Al Gore blames global warming on Tonto
I was living in New York when Mayor Bloomberg proposed making the bars and restaurants in the city smoke-free. At the time I was completely outraged by what I thought to be state-nannyism run amok.
Although, as a non-smoker, I found the smoke-free bar and the lack of smoke that goes with it to be quite agreeable in practice.
Another benefit of the ban was you no longer had to actually enter the bar to make it a night. Instead you could just buy yourself a larger bottle of malt-liquor, paper bag it, and chat up the girls smoking on the street outside the entrance.
And if the young lady doesn't succumb to your wiles in the span of cigarette? Well, there will be another one jonesing for a smoke any second now. The only downside to this strategy is if you wear your more ironic hipster garb you will be mistaken for a vagrant.
This is all to say I believe within five years smoking will be made illegal in any remotely public place in the United States -- if not the Western World.
So what's a government to do, after relieving the tobacco companies of a couple hundred billion dollars and then ungratefully banning their product from plain view?
Although, as a non-smoker, I found the smoke-free bar and the lack of smoke that goes with it to be quite agreeable in practice.
Another benefit of the ban was you no longer had to actually enter the bar to make it a night. Instead you could just buy yourself a larger bottle of malt-liquor, paper bag it, and chat up the girls smoking on the street outside the entrance.
And if the young lady doesn't succumb to your wiles in the span of cigarette? Well, there will be another one jonesing for a smoke any second now. The only downside to this strategy is if you wear your more ironic hipster garb you will be mistaken for a vagrant.
This is all to say I believe within five years smoking will be made illegal in any remotely public place in the United States -- if not the Western World.
So what's a government to do, after relieving the tobacco companies of a couple hundred billion dollars and then ungratefully banning their product from plain view?
I see Bloomberg is taking his righteous crusade to transfats. But Al Gore -- who is famously not in the government -- is still trying to bleed Big T for every last drop of political capital.
In a speech to the UN yesterday Gore named cigarette smoke as a "significant contributor to global warming."
His likely-spurious accusation should be an affront to my fairness barometer. But hey, anything that takes the heat off air-conditioning is cool with me.
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