I am a smoker: I’ve known love, I’ve known heartache, just like everyone else, yet I am allegedly different.
I am a smoker: I’ve made choices, some good, some bad, just like everyone else, yet I am allegedly different.
I am a smoker: I like animals, and the natural world around me, just like everyone else, yet I’m allegedly different.
I am a smoker: I like the arts, music, cinema, good food, just like everyone else, yet I’m allegedly different.
I am a smoker, I treat all with courtesy and respect until proven unworthy of either, just like most other people, yet I am not afforded the same courtesy.
In October those people who believe they know how I should best live my life will once again try to force me into a lifestyle I do not want against my will, it is not sufficient for them to deny me social access with my peers in safe and comfortable surroundings, they will instead claim I am a danger to society, the same society that I chose to defend at risk of my life, a simple thank you would have sufficed but no, they had to remove the freedoms I defended, the same freedoms my predecessors fought and died for in two great wars.
The use of legislation to impose a lifestyle that is not wanted is governmental abuse, those who support such abuse are no better than a National Socialist government who ruled abusively. It is clear that those who died fighting National Socialism died in vain, their surviving comrades a significant number of whom are smokers and have been all their lives, the smokers who came after them and now it seems those who choose to vape, or those who are over the prescribed weight or drink a little more than the recommended limits will become subject to National Socialist policies that will force them to change a lifestyle that they enjoy.
This nation condemned National Socialism. Our judiciary along with the allied nations tried and executed most of those who made the laws, those who enforced those laws, the media who supported those laws, the Doctors who used them for their own ends, mistreating or refusing to treat whole sections of the community; worse still they euthanized those who could not take care of themselves. They punished the Military for their part in this great human tragedy. Rightly so, for they are supposed to defend their own people not assist their government to systematically abuse them.
I stand against any policy that places one group over another, that creates inequality, that places the lives of a minority at risk of abuse, even at risk of their very lives. There is no place for such legislation in any country, there is no place for any organization that promotes inequality or hatred be they within or outside of government. I am but one of a growing minority who grow less tolerant of those politicians, charities, and other organizations that seek to control every facet of our daily lives.
Are you?
Photo credit: AP Photo/Putnam