Seattle Responds to Big Nanny

The following letters are in response to Philip Dawdy's Jan. 18 cover story, "Big Nanny Is Watching You."

While the prevalence of paternalistic philosophies in Seattle government alarms me, I have to disagree with Philip Dawdy on which rights should prevail in the battle over smoking. When an individual's actions have a direct impact on the well-being of others, our government does have the right to regulate them.

Many disagree, myself included, with the moralistic arguments used by the health department. If an individual wants to smoke and understands the consequences, he should live it up. But is it too much to ask a smoker to take into consideration other people's well-being?

I, and nearly all of my friends, voted for the smoking ban. We are in our mid-20s, stay out until 2 a.m., go to bars, and enjoy going to shows. I remember a concert at Neumo's when I had to leave for some fresh air because the secondhand smoke made me sick. Dawdy would argue that he has a right to smoke without being inconvenienced with consideration of my well-being. But I can't help but think that I had a stronger right to see that show without being inconvenienced by other people's habits.

Kristen Paynter
Seattle

Philip Dawdy did an excellent job of showing how Seattleites are slowly losing their freedoms and their minds. I expect Seattle to be at the forefront in protesting silly laws and regulations that serve no greater purpose than to treat us all like children. I started smoking when I was 12, and I could purchase cigarettes anywhere. Now, at 32, I can't buy a pack without a driver's license. Now I'm being characterized as an "evil" smoker, and I'm sick of it. If it's legal to buy, it should be legal to smoke. Forcing smokers to stay 25 feet away from businesses is ridiculous, and in some areas, virtually impossible. It's time to stop putting up Band-Aids and deal with the real issues in this state. Banning cheap beer is easier than dealing with alcoholism and homelessness, but it accomplishes nothing. Vilifying smokers isn't going to stop them from smoking. I think we've all learned that you can't motivate someone with a weight issue to lose weight by calling them fat and disgusting, but it's OK to portray smokers as disgusting humans? Come on, Seattle, you know better!

Meghan McFadden
Renton

Boo hoo. Smokers have to take their nasty habit out of my airspace. Boo hoo. They've lost their "right" to contaminate the air I breathe. Let's put smokers' "rights" in perspective: Secondhand smoke causes more than 3,000 nonsmokers to die of lung cancer each year. Philip Dawdy attacks the "Take It Outside" campaign as puritanical. Let's put a parent's "right" to expose their children to smoke in perspective: Children's exposure to secondhand smoke is responsible for (1) increases in the number of asthma attacks in 200,000 to 1 million children with asthma; (2) between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections; and (3) respiratory tract infections resulting in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year. And that's not to mention the association between cigarette smoke and SIDS, the leading cause of death among babies.

Banning smoking is not puritanical or judgmental. Wake up, smokers: It's not about smoke being "icky." It's not about imposing a "social preference." Your habit kills, and not just you. You can keep your smoke in your private airspace, but if it enters my space (the public arena), I'm going to get a little testy. Dawdy calls it puritanical. I call it standing up for my rights. And that's exactly what Washington voters have done.

Jane Cover
Seattle

Thanks to Philip Dawdy for having the journalistic cajones to take on the Nurse Ratcheds and Carrie Nations of this town that was originally jump-started by imported prostitutes. He could have borrowed a page from the late local columnist Emmett Watson, who loyally guarded the tattered traditions of old Seattle . . . a ramshackle sawmill town that didn't have to have all of its naked sins cloaked in the chadors of modern yuppiedom.

As a 10-year-old in the 1950s, I secretly bought bus rides from West Seattle to First Avenue to marvel at the lusty burlesque posters and buy whoopee cushions at the Trick and Puzzle Store. I survived childhood mixing with the pimps, drunks, and whores on "skid row," always busing safely home where I studied my way to an Ivy League scholarship and degree, thanks to excellent public schools that were not jerked around by the humorless nannies who run them now.

It's a town that will probably never again spawn the likes of Ray Charles, Mia Zapata, Jimi Hendrix, Frances Farmer, Ivar Haglund, Nirvana, or Stan Boreson. Greg Nickels, Roger Valdez, and the band of mullahs who have taken over a richly creative and quietly chaotic city have embarked on a campaign to homogenize it into a North American Singapore, where edgy fun is illegal. Dawdy should keep the pressure on the flabby mayor and his scolds who are foisting their cultural revolution on the resident rabble, who are more than comfortable in the presence of publicans, sinners, smokers, drinkers, and hotties.