Heavy-Handed Death Packaging

EDIT: I'm also going to directly link to the video I found here. CNN Video only works when it wants to and it's the worse video news I've seen on the Internet. Still, one could kindly say that they have a room for improvement.

I'm not crazy about smoking because I don't want the health risk. I've been raised all my life to never smoke cigarettes, but I still also believe in free will and individual choice.

I've always hated the idea of smoking bans. I think people who complain about smokers are just contributing to the softening of the world. I wouldn't smoke around children with still developing lungs (this is if I smoked, of course) but I don't see anything wrong with the way things used to be with separate sections in restaurants and things like that. I believe in smoking in bars and in private offices. I believe if you're renting from someone and that person is against smoking, that just means you have to suck it up and scrub your walls down with ammonia every few months.

But I also believe that there are just steps that go too far. In America, we're going through arguments about how far is too far with the government regulation of the market. Yet city by city and state by state is enforcing smoking bans. Now Canada and England has horrifying pictures on cigarettes to dissuade people from smoking? People are informed. There are warnings on the packages and people make their choices, but caveat emptor has to mean something eventually.

The man in the video does have a point. What if pictures of clogged arteries were plastered all over McDonald's? What if every bottle of Jack Daniel's came with a bandage so you can give it to your wife when you hit her in a drunken haze?

I believe tobacco is harmful. I believe it's dangerous. I believe it may even be a scourge. But I also believe the populace has been informed. It's still being informed. It's learning more and more about the health risks and it's making it's decisions. Some are just willing to risk their lungs and their lives for that nicotine fix. As unfeeling as it may sound, that's how free market works sometimes. Feel free to be upset with Big Tobacco. Feel free to sue Big Tobacco for selling poison to the masses. But if Arthur Miller were around today, it wouldn't be out of his reach to make this whole thing into a sequel to The Scarlett Letter.