To the Editor:

I just wanted to write in and respond to Mr. Cloud’s portion of [last week’s editorial]. He makes a good point and a couple of faulty ones.

His good point is that people should not be discriminated against for things they do on their own time that [don’t] affect others. That is absolutely true.

However, he has two flaws in his argument.

First, smoking is often done on the company dime, and affects non-smokers in the way that they are left to pick up the slack while the smokers fix themselves up.

Second, all his examples (weight, sexual morals, prospect of death), are vastly different from smoking.

There is no such thing as secondhand obesity.

Just [be]cause I eat my heart out doesn’t mean others get fat.

Smokers on the other hand, force those around them to smoke. There is only so much a non-smoker can do when the smoke comes.

In some cases, moving to another location isn’t an option.

Smoking limits the options of people around it, not just the options of people doing it, like his examples do.

I don’t think nicotine testing is right. I do think that smoking on the job at all should be illiegal, except on the specific breaks that everyone gets, and then the smokers should be required to relocate.

And that is discrimination that can’t be argued against.

Fat people can’t sit in weak chairs. No one can have public sex, except within certain confines.

Depending on the illness, some terminally ill people would be banned from certain areas.

If you have rabies, plague, or a number of other really bad illnesses, I doubt you can work where you want.

That’s my view. Thanks.

—Devan Ozment

Pioneer Reader