PLATFORM : Right to Breathe

What people fail to understand is that cigarette smoking not only harms the people who are doing it, it harms the people around them. Cigarette smoking is a communicable disease. You’re not only killing yourself, you’re killing the people around you.

The effect of secondary smoke is cumulative, because people end up in a home where someone smokes, in a workplace where someone smokes, in a restaurant or a bar where someone smokes, at a game where someone smokes. The bottom line is, there should not be smoking in public allowed anywhere at any time in an enclosed area or in an area where there is a crowd of people.

The people who smoke say it’s a violation of their rights. There are abridgments of the Bill of Rights when it’s for the common good. You have a right to smoke, and if you want to go outside by yourself and smoke a cigarette, that is your right. But you can’t do it in the seat next to me.