Smoking-Please read on for the full resolution

Thank you for your response and your admirable concern for the welfare of American citizens. I believe that smoking is as well a danger to public health, but the rights of private citizens still stand even in these types of cases. I wish to provide further proof for my position in relation to your response, and I apologise for my lack of sources in my previous statement. As you stated, second hand smoke will kill. That is an irrefutable fact, and one that I encourage all private businesses to look at. I am not arguing that smoking does not kill, but I am arguing for people's rights to smoke it in public as they wish. I will do this by proving to you that the government has no right to infringe on a person's rights to perform legal acts in public, and as such that they have not enforced the same bans on another similar killer. First though, I would like to address your comparison between nudity laws and smoking laws. I do not believe there is a comparison. Nudity is in fact allowed by the state on public property. I quote from your own source: "Section 4322 of Title 14 of the California Administrative Code regarding nudity in the state parks: No person shall appear nude while in any unit except in authorized areas set aside for that purpose by the Department. " Please note the enite statement. There is 170 nudist resorts across the United States, both allowed by private and public institutions. This voids your comparison between the two laws. In terms of rights, to many there is no more sacred right than the right to your own health. This is true and this is specific. Unfortunately, the terms 'rights' itself is a very ambiguous one when applied to democracy. If I may , I shall quote an excerpt from the book 'The Rights Revolution' by author Michael Ignatieff: ". .. rights have a double-sided blade to democracy. Rights enacted into law by democratically elected representatives express the will of the people. But there are also rights whose purpose is to protect people from that will, to set limits on what the majority can do. " (Chapter 1, page 2) "Legislatures and governments do not exist to give us our rights; they are there to protect the ones we already have. " (Chapter 2, page 29) So though it may be the will of the people to ban smoking, it does not necessarily mean that they should. As smokers have been lambasted over many years, they have had their right to perform an illegal act on public property curtailed. This is a person's right, and one that must be protected against by the majority of those who would take it away. No one has curtailed someone's right to walk away from those who are smoking and to keep their children away from it as well. As you stated, private institutions are a completely different matter, and for those who work in these institutions I encourage them to talk with their managers and property owners. In the public sphere though, smokers must have their rights guaranteed, just as the right to even walk in the streets is guaranteed. I would also like to draw your attention to another killer that the government has failed to stop. Pollution has been documented as one of the biggest killers in society, and between the years of 1986 and 1993 alone, they have been accounted for almost 3% of deaths in the United States. In the same study it was found that almost every year ". .. . air pollution. .. . triggered over a million asthma attacks, as well as more than 47,000 cases of chronic bronchitis in adults and 540,000 cases of acute bronchitis in children. " This is a very serious infringement on people's health across the US, and it has been only recently that the government has put forward a plan to help clean up pollution caused by the various industries and manufacturers across this country. But please note that I said they have helped 'clean up', instead of an outright ban on pollutants. How could the government in honesty expect to enforce a ban on smoking, when they won't even enforce a ban on pollutants and the industries that pollute. Why could the government not bring forward an initiative to help clean up the harmful toxins in tobacco smoke? Instead of a ban on smoking, which will infringe on the rights of the smokers in favour of non-smokers, could the government, and anti-smoking lobbyists, not work together to find a solution? Just as industry and the government have found a way to help clean up their deadly toxins without infringing on the right to a free market, I believe they could do the same. That of course is just speculation, but I believe I have made my points clear; smoking bans are only an infringment on the rights of smokers to smoke, and the government itself has shown it is incapable of enforcing a ban on a similar issue. Private property will still enforce their own rules about such a thing and so far, no one but the government has denied that. Neither has anyone infringed on people's rights to avoid smoke in open, public areas. So yes, of course smoking kills and yes it does infringe on the right of people's health. But there is no issue yet that has shown there is not a way to live and get on with our lives without infringing upon other's rights, be it avoidance or technological progression. Sources: 'The Rights Revolution': . http://books.google.ca... Pollution source: . http://www.medscape.com... Nudity laws: . http://gocalifornia.about.com... Wikipedia: Effects of smoking bans: . http://en.wikipedia.org...