Jump to full article: Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News, 2009-03-01
Author: Walt Rubel
Intro: The New Mexico Senate last week passed an expansion to the state's smoking ban that prohibits people from smoking in their own vehicles if they have children as passengers.
"Small children are not in a position to object when someone is smoking in a vehicle in which they are passengers," said Sen. Bernadette Sanchez, D-Albuquerque, chairwoman of the Senate Conservation Committee and sponsor of the bill. . . .
this is a really bad bill. It adds to the Dee Johnson Indoor Air Act, passed in 2007, which already prohibits smoking in just about any public building except those with craps tables and slot machines.
After all, where's the fun in gambling away the family paycheck if you can't chain-smoke at the same time? . . .
Can't the same arguments used to pass this bill also be made to prohibit smoking in the home if children are present? Will it be long before the government has cigarette smoke sensors in every home and a smoking police to haul off those miscreants who dare light up in their own living room?
No group in America these days, save for perhaps Wall Street CEOs, is more ostracized than smokers. I've never been one, but have many friends who are. I even work with a few here at the Sun-News. And they're not so horrible. Really.
Here's the rub. When you outlaw common, everyday activities, you make outlaws of common, everyday people.
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