BENEATH THE PAST During the times of segregation everyone is so ashamed of, signs like this were common. But at least the blacks were often allowed inside, although in special sections. In today's "fair" an politically correct times, signs like the one above are often just a dream for smokers, as they are not even allowed inside. True, blacks could not change the colour of their skin and smokers surely can avoid to light up. However, a question comes to mind: if there was a "pill" a black could take to become white, would segregation be acceptable today? After all, in the past junk science "proved" that blacks carried disease - just as much as today's smokers "kill" with their passive smoke. Times have changed -- or have they?

I have walked into restaurants, shopping malls, hospitals and yes now even bars only to find out that there is no place for my kind, or if there is I ‘am promptly led to a small section in the back of the building where I’ am forced to sit with other members of my kind. This is of course if I'am lucky enough that they even have a special section for my kind, usually I’am told I have to go outside, and make sure I walk anywhere from 20 to 200 feet away from the entrance to join my kind. And there we huddle together like outcasts from the human race, sometimes in freezing cold rain or snow, or blistering heat because we are segregated and are only allowed to be with our own kind.

No we are not being segregated because we are Afro Americans or Caucasians or Hispanic, Bosnian, Native American. We are not physically or mentally challenged. What grounds are we being segregated upon you ask? We smoke!!!!!!!!!

Yes I myself smoke and so do millions of other Americans, we pay taxes (even more than people who do not smoke) yet we have less rights than the nonsmokers how is putting us in a separate room or making us go outside, any different than telling Rosa Parks she had to go to the back of the bus because she was black? How is this any different from the signs that used to hang above drinking fountains that said “for whites only” How is this different from telling the Native Americans they had to give up their land and convert to Christianity?

No matter how you look at it, we ask smokers are being discriminated against and segregated. Already we are forced to pay outrageous prices for cigarettes and now the government wants to add more taxes to cigarettes, yet we remain being treated unfairly, whom would you tax if everyone quit smoking? If the government keeps listening to the nonsmokers soon tobacco will be outlawed completely. You might ask me why “if I do not like the laws, why don’t I just quit smoking? Because I like to smoke and I am exercising my freedom of choice. Or is that not still part of the constitution?