{"id":52555,"date":"2013-12-23T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T18:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=52555"},"modified":"2013-12-21T10:39:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T15:39:50","slug":"think-it-is-not-only-your-right-but-your-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=52555","title":{"rendered":"Think: It is not only your right, but your responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"letterstotheeditor\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To the Editor:<\/p>\n

(Perryville, NY) Last night, outside the mall, a man with a gun and a badge told me to put out my cigarette.\u00a0 No, he didn\u2019t point it at me, and at the time I did not feel threatened in any way.\u00a0 He was actually quite friendly, just doing his job, as they say.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think about it enough to even notice if he was Paul Blart or Barney Fife. I did notice the gun, probably Barney.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we went back in the mall and headed toward a restaurant that I wanted to try.\u00a0 We don\u2019t go out for a nice dinner often and both my girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it.\u00a0 It was fantastic; the food, the service, everything was fantastic.\u00a0 Our table was not too close to the bar, but I could see it from my seat.<\/p>\n

I thought to myself how nice it would be to pay our bill and meander up to the bar for an after-dinner drink, maybe a bourbon or glass of wine, too full for a beer.\u00a0 It brought back memories of days gone by.\u00a0 You see, most of us smokers were always polite.\u00a0 No one wants an ashtray at the dinner table and diners at nearby tables certainly don\u2019t want our smoke wafting through their space and ruining their meal.<\/p>\n

Courtesy or maybe the owner of the establishment, by his individual right as an owner, dictated that we refrain; not the government.\u00a0 But the bar, that was the place to go for a couple of minutes and cap off your meal.\u00a0 The bar was a place to have a drink, a smoke and make a little small talk with a friend or a stranger.<\/p>\n

The kiddies were not allowed there, so the fallacy of second hand smoke was not an issue.\u00a0 Not anymore; oh, well\u2026 \u2018No big deal,\u2019 I thought, and home we went.<\/p>\n

I have been reading a few pages or maybe a chapter or two each night of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.\u00a0 Last night, I came to the part at James Taggart\u2019s wedding reception where the crowd is lectured by Francisco d\u2019Anconia on why money is, in fact, not the root of all evil.<\/p>\n

I have been thinking about it all morning and, although it has nothing to do with tobacco, I can\u2019t stop thinking maybe it does.<\/p>\n

I will never try to tell anyone that tobacco is harmless; it most certainly is not.\u00a0 But for some reason, and I\u2019m not sure exactly when it started, I can\u2019t help but feel the \u201cawareness\u201d campaign by various public health groups and, of course, the American Cancer Society, has been evolving to become something much bigger, and darker.<\/p>\n

You should pay attention to the tactics used to control other\u2019s behavior because similar tactics can, and eventually will be used to control your own.<\/p>\n

Mike Smith<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perryville<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the Editor: (Perryville, NY) Last night, outside the mall, a man with a gun and a badge told me to put out my cigarette.\u00a0 No, he didn\u2019t point it at me, and at the time I did not feel threatened in any way.\u00a0 He was actually quite friendly, just doing his job, as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}