Invalid argument against the smoking ban. "Changing the law to make something previously legal illegal will make previously legal things illegal."

Sigh. I struggle with the smoking ban. On the one hand... I am firmly convinced that smoking is the exact moral equivalent of taking a bag of asbestos fibres out with you and blowing them at people. Because of this, I have no sympathy for any argument based on the enjoyable effects people may get from it, and/or on any byproducts of their addiction. So it's relaxing, so you get the jitters if you stop. These are irrelevances. If it wasn't harmful to anyone else, I don't care even if you hate every second of it; I'd still let you do it if you wanted to (or perhaps should phrase that as "if you didn't want help to stop", considering we're dealing with addiction).

The civil liberties vs. totalitarian state issue is where I'm struggling. Because there's no doubt about my own feelings on the issue: I want smoking to be banned. More accurately, I want it to disappear. I also want various other things to disappear, including people who repeat a word or phrase loudly three or more times in certain circumstances (it sets off my autist panic response) and Simply Red. If these didn't exist my life would contain fewer things to spoil my mood. Nona dolorosa.

Well, we know what a country is like that's ruled on gut feelings and I Want To Ban What I Don't Like. Freakin' terrifying.

You can't legislate for considerate behaviour. That's the central thing as I see it.

Smoking has been singled out; there have been no sensible moves to ban petrol cars and other poison-factories (taxing them off the road isn't a complete solution unless you invest in public transport - the rail network in particular urgently needs its prices sharply regulated). Then again, I don't know that it's wrong to single smoking out; it's an easy target because it's such a foul habit. But is it something the government needs to wade in and ban? Grr.

The smoke that bothers me, personally, the most won't even be banned, because most times I come into contact with a faceful are when I'm out walking along the road.

So I think I should be at least partly opposed to the ban. Or maybe it's the right-wing author I've been enjoying recently and I'll feel differently after I've read a few Iain M Bankses. I can't trust my fogged brain even to think clearly at the moment, which is a perfectly hateful state for a deitything that considers itself at least semi-rational.

I love Germany.

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Germany rocks.