Ban the butt?

First of all, let me get something crystal clear: I hate cigarettes.
I hate cigarettes with a visceral fury that overpowers rational thought. The mere sight of one dangling from somebody's lips repulses me. Whenever I see somebody smoking, there's a small part of me that wants to reach out and grab the cancer stick and crush it between my fingers. And when I see smokers drop their butts on the ground, I want to plant their faces into the pavement and make them eat the damned things.
Given this incredibly strong feeling, you'd think I'd be happy to hear about Cambridge Memorial Hospital. Here's a place that has outlawed smoking...everywhere. Not within the building. Not on the grounds. Not even in your car. If you're caught smoking anywhere on the property, you can be charged with trespassing.
Yeah, you'd think I'd be applauding this place.
I'm not.
I understand their rationale...to a point. Cambridge Memorial Hospital is, by definition, a health care provider. As such, it's to be expected they would not look kindly on smokers. After all, as everybody on earth knows by now, cigarettes cause four point three eight hackillion diseases, are the leading cause of zombification in humans under 127 years of age, and contribute to global warming, perverted sex practices, and mass hysteria.
Don't get me wrong. I was happy when Tim Horton's went smoke free. I wasn't overly fond of the nicotine Timbits. You may scoff, but I assure you, no matter what fumy Tim's I visited, their Timbits tasted like tar. The smoking crowd squawked at first...how can you possibly have a coffee without a smoke?-- but the squawks have subsided, as I knew they would.
Then they went and banned smoking in bars and bingo halls. The squawking grew in volume and invective. The ardent anti-smoking zealot in me rejoiced...that'll hit 'em where they live!--but the sane part of my brain began to have doubts about this crusade.
Cigarettes, last I looked, are still legal, you see.
I wish they weren't. I'd love to live in a world where cigarettes are treated the same way we treat heroin or crack. But the government needs money to treat all the smokers, and so tobacco is legal and heavily taxed.
(But pot's still..wink, wink...illegal. Go figure.)
I'm surprised no smokers' groups have challenged the constitutionality of these bans. I'd love to hear the Supreme Court's reasoning why it should be illegal to consume a legal product in an environment filled with consenting adults.You'd get some real doubletalk there, I bet.
Now, we have Cambridge Memorial Hospital threatening to charge smokers with--of all thing--trespassing. I'd love to know how that works, too. You go to see your ailing mother and you're a welcome guest, but you light up a smoke in your car before you go in and suddenly you're persona non grata? Or, better yet, you are an ailing mother, who just had her hip replaced. You've been smoking since the time cigarettes were said to be full of vitamin C and a cure for the common cold. (Yes, smokes were once marketed that way, hard as it is to believe now.) And you're hooked through the bag. You wheel yourself outside and light up in the parking lot. What are they going to do, throw you out of the hospital?
Let's get real.
I'm going to state something here that is so ridiculous, so counter to current thinking, that most of you will dismiss it as the ravings of a lunatic.
Cigarettes are not addictive.
Did you catch that?
CIGARETTES ARE NOT ADDICTIVE.
Okay, I guess I need to qualify that. Cigarettes are not addictive for everyone. Granted, all I have is anecdotal evidence to support this startling claim, but I'd ask you to query your smoker friends and acquantances, if you have any who haven't died yet. Chances are either you or one of them knows somebody who only smokes when they're out with their friends, every Friday night. I used to work in a variety store. I met countless people who bought a small pack once every other week...or even less often. Now I ask you, if cigarettes are so maddeningly addictive, how is it that some people can smoke only every so often, and keep up this infrequent smoking over a period of years? You don't hear that kind of thing with crack cocaine. "Sure, I do crack, but only when there's a full moon. I just don't have the urge, otherwise."

WHY ISN'T MEDICAL SCIENCE INTERESTED IN "SOCIAL" SMOKERS?

It seems to me that Rebecca, who limits herself to one smoke a day, is somehow--genetically?--different from Bob, who would smoke three at a time if he could.Somebody ought to look into this.

In the meantime, it is the height of hypocrisy for the government to sell smokes with one hand, and limit the places where they can be smoked with the other. A truly progressive government would fund smoking cessation aids on their health care plan, don't you think?