State officials love to use the term “secondhand” when it comes to cigarette smoke. The state says that secondhand smoke perpetrates an adverse and harmful effect upon another person as a result of exhaling smoke. Therefore, they feel that they must protect each and every one of us smoking people.

Alcohol also perpetrates an adverse and harmful effect on other people. Over consumption of alcohol by drinking people has produced “secondhand” effects such as crime, rape, incest, murder, vehicular death and even emotional distress.

Why, then, is it not OK to smoke in a bar, but it is OK to drink in a bar. Secondhand smoke does not automatically cause lung cancer just as drinking does not automatically cause motor vehicle deaths.

People who go to a bar want to drink, smoke and relax. They are not going to take a sip of their drink, run outside to take a puff of their cigarette, run inside to take another sip of their drink, and so on. They just won’t go to the bar, or if they do, they will leave much earlier than normal.

People will also have more home parties in which drinking and smoking cannot be regulated, thus potentially causing more deaths and problems from intoxication.

I neither smoke nor frequent bars, but as a small businessman in this state, I can see that this “Big Brother” thinking by our do-gooder politicians will just be another very large spike in the coffin that has already been built for small business in this state.

John M. Beatrice, Auburn

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