Creeping fascism watch...
Written by: Beck
Link credit goes to Andrew Stuttaford
for this article. Port Orange, FL has passed a law that bans smoking in public... when in view of children. You can get away with imposing any new restriction so long as it's justified by being FOR THE CHILDREN.
Port Orange council members said the smoking ban is to protect kids from second-hand smoke and to prevent them from starting in the first place.
I'm reminded of Dennis Leary's rant from his No Cure for Cancer routine. Paraphrasing: "What's the law now, you can only smoke in your apartment with the lights out under the covers? 'This is the police, we know you have the cigarettes, come out with the cigarettes over your head.'"
Apart from the raw offensiveness of seeing yet another civil liberty curtailed, the worst part is their justification for it. Basically, Port Orange is announcing that their children are so fricking insipidly dim that the mere sight of a smoker immediately prompts them to want a butt of their own to suck down. Hell, I think they could benefit from seeing a few smokers. Line up the homeless people, the drunks, and the other misfits and let them puff away. "Scared straight," is the phrase, I believe. But don't belittle our intelligence with this, "Bow to our unbending will... FOR THE CHILDREN," crap. If your children need this law to avoid becoming cancer statistics, then your children deserve to die.