Monday, April 9, 2007

I can't stand smoking

Everyone who knows me is aware to the fact I can't stand smokers near me. Just try lighting a cigarette 10 meters behind me, and in 15 seconds I'll ask you (politely) to put it out.

Israeli law forbids smoking in public buildings and requires a non-smoking section in restaurants to be completely separated from the smoking section. The problem is that as is the case with other laws, this one is mostly ignored.
You can go to a restaurant, sit in the non-smoking section, and 2 meters from you someone sits at the bar, smoking. Going out to a bar/pub is completely out of the question, unless you like smelling like an ash-tray at the end of the evening.

Some cities in Israel try to take example from New York and other smoking-free cities in the world, and forbid smoking in pubs, and naturally this raises an opposition from the smokers.
But as it turns out there are nice people out there, who desire to be forced to avoid smoking while going out, and they criticize that opposition:

"If smoking would have been invented today, every normal country would have outlawed it. Most countries in the world are already taking steps in that direction, trying to correct an historic error, and protecting people without capability of protecting themselves.
But Taub, for some reason, wants to kill the wrong messenger. Smoking in pubs, according to him, is one of the "Tel Aviv pleasures" the new law is about to destroy.
The law, in Taub's view, is a kind of dictatorship on behalf of non-smokers."If 100 people wish to kill each other", he says "no one has the right to interfere. Let us commit suicide in peace. Get out of our sight, and leave the lighter..."

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