Pulled this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States#.C2.A0California
Look at the rules in Marin County: May 23, 2012 banned in all condos and apartments, as well as all patios within residential units. Anyone caught smoking will face a $100 fine and will be sentenced to five community day services. A second offense warrants a $300 fine and ten community day services, and a third offense being $700 fine and fifteen community day services. Landlords may opt out of smoking restrictions by designating 20 percent of their units reserved for smoking and may permit e-cigarettes to be used inside apartments and condos. All other outdoor areas, including bar and restaurant patios, and private homes that are not of multi-unit residences and smoking in cars are exempt from the ban.
Calabasas: 2006, banned in all indoor and outdoor public places, except for a handful of scattered, designated outdoor smoking areas in town. Believed to be the strictest ban in the United States.
Glendale: October 7, 2008, banned smoking[54] in/on and within 20 feet (6.1 m) from: all city property (except streets and sidewalks); city vehicles and public transportation vehicles; city public transit stations; places of employment; enclosed public places; non-enclosed public places; and common areas of multi-unit rental housing. Some of the areas where smoking is prohibited are authorized to have smoking-permitted areas, subject to regulations. Also, landlords in Glendale are required to provide disclosure to a prospective renter, prior to signing a lease, as to the location of possible sources of second-hand smoke, relative to the unit that they are renting.
I get that people can say they don’t like smoke. I get that it certainly does not improve health.
But there is just something creepy about this to me. I don’t want to live in a world where the government can tell me what I can and can’t put in my body. We all die. Every regulator who imposed every one of these regulations, and everyone who agitated for them, and everyone who opposed them: in 100 years, barring breakthroughs which can only happen if mainstream science abandons its orthodox materialism–not likely soon–all of them will be dead. Their minds will not be downloaded. Minds are not machines, and this is a necessary presupposition for those drooling over surrendering their souls to machines.
Why not live and let live? There are too many fucking people worried about bodies and neglecting souls. I like and trust smokers far more than health nuts. They are at least in partial touch with their true emotions. It is of course possible to be emotionally and physically healthy and reject things like smoking, but it seems to me most of the people pushing these things are emotionally detached ideologues.
One of the feeds on my Facebook posted an old video of Hollywood Squares, with Paul Lynde (how did I not figure out he was gay? I guess I was too young when I was watching it), and they asked him something like: What is the collective name for gluttony, sloth, lust, wrath, pride, envy, and greed?
He answered: The Bill of Rights. Call me a Libertarian if you must, but I think he was on to something there.