To the editor:

I thank Darren Cauthon for his response to my inquiry regarding the health risks associated with smoking in public and his opposition to a ban.

Mr. Cauthon, you wrote that health implications do not factor in to your argument against a smoking ban because we are each solely responsible for our own decisions and their consequences. Not true. Smokers are not held solely liable for their decision to smoke. Some sue tobacco companies to shift the responsibility. Others require government-subsidized health care costing billions of dollars a year, paid for mostly by non-smokers like you and me. We also subsidize absences in the workplace, lost wages and increased insurance premiums (for non-smokers, too), and we endure the fundamental unfairness of smokers causing the illness and death of nonsmokers without consequence.

You wrote that exposure to smoke is by choice and that people can’t complain about their choices, including workers. You are a college graduate programming computers in a smoke-free workplace, so I question your ability to judge the employment opportunities of the servers, busboys, doormen, bartenders and others who must perform their jobs in a smoky haze.

You wrote that a smoking ban ignores the restaurant owner’s property rights, their right to determine for themselves how they conduct business. Do you believe health inspectors violate their rights?

In the balance of your letter you presume to know the motives of every proponent of a smoking ordinance. You know nothing about my motives. We’ve never met. Your presumptuous and uninformed generalizations undermine your credibility.

Todd L. Crenshaw,

Eudora