Does anyone else remember the days when one would refrain from huffing on a cancer stick in the company of nonsmokers as a courtesy rather than a legal obligation?

I’m a dirty smoker. I’m an unapologetic addict. I smell like a burning tire and kissing me is like going down on a barroom ashtray. I intentionally fill my lungs with black smoke and carcinogens, and I’ll probably die from a cornucopia of complications involving my respiratory system, if that random bus that we smokers invoke to defend our cause doesn’t hit me first.

Of course, all of that is my choice. I’m not blaming Phillip Morris for my addiction. Winston Salem didn’t force their smokey black death into my lungs either. We smokers smoke of our own volition. We’ve all made a bad choice for ourselves knowing full well the consequences.

It’s my choice every time I ask those around me if they mind if I smoke too. When I’m in a smoking establishment, I make sure I ask my friends if they care if I smoke. If they say no, I smoke. If they mind, then I don’t. Must it be more difficult than that?

Apparently so! The machinery of govermnent, spinning its cogs for their own sake as always, have seen fit to legislate when and where we can smoke. Most state governments have banned smoking in public establishments. Some have gone as far as banning smoking from bars. Restaraunts don’t even have smoking sections, leaving generations of young people ignorant to just how good a cigarette feels after pounding a cheeseburger and large fry. Rumor has it that in some locales citizens can’t even smoke inside their own homes. Apparently “Smoking or Non” is too complicated a choice for the simpleminded American public; apparently we’re all too selfish or too stupid to consider the health of those around us without the threat of fines or incarceration.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all about the smoking section. I’m fine with smoking in my vehicle or home or in the smoking section of whatever dingy all-night diner I’ve decided to sober up at. My smoke doesn’t need to cause nausea in those around me for me to enjoy it. But I will tell you this: the government will need to pry my cigarettes out of my cold dead tracheotomy hole before I let them determine what I can and cannot do to my own body, in the seclusion of my own home.

You can thank me for not smoking. But you can’t tell me I’m not allowed. Save the rules for causes that need them, not those that can be solved by use of common courtesy.