Peers suck: a rebuttal

The one and only Danger Is My Middle Name has taken the time to make a nice little post with regard to mine which praised the Peers who attacked the Smoking Ban, in which he concludes I'm essentially wrong in supporting the pro-smoking movement. Here is my rebuttal.

I initally thought the article would support my judgement that a ban on smoking is an infringement of human rights - that is to say, it's not appropriate for a government to ban an activity which is legal, and can be conducted in public without putting anyone else in harms way. Unfortunately, Danger concluded that people smoking was 'evolution in action', and that he didn't want to pay taxes for something which is not his fault. I put this to him - is the fact that there are people with athsma in society my fault, and isn't their demise also evolution in action? If Danger is an advocate of survival of the fittest, and the athsma sufferers are the ones dropping dead, then shouldn't he be supporting the ones who're surviving, and not the ones dying? Also, I feel it's a pretty absurd notion that everyone should be able to choose which ailments they should be treated with their tax money.

As for the idea that smoking is selfish - isn't is more selfish to tell people they can't do something they enjoy, because you said so? If everyone went around ordering everyone else around, we'd be in a far worse place than we are now.

Supporting the smokers for me is not about telling people how things should be, but it's about telling people that they don't have the right to tell others how things should be - if we all walked around doing that, we'd all be Neo-nazis.

One final note, and that is to say - the one thing which is more shameful and disgusting than a smoking habit is the fact that the law is being passed based on false evidence and misinformation - where have everyones morals gone? Even the 'good guys' are using dirty tactics, and that's something which abhors me more than any smoker ever would. Want to prove that smoking is harmful? Then prove it with sound, unbiased, unglamorous, scientific data. Until then, I'll be sitting with the smokers.