Socialism, they will find, isn't much fun when you run out of other people's money.

Secondly, the liberal-progressive Smoke Nazis, as they bend over backwards to accommodate their liberal-progressive, marijuana-smoking compatriots in the pro-drug movement, will finally discover a truly very inconvenient truth: Marijuana, which burns much, much hotter than tobacco, is more destructive of lung tissue that tobacco could ever try to be. That proven bit of medical science has been out there all along but they've never bothered to discuss it probably, I suppose, because it takes away from the high. And then there is that thing with the munchies. The perfumed set will have to buy bigger clothes to accommodate their ever increasing, brownie-filled bellies.

I will be smiling when that happens. And hopefully still be able to sit on my front porch and enjoy my cigar and evening whisky.