First they came for the smokers......

Smokers, how do you like being 2nd class citizens? How would you like to have to get a "license" to smoke?

While its not happening here yet, many bad ideas that first start in England seem to get imported. While Governor Kaine and our representatives explore the idea of taking more property rights from business owners, England is talking about needing government permission to even smoke at all....

"Smokers could be forced to pay £10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way. No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England."...cash raised by the proposed scheme would go to the NHS.(National Health Service)

"You've got to get a form, a complex form - the government's good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph.

"It's a little bit of a problem to actually do it, so you have got to make a conscious decision every year to opt in to being a smoker."

"The senior government advisor putting this idea forward is not only adding to the red tape and bureaucracy we already have in this country.

"He is openly bragging that he wants to make the form as complex as possible to fill in."

I can see people pushing laws like this. I don't smoke. I don't like smoke. But it is a legal product used by adults. Leave it to them whether they wish to smoke. Politicians will use an idea like this to add more power to themselves. Its about them, not you, the smoker. Private citizens should be left alone.