Posted on by Californiacontrarian

We Know What Is Best . . .

“We are right! We know what is best for you (wkwibfy). Actually not only do we know what is best for you, but we know what is best for everybody!” Whenever you hear this, or in essence what amounts to the same thing, you should think, “danger,” as these wkwibfy-ers are much more interested in taking away another of yours and my personal freedoms. This way of thinking is becoming more and more often a standard in California, and it is growing, basically because this “we know what is best for you” (wkwibfy) is one of the standard tenets of the present liberal religion here in California. Year after year, the liberal Democratic State Legislature passes bill after bill that espouses this philosophy, and it has spread down to the local community levels. 

This week the city of Santee, a suburb in San Diego County, capitulated to the “wkwibfy” dictum. Santee had been the final holdout for one personal freedom in San Diego County . . . the personal freedom of smoking in a public space, specifically in its city parks, which the last time I checked were open air parks.

Before I go any further, let me explain my position on smoking: 

-Smoking is bad! 

-People die because of their smoking – e.g. my father.

-There is little or no redeeming value to smoking, and it should be discouraged.

-Second hand smoke can be deleterious to exposed individuals.

-Smoking is enclosed spaces (bars, restaurants, airplanes, buses, etc) should be      frowned upon as this practice exposes others to second hand smoke.

-There is no smoking in my house. Those that want can smoke in my open-air back     yard.

-I do not smoke, and no one in my family smokes.


However the fact that I am 100% against smoking does not mean that I would have the chutzpah to demand that an individual cannot smoke. If he/she wants to smoke, as long as it does not infringe on someone else, then that is a personal choice that each individual should be able to make on his/her own. 


Back to Santee where smoking in public places was outlawed this week. The thrust of this restriction was to insure that smoking was prohibited in parks – open air parks. Can anyone explain how cigarette smoke, drifting up into the atmosphere can do any harm to anyone? I am not aware of any scientific data that confirms that smoke from a cigarette is harmful to anybody when it drifts into the open air. Certainly if a smoker blows his/her smoke directly into the face of an asthmatic child, this could aggravate the asthma. Likewise second hand smoke in an enclosed area is deleterious for asthmatics and others with pulmonary disease. However, that is not what this about. This latest Santee ban is very similar to present banning of smoking at San Diego beaches where the wind constantly blows in from the ocean. At the beach any cigarette smoke is instantly dissipated up into the open air. 

Now if the argument is that the cigarette-butt-litter problem makes it imperative to ban the cause of that butt-litter, then that is a different story. Perhaps substantial fines for littering cigarette butts would be appropriate, as it is with any other kind of littering. However in Santee the case was unabashedly not about the litter problem. As Santee City Councilman Stephen Houlihan said, “All that matters is that the parks of Santee will be 100% smoke-free for the children, the elderly, the asthmatic population, and for the people of planet Earth.” 

“The people of Planet Earth!!” Take a guess as to whether or not Mr.Houlihan is a member of the “wkwibfy” church!

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