This will tickle @InsaneApache feathers: anti-anti-smoking left-wing bleeding-heart.

THE POWERS THAT BE say anti-smoking legislation is for our own well-being. Nothing could be further from the truth. The attack on cigarette smoking does not improve the lives of those it claims to protect, be they the “self-destructive” workers who smoke or the moralizing professionals who complain about having to smell them. Anti-smoking legislation is, and always has been, about social control. It is about ratcheting up worker productivity and fostering class hatred, to keep us looking for the enemy in each other instead of in those who are making a killing off cigarettes and anti-smoking campaigns alike. It legitimates the privatization of public space, limits popular assembly, and forces the working class out of political life into private isolation via the social technology of shame. It whitewashes the violence exacted on the poor by the rich to make it all seem like the worker’s own doing. It is, in short, class war by another name.
So people suffering under capitalism find it more difficult to do small things to slightly alleviate their suffering, for a time. Perhaps. And maybe (the pretense of) preserving their health in one way doesn't matter much when it's being damaged by their work and their society. But it sure has gone fantastic for those of us who don't have to - oh yeah, the solidarity thing.



Still though, smoke in buildings.