Dear Editor,
January 6th”s article, “Rocky is targeting smoking…” quotes Mayor Anderson as saying smokers “look like animals in a zoo” in the fishbowl pens that he and others have forced them into.
If he’s so annoyed at seeing that image, why doesn’t he simply get rid of those pens and allow for reasonable smoking areas at the airport?
The argument that their secondary smoke would harm others in that setting is so ridiculous as to be laughable.? The air terminals get their “fresh air” from outside… out where the planes are taking off and landing.
If we look at two of the primary “pollutants” in tobacco smoke, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides, and compare their amounts with those emitted by the planes, the absurdity of Antismokers’ concerns becomes obvious.?
Using data from the EPA and the Surgeon Generals’ Reports it’s easy to compare those amounts. A single 747 takeoff/landing emits carbon monoxide equal to 375,000 cigarettes.
It also spews out 17 *million* cigarettes’ worth of nitrogen oxide.
The “clean, fresh air” that the airport sucks into its terminals all day long contains the equivalent of hundreds of millions of cigarettes’ worth of air pollution… and yet Mayor Anderson feels it’s necessary to either keep smokers locked up in a pen or ban them altogether.
When Cynthia Hallett, the director of the extremist Antismoking group ANR says “Airport managers are finding that ventilation is not an effective option in providing their employees and customers a healthier environment,” she is lying, pure and simple.
It’s not “airport managers” that are “finding” this, it’s extremist Antismokers that are telling them this… and sadly, too many of them believe it without examining the facts.
The real motivation for smoking bans has never had much to do with “protecting nonsmokers” despite the fact that such a claim has been loudly made for the last 20 years or so.
It’s only now however that the extremists pushing for total bans have become comfortable in admitting what they’ve been fighting for all along: the total abolition of public smoking in an attempt at designed social engineering.
Americans have fought hard for their freedom: allowing social engineers to take it away from us one little piece at a time “for our own good” is NOT something we will tolerate… if we wake up to it before it’s too late.
Mayor Anderson and his ilk belong in their own fishbowl, hopefully one well-stocked with piranha.
The “Fishbowls and Airplanes”
Originally written By: Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
