Not in Front of the Kids

If smokers in movies set a bad example for the kids, what about smokers in real life? Stephanie Anderson Stroup, former "tobacco prevention coordinator" with the Deschutes County, Oregon, Health Department, defends a proposed ban on smoking in parks on educational grounds. "Our issue here is about modeling safe behavior and making Bend a safe place for kids," she says. "We have to start setting healthy norms in our community."

Stroup is not the first advocate of outdoor smoking bans to use this argument. Given the current agitation about obesity, it may be only a matter of time before fat people, too, are forbidden to show themselves in public.

[Thanks to Linda Stewart for the link.]

Comments

[Ron Hardin]

Joe Queenan once on Imus described an experiment walking the Central Park jogging path, the wrong way, smoking an ``area clearing'' cigar. I wonder if this is still legal. The self-rightous used to be confined to jogging paths, I guess, making it worthwhile.

[Junis]

The intellectually honest would always allow fat people to roam free in public - naked - so that they're hideousness can acto to scare people away from inhaling a plate full of fries.

[Tom]

Back in the mid 70s, National Lampoon published a hilarious history of the United States (so un-P.C. today that the editors and writers would surely be killed on sight) that described how Americans have always needed amd will always need some group of people to shit on. As each ethnic group reached our shores, they became the butt of jokes and abuse, until the next ethnic group came along and the previous group moved up the ladder. For instance, In a rare moment of sympathy on the part of WASPs, Puerto Ricans were allowed in to make blacks feel better. "Even Sambo needed a Sambo."

Since it is no longer acceptable to shit on people because of what they look like, where they're from, or who they pray to, we now must squat over those who do things we don't like.

Fat People, the New Niggers.

[Warren]

Porn, alcohol, tobacco, fat, and I'm sure caffeine is next, then maybe all meat. After that we can go after the real threat to human kind. I can't wait till we rid ourselves of the evil milk menace. Once we determine stop Bossie from bossing around our children, we will finally cast off the lactose yoke and walk free upon the earth.

[Hank]

What about the hairy people? By God they must be stopped! Walking about unabashedly in public in front of the children! All.... hairy!

[Plutarck]

Wow, I get to use a phrase I've just kept in my head for quite some time: child-proofing society.

The strange thing is that this is totally logical, actually - the big movement of modern culture, or at least the political culture/government, is that even adults can't make decisions for themselves; so really, it isn't about the "children" anymore - it's about all of us. We must all be protected from corrupting influences, for we are unable to shield ourselves from evil.

Hear No Evil
See No Evil
Speak No Evil

It's like a bad horror flick.

[Ira]

So long as it's to protect the kids ...
No, wait, I mean, so long as it's to fight terrorism ... No, wait, so long as it's not to offend another person's pheelings ... Wait, what was the question again?

[Pathos]

Now, now, Jacob.

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Fat people will be allowed to show themselves in public. They will merely be prohibited from eating fatty foods in public. They will have to huddle in the "fat section" out back with other obese persons, snarfing down Ho Ho's and other delectables.

There's nothing wrong with homosexuals as long as they don't have sex. There's nothing wrong with smokers, as long they don't light up. And there's nothing wrong with the obese, and long as they don't eat.

[PLC]

I would definitely be all for banning the display of fat people in public. How much more pleasant would a trip to the supermarket be if you didn't have to see the 800 pound fatso riding the tiny scooter and pushing a cart full of ice cream and frozen pizzas?

[Larry]

On the other hand, maybe Reason could use this issue to offer an alternative. How about encouraging the faculty to teach all the students to read well enough to understand tobacco warning labels?

[Douglas Fletcher]

Well children probably shouldn't have to know if their parents smoke in bed.

[Ira Weatheral]

So long as it's to protect the kids, no wait, I mean to fight terrorism, no wait,

what was the question?

[Jim]

I think I have the right as a parent to make everyone behave according to my moral standards so I never have to explain anything or encourage moral thought in my children, even though I had 100% control over the circumstances that led to their existence in the world. I thus assert my 'right' to completely abnigate the moral education of my children by letting the rest of the world be resonsible for teaching them right from wrong.

😉

[Lefty]

I noticed the advocate of this current issue was in a previously paid position of "tobacco prevention coordinator", probably paid for by the tobacco industry. Now that the states are diverting tobacco money into general revenue I suspect (hope) that we'll see less of this coordinated, well financed legal push to ban smoking.

Also, this is one of the few articles I've seen that spent any serious time looking at the other side of the secondhand smoke propaganda we've been fed.

[Plutarck]

WC: Perhaps we could eat them.

[Plutarck]

"Well children probably shouldn't have to know if their parents smoke in bed."

If you smoke after sex then you were doing it too hard, or you need a lower viscosity oil. I reccommend Quaker State or Penzoil.

[booty0]

I have to admit that the character Kelly, played by Jackie Earle Haley in the 1976 movie "The Bad New Bears" had a direct influence on my willingness to start smoking. I was 13. He was so cool, I wanted to be cool too. I finally quit after 25 years. I'm all about individual rights, but there is absolutely nothing positive that comes from smoking, nothing. It's all bad. Please don't market such a foul and dangerous habit to my children.

[Ira]

I bet 20 years after EVERYTHING is made illegal we'll have the drunkenest, smokeingest, fatest generation around.

In the early 70s in upper manhatten, the parks were full of junkies on the nod. These losers were so weird and sort of scary that I would never do heroin, no matter what. In the 90s heroin made a big comeback, in part because there weren't any bad examples to scare regular kids off it.

If our kids today don't see old people coughing out their lungs kin the parks, why will they think that smoking is bad, and not just tantalizingly forbidden?

[W.C.]

Look, the real problem is children. Wouldn't it just be easier to get rid of them?