It’s happened to all of us: You’re eating and someone lights up across some invisible barrier meant to stop smoke from traveling across a restaurant, and you and your family must breathe and smell the smoke while you eat.

Better yet, you’re sitting in an office when your co-worker, a smoker, comes in from a smoke break and stinks up the whole office, and everyone who chose not to take that extra break has to breathe the odors.

With all this debate on smoking, I feel that there’s only one answer: A smoker’s right (military or otherwise) to enjoy his cigarette or other smoking implement extends, and abruptly ends, at a nonsmoker’s right NOT to smoke. This includes the after-effects of smoking, i.e. odors and secondhand smoke.

A smoker makes the rightful choice to smoke, and his right to make that choice cannot infringe on a nonsmoker’s right not to smoke. Nonsmokers should not have to breathe odors or secondhand smoke.

If smokers want to smoke, go ahead, but nonsmokers need not be forced to do the same.

Spc. Jeremy T. GlennCamp Taji, Iraq

Migrated