Braude Plan to Ban Smoking in Restaurants

Braude typifies the anti-smoking fanatic. Not satisfied that restaurants provide areas for people who don’t smoke, he wants a total ban of smoking in restaurants. Under the guise of protecting the rights of nonsmokers, he would strip away the rights of those who do smoke. It is one thing to demand that smokers be isolated from those who find tobacco smoke offensive, but it is quite another thing to tell them they have no right to dine in public eating places; and that is exactly what Braude would do.

No, I’m not a smoker (I quit many years ago and am glad I did!), nor have I ever been an employee of the tobacco industry. Smoking is an unfortunate addiction, one that mankind would be better off without; but it is an addiction, one that most smokers are powerless to overcome. Just because they are unable to do so, should they be treated as pariahs? Don’t they have rights like the rest of us?

Fanatics are extremists. They ignore the rights of others and seek to impose their own views on everyone. Unfortunately, when a fanatic occupies a powerful political office he is often in a position to inflict his own biases on people who don’t think as he does. There’s a word for such conduct. It is called tyranny.

DEL J. WARREN

Culver City