smoking invasions

Like most smokers, Moya, 48, is under considerable pressure at work to quit her enjoyable habit even though smoking is something she indulges in at home -- not at work -- and she is fuming that her civil liberties are being violated and invaded in this manner. She sees the whole quit smoking campaign as being as criminal, shortsighted and venal as the Iraq invasion, and believes that it's pushed by the same type of opportunistic people, for the same reasons.

"Although it's not a life-threatening violation of my civil rights -- as the criminal invasion of Iraq was, and still is, to Iraqi citizens," says Moya, "the quit smoking war is still very much a criminal act -- it's creating discriminatory attitudes in my place of work that are violating my civil liberties to enjoy a legal product in the sanctity of my own home."

"What I do at home is absolutely no business of my employer and it's deplorable that a comment I made to a coworker about smoking ended up being reported on my employment file," says Moya. "This is Big Brother gone crazy and next thing they'll be wanting to know what we eat for breakfast and what we do in bed."

"As I see it, the quit smoking campaign came about as a result of someone getting lung cancer and successfully litigating against the tobacco companies," says Moya. "That person may very well have developed lung cancer from a bacterial infection whether he or she smoked or not, but once the precedent had been set -- and the dollar signs started flashing -- that was the end of freedom for smokers."

"From then on, smokers became the enemy and the lies started coming thick and fast -- such as smokers are killing themselves and others (some of us may very well be doing that, but so are drinkers, drivers, meat eaters, gun owners, etc); we are bankrupting the health services with our smoking-related diseases (and paying for them ten times over with tobacco tax); and we crave liberation from the thralls of addiction (yeah, sure, we embrace the efforts of the nicotine-Nazis with love and gratitude.)"

"The illegal invasion of Iraq -- against UN decisions -- came about as a result of Mr Bush and the warmongers being frustrated at failing to nab Osama and going after Saddam instead," says Moya. "One criminal excuse after another was given in order to justify the illegal invasion -- Saddam was a monster (he may have been, but so are lots of other rulers and even Hillary Clinton is seen as being one by a fellow Democrat! ); he had stockpiles of WMD (Hans Blix found none); and the Iraqis crave liberation (yeah, sure, they embrace our gun-toting troops with love and gratitude)."

"The quit smoking campaign and the decision to invade Iraq are also alike in that they were based on shortsighted premises by people who have no understanding of consequences and no way to back off without losing face -- making them dangerous people."

"Their jobs -- their wealth and their pension funds -- depend upon successfully completing their mission and maintaining control over the outcome," says Moya. "They refuse to admit that they were wrong in invading Iraq -- that Saddam was the right person to rule a divided nation -- and they also refuse to admit that they were wrong in making such deceitful claims against smokers."

"The Iraqi people they claimed to be 'liberating' are now living in fear, anger and helplessness, wishing Saddam were back in power," says Moya. "And that's the way many ex-smokers feel. The rewards of being a non-smoker are not what they were cracked up to be -- all of the hidden reasons why people become smokers in the first place come back with a vengeance when they give it up."

"I have personally seen several acquiantances at work sink into deep depression when they quit cigarettes," says Moya. "Now they are on prescribed medication and spending just as much on their meds as they did on cigarettes. Big deal!"

"And there has been no massive decrease in the so-called smoking-related diseases either," says Moya. "Rather that admitting that other factors cause these diseases, the health authorities now claim that people who once smoked have already done the damage. Hmm, more reason to keep on smoking, then?"

"Finally, by far the closest likeness between the quit smoking campaign and the invasion of Iraq is, you guessed it, money!" sighs Moya. "They want a bigger cut of the Iraqi oil fields and they want a bigger cut of our money -- if not in tobacco tax then in quit programs and products."

"They've already pushed the Iraqis too far by overstaying their welcome -- and they're pushing smokers to the end of their tether, too," says Moya, "and I have no idea whether they doing what they're doing out of grotesque money-grubbing greed, arrogant self-righteous hubris or just plain dumb stupidity."

"The only way the warmongers can win decisively in Iraq is the same way the anti-smokers can win decisively in the smoking war -- imprison or shoot all the dissidents."

"I don't think there are enough prisons and bullets to achieve this end and while fellow citizens may not be too concerned about this sort of thing happening in Iraq they may start squirming when the dissendent smokers at home start getting rounded up -- or will they?"

"Judging from what's happening at work -- and what's happening in society at large --I honestly fear that our national identity as a feircely proud and free nation has been so watered down with foreign immigrants from totalitarian nations that the concept of civil liberties is fast disappearing from our national psyche."

"That so many so-called democratic freedom lovers still see the Iraq invasion as justifiable -- as justifiable as smoking and other bans -- is really scary," says Moya. "I feel so sorry for the next generation raised on Big Brother television and Big Brother government -- as well as control freaks at school and work -- because they will never know what freedom is."

"And most of all I feel sorry for the Iraqis -- especially the ones who smoke, and that's an awful lot of them -- because if western style democracy takes off in that country, they're going to be hit with an invasion of their smoking rights next."