On the smoking issue

There are many smokers who strongly and quite understandably resent their exclusion from society by stupid blanket bans. Here is a current post airing some of those feelings: 

https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/three-comments-on-facebook/#comment-131908

I gave up cigarettes nearly 40 years ago, but I don’t see why they should be chosen as the one minor vice to be stamped out. This is not Puritan England. If we don’t try to accommodate differences, we will be perpetually at one another’s throats.

So I comment on the above piece in this way:

Targeted change is what we need.

In schools, there is an expectation that schools will make “reasonable adjustment” for special needs children, to promote inclusion. Special needs children aren’t expected to stand outside the school building in the cold and wet.

Yet as you say, in other contexts the approach is draconian.

I would suggest that the way forward is to campaign for “reasonable adjustment”. If airport smoking lounges are dingy goldfish bowls, get the airport to improve the furnishings. If pubs can offer a separate and nicely-appointed smoker’s room, why not?

Besides, if the government succeeds in its obvious plan to legalise cannabis and find another way to raise tax that soaks the lower orders and makes vast, low-taxed profits for beardy businessmen, there will have to be somewhere for stoners to go, too.

“Reasonable adjustment”: the war is won by language.