Word: smoked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recall how big a deal it was for my orthopedic surgeon, Major Gregory Hill, to spend a few minutes going over my prognosis. But the documentary shows the specialists as anxious, overworked and bored as any grunt. One night they repair to the roof of the hospital to smoke cigars and look over the rooftops of Baghdad, spotting explosions a few miles away. "We just see the consequences," says one doctor. Another says, "There's one with your name written all over...
Perhaps if brief exposure to cigarette smoke posed serious health risks, like sarin gas, regulation would be needed to protect bystanders from accidental contact. But the alleged danger of secondhand smoke depends on sustained, long-term exposure, which limits the risk to the population of volunteers...
Indeed, it is doubtful that smokers endanger bystanders at all. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, out of twenty-three studies of workplace passive smoke, “Only one reported a statistically significant association between exposure to secondhand smoke at the workplace and risk for lung cancer...
Ultimately, smoking bans represent far more than a minor inconvenience to smokers; this neo-prohibitionism paves the road to far greater somatic oppression, because it sanctifies the violation of personal liberty and private property to prevent private harms and freely-chosen dangers. Inventing “rights” to protect—customers’ and workers’ so-called right to a smoke-free environment—self-appointed health-nannies want the power to impose their personal preferences on everyone...
...smoker, I understand how pleasant it would be to simply walk into a bar and demand that it cater to my particular smoke-free preferences, but what gives me the right to impose my personal choices on others? In a liberal democratic society, tolerance of harmless actions is a virtue that enables the peaceful functioning of society—“each person should enjoy maximum liberty, consistent with the like liberty of others.” J.S. Mill’s tolerance, rather than teetotalers, ought to be the model...