You would be surprised how many people bring lawsuits alleging abuse, and further alleging that they were abused when they were nearly 18 years old. They all allege they were groomed. Personally, I can recall when I was 17 (after all, it was not that long ago) and there is no way a teacher, coach, preacher or anyone else would have been able to talk me into doing something I did not consent to doing.

It is the bystander effect, sometimes called diffusion of responsibility. It was studied after the murder of Kitty Genovese. Sometimes it is actually referred to as Genovese syndrome.

I remember almost getting fired as a teenager for telling my employer that I was going to take a "nonsmoking break" that was equal in length to the time the smokers took for their smoke break. This is why I always laughed at smokers who said: "what about our rights!!?" I had calculated that I worked almost a full hour more each day than the folks who took frequent smoke breaks (while on the clock). I thought that was complete B.S.

They would only be hypocrites if there was such a thing as second hand junk food. This is not about protecting you from the adverse health effects of your own decision to smoke. This is about protecting those who choose not to smoke and still have to breathe tobacco smoke from others.

No. I take issue with your superhero complex. Who is going to come begging you for anything? Who is going to go after us because of hate, prompting us to run to you (of all people) to ask for help? This all sounds like delusions of grandeur to me.

Whoops. Sorry. I am bad at reading sarcasm through text. I looked it up. Annual tobacco tax revenue in the U.S.: approx. $20 billion. Estimated annual tobacco-related health care costs: $200 billion.

Permitting smoking in public spaces like this is the very definition of "punishing all for activity of the few."

You cannot smoke that in public. Having a medical marijuana card does not entitle one to smoke in public, drive stoned, give pot to kids or any other made up parade of horribles.

THe amount of tax money generated by tobacco taxes is a tiny fraction of the amount it costs dealing with the tobacco-related health care costs, which are in the hundreds of billions each year. This is a no brainer.

I agree with you. However, that is no reason whatsoever to permit smoking in public spaces where nonsmokers have to deal with second hand smoke.