War vet victimized for smoking

As Didi watches her elderly father declining day after day - not from smoking, but from old age and weariness having to deal with victimization from anti-smoking medical crusaders – she thinks about the wars he's been in, the taxes he's paid and the extra taxes he's paid for his self-medicating cigarettes and she hates her government for letting him down.

“The worse thing the government has done is making smoking such an anti-social habit that so many people think they have permission to vent their venom on smokers – even old smokers like my dad.”

"The government will never ban smoking because alcohol prohibition didn't work," says Didi, "and, knowing this, it should act as a moderate voice between the tobacco companies and the anti-smoking lobby.”

"Right now, it's taking the side of the anti-smoking lobby and making it okay for every Tom, Dick and Harry to victimize smokers," says Didi, "and for this it's no better than the Third Reich."

"No German hated the Jews -- or at least made their hate known -- until Hitler came to power and started blaming them for Germany's problems," says Didi, "and in this sort of climate more and more smokers are going to become depressed even if they they weren't that way already."

"It's against the law to discriminate against every other aspect of being human -- your age, your ethnicity, your religion, your sexual preference, etc -- but it's perfectly okay to discriminate against smokers," sighs Didi. "Where's the justice in this?"

"Even if you smoke in your own time, in your own space, the government sanctions discriminatory measures against you," says Didi. "European employers have been given the right to fire employees who admit to being smokers. When is this madness going to end?"

"The message seems to be: stop smoking and we'll treat you nicely," says Didi, "but having quit smoking hundreds of times I know that that's not true. Victimizers are victimizers through and through and will quickly find something else they don't like about you."

"A climate fuelled by anti-smoking venom marginalizes smokers," says Didi. "This doesn't bother me because I don't get out much these days, but some smokers do have mental health problems far more serious than depression and I am wondering how long will it be before one of them snaps and gets really stuck into the smug non-smoking victimizers."

“Victimizing an elderly war veteran for smoking is really the pits.”

Read more by Didi on this issue:

mental health self-medicators?

dealing with elderly parents and doctors

Anti-smoking vaccine?