Da Screamer does:

Look, my contention is that we shouldn't ban combustion engines [...] any more than we should ban smokers from smoking in any public place. Either particulate and carbon monoxide are a "health hazard" worthy of regulating or they aren't.

You're missing the distinction: There's necessary risks, and there's unnecessary risks.

If I remember right, I was using the whole issue to point out that people will continually give up "rights" unless it directly effects them. I also conceed that cigarette smoke is offensive smelling and a nuisance. That's what brought up the I'll defend rights I care about... until it's your ox being gored...

I neither smoke nor drive a car, but I can see the fundamental difference: Cars (and lorries/"trucks" and buses, and most non-automotive combustion engines), besides polluting, _perform a useful and often[*] necessary service_.

Smoking doesn't -- there, the pollution is the whole _point_ of the excercise. That doesn't matter, to me, as long as it doesn't *affect me*... But when it does, why the fuck should it _let it_ do so?!?

Seems like a perfectly consistent and non-self-contradictory[**] personal philosophy to me; in the light of this, all your ranting and raving is just so much ranting and raving.

To the nonsmokers... If you have a right to breath "clean tobacco free air", I have a right to breath "clean automobile exhaust free" air...

No you don't: You, like I, have to accept that if you live in, are part of, a society then you gotta take some inconveniencies to you personally, in the name of the greater good; some socially useful phenomena (like goods transport and personal mobility) unfortunately have negative consequences which we must take because their positive consequences are worth more to society as a whole.

Other phenomena, which have the same negative consequences *without* the positive consequences (like smoking), we *don't* have to take.

Seems like a perfectly consistent and non-self-contradictory[**] societal philosophy to me; in the light of this, all your ranting and raving is just so much ranting and raving.

It's either a health hazard or not

And it either is socially useful, or not; it either is personally avoidable, or not.

To spell it out, again: combustion-engine exhaust is unfortunately not personally avoidable, but at least it's socially useful[*]. Exposing others to your smoking is at least in principle avoidable (albeit at some inconvenience to the smoker, but that inconvenience is eminently acceptable[***]), but smoking is of no social use whatsoever to anyone else.

Just a few thoughts,

Too bad they're misguided ones.

"Nietzsche has an S in it"

Celina Jones

Well, an 's', to be precise...

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[*]: I wouldn't *dream* of contradicting Karsten!

[**]: But sure, there's quite too much "non-societally-useful" combustion-engine pollution going on; personally, I wouldn't mind fining drivers for taking the car two blocks when they could just as well have walked, or impounding the giganto-SUVs from all the soccer-moms who only ever drive -- on paved roads! -- to school, work, and the supermarket in them. Buy some little box-on-wheels that only pollutes one third as much, bitch! (It'll cost yerself less not only to buy but to operate, too.)

[***]: You wanna smoke and "I" am making that _inconvenient_ for you? Well, tough fucking luck -- it's _you_ who _wants_ to smoke, not I who am obligated to make your filthy habits _convenient_ for you to indulge in! Why the fuck should I, at the expense of _my health_ and my _own_ convenience?!?

(That last is really the clincher: In the case of cars and buses, the answer is, "You should accept it, so people can get to work and the supermarket, and get their kids to school, and all the other things that make society go round". In the case of smoking, there is no such _social_ argument, that I as a member of society should reasonably be expected to take some personal inconvenience for. There, it's all about indulging the smoker's _strictly personal_ habit; something that *only s/he* derives pleasure, and *nobody* any benefit, from. And therefore, he or she should take any inconvenience that arises from it upon her- or himself, and not bother the rest of us with it.)

...they use it all up in health care for their smoke-debilitated bodies.

That, too, probably works the same way over there: OK, so your health care isn't tax-financed, but then they drive up the cost of health insurance for everybody else.