Letter: Smoking on track to being criminalized

Monday, Nov. 20, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

If we take the smoking issue to the extreme, it's easy to see that a criminal case might be built putting smokers and establishments, which allow smoking, in jeopardy. Follow this line of thinking and you will see what I mean.

Are smokers committing the crime of voluntary suicide? It is a known fact that smoking kills the smoker. If we know that it is killing us and we continue to do it, we are consciously committing suicide.

The Surgeon General's report tells us that secondhand smoke kills. That fact could put the smoker in line with another crime, involuntary manslaughter.

Establishments that facilitate smoking could be accessories to the crime of manslaughter. All of that leads to fines, legal actions and perhaps jail time for the continued offenders.

In some states legal actions are brought against parents who jeopardize their children's health by smoking in their presence while in the car. Evidently it comes under the topic of child abuse. Are those actions laying the groundwork for smoking to become a "crime"? We are living at a time when the public's well-being is targeting smoking as an evil. Now it doesn't seem quite the long shot that was once thought.

Quitting smoking has become an issue for us to take more seriously than ever before. Perhaps it's best to quit now and avoid the rush while we can still consider it a choice.

Martin McColly, Las Vegas