Auntie, I love the glove-in-the-mud line.

A couple thoughts:

Smokers have, I think, two problems that get in the way of effective political action. First, I think most of us feel guilty about smoking (which I guess means all those campaigns have been effective). Second, we're in a minority. It ain't like the '50s, when everybody was supposed to smoke. Stripped of the anti-smoking aspect, what we have here is a frank tyrrany of the majority--one of the built-in dangers of a democracy--and I don't see people being concerned about where it's going to go. like ol' Pastor Niemoeller said in Germany, "First they came for the Jews..."

Sam, you might want to keep an eye on the State of Oregon. I think they're going to do the legalize-weed thing. Oregon state government is dependent on an income tax for revenue, and you know what happens to income taxes when people aren't working. It's bad, and going to get a lot worse. The main reason alcohol is legal in Oregon (which had had statewide prohibition since 1905) was desperation for money in the *last* Depression. They made hard liquor a state monopoly, and put a 94% markup on the stuff which still exists. My main worry is that state government will be so money-hungry they may peg the markup on marijuana so high people won't pay it, and will just continue doing things illegally. But watch--it could get fun.

And seatbelts. I was a city manager when the whole seatbelt thing came down in Oregon. Personally, I have been a seatbelt fan ever since I was in a Close Encounter of the Guardrail Kind, but I detest anybody telling me I *have* to do it or get fined. The political deal was that the auto manufacturers didn't want to put passenger airbags in their cars, and were told they didn't have to *provided* they could get every state to make seatbelt use mandatory within a specified time. So they did. (And passenger airbags got required anyway. So much for trusting the gummint.)

Are we having fun yet?

Joe

www.soundclick.com/joewrabek
www.soundclick.com/deathgrass
www.soundclick.com/wrabeksworksinprogress
The Writer's Blog: http://nakedspacehamsters.blogspot.com