A Tale of Two Cities” Anon: “I’m not giving up my cat. I’m looking forward to watching all of those dogs and their people living in the suburbs who are going to put pet cemeteries in every yard to bury their pets when they die.” “It’s a sad reality that sometimes the government finds ways to make it worse. We should stop trying to legislate away everything that is difficult in life. I don’t need laws against smoking, bad drivers, dangerous cars, etc. etc. I think it’s sad that the legislature can’t get their act together, but at least our neighbors will not be getting stuck in the car with a stupid driver and he will not be dying on me and I won’t have to watch.” The last sentence in this anonymous email has the answer. What’s scary is that so many legislators, even in this age of e-mails, think that there are limits on what they can decide for the rest of us. When I first wrote this article, I had the impression that it might reach thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people. I just got an email from somebody in Washington state who said she’s been hearing about this since it was published. And then I received this, and realized that there’s another large group to reach. Somebody out there needs to hear these words. This article is also a commentary on the current legal status of smoking. No one is allowed to smoke in the state of Washington’s legislature or in its Senate Office Building. They’re allowed to smoke in their offices, and in the cafeterias. To me, it would be much easier to be a smoker if I could smoke in the cafeteria. And as far as the legislature is concerned, there are no rules against smoking, not anywhere in the State Capitol Building, not on any floor, not on any property. In some places, you can still smoke in your own car. If you see a car with no exhaust, or some other exhaust device in the window, you can be pretty sure that the driver has quit or doesn’t smoke. The law firm of Snedigar was nice enough to invite me to address the American Lung Association’s annual dinner in September. There were only two speakers from the area, and I was glad that one of them was the lawyer in my own law firm, Joe Snedigar of Snedigar Law Office, P.S., in Everett. You can see some photos from that presentation at this link on my web site: It’s really hard to talk about cigarette smoking, though. There is no one person to blame for starting it, although many people share some responsibility. My son has one of those old typewriter typewriters that takes one to three whole minutes to type one word. You’d never catch me smoking around a typewriter, but it’s very hard for me to stop smoking around people who actually smoke. And, unfortunately, for many of those smokers, not only is it hard to stop, they’re addicted to nicotine and they’re going to smoke. I’ve learned a few things in my long life, about smokers, about the law, about writing, about getting along with people, and about being around people and pets. I’ve learned a lot about some very tough situations, the kinds of problems that take many people a lifetime to deal with, problems that affect thousands of other people. And I have a few more things to say. The American Lung Association had one good idea when it came up with their annual dinner. It’s really hard to talk about smoking without giving up, and you give up by saying something that is just about impossible to hear. If you’re going to talk about smoking, you can’t talk about smoke. It’s been done many times. After they ran the ad for the commercial on the radio, announcing that the cigarettes didn’t have any tobacco in them, no, you couldn’t talk about smoke. They wanted to quit smoking? You wouldn’t think it was possible. Asking smokers to give up their cigarettes would kill them. It was like asking people not to have pets, a bad, wrong idea, but it had a certain logic to it. But how about not giving up cigarettes, but not using them every day, that’s the idea behind “harm reduction”… Smokers do smoke because they like the way they feel when they’re smoking and they like the way they smell. There’s nothing wrong with that. No one is asking people to go without cigarettes, even people who don’t want to be around them, like smokers. This is America. There’s no law to force anyone to smoke. As a matter of fact, the government in Washington just said that the legislature could not even be around smokers. If they don’t like being around smokers, if they don’t like how they smell, they can stay away from smokers. They can even move to the other side of town and start a whole new government. Maybe they can even move to a different state if they don’t like their neighbors, and if they don’t like the way they smell. But if they’re going to stay here in Washington state, they should learn to accept the fact that people who smoke in their presence shouldn’t be punished. There’s no law that says it’s wrong to have a cat. There’s no law that says we should kick animals out of our homes. And when people get sick, we’re very reluctant to say that we don’t like to go around with someone who’s sneezing, because there’s so much that we would want from others, whether it’s food or money. In our community, for the most part, people love their pets and will do anything for them, except let them suffer. And they really don’t want to see anybody they love suffering. They’ll do anything to stop the suffering of their pets. And that’s why we have laws to protect pets, especially when they’re elderly or sick. If we can figure out a way to prevent people from smoking around their pets, then we need to do that. But even with the current laws, there are laws to protect people who are around pets, including smokers. This is why I’m so happy that someone passed a law banning smoking on the street where pets walk. And there are other people in our community who hate smoking as much as I do, because there are many people who actually quit smoking because they got sick from cigarettes. And some people in their 40’s and 50’s stopped smoking because they weren’t able to keep up with the younger people in the neighborhood, because they didn’t have the breath and the smell. But it’s still true that if you want to look as if you’re cool, if you want to pass as if you’re cool, if you want to pass as if you’re smart, you’ve got to be cool with your smoking. But if you want to pass as if you are so smart that you have invented laws that stop smoking in all places around the city of Snohomish, that’s the law that has been implemented. And some people are saying that we need a new law that gives laws to the children, children that are not smoking and are going to be in our world, and the children that are now older people who will soon be very old people. There are so many smokers in Snohomish. There are no laws to stop them. There are laws to protect their pets. This is the law. It’s not exactly right, it’s not exactly fair, but that’s the way it is. No one needs a law against smoking. It’s really sad when you see smokers, when you’re outside and it’s hot, when it’s cold, even in the rain, when you are driving along a road and there is a smoker next to you. Just look at these people: Look at how they hold their hands to their faces, and how they turn their heads away from everything else that’s going on around them, including people in their family. They’re on the way to buy cigarettes. Or if you go to a restaurant or store and see some one with cigarettes, and you can smell the smoke, it just makes you feel so sad to see these people. Just watching them as you walk by is enough to make you want to give up smoking, to quit smoking, just watching the smokers, thinking about how their world is really small. That’s what makes them look so small and sad to the rest of us. What’s sad is that it’s even sadder if you have to walk around these people in the state Capitol Building and in other areas where there is no protection for people who are around smokers. Many times, the smokers that I talk about just don’t realize what they are doing. Sometimes they don’t even know the people who they are with or why they are with them. I think that this should really be considered as a huge insult to everyone who works in the Legislature in Washington state. You can’t see people as being stupid or selfish or being bad people. Sometimes, I don’t even think they realize they are bad people. But they are bad people, they’re really bad people, and that’s what makes me sad. You can say to yourself that maybe they want a cigarette because it makes