Letter: Mistreatment of smokers

By Dan Sullivan

At a glance, one would think that an anti-smoking rally in a bar would be a good idea. In fact, the Daily Illini supported Monday’s rally at Brother’s. However, the newspaper neglected to mention a few details, namely the mistreatment of those who decided to exercise their personal freedom to smoke.

Monday night, I was continually harassed by the creeps participating in this rally. “Stop killing me!” one girl yelled in my face. Ironically, this same girl, while shaking her rueful fist at me with one hand, had a drink in her other hand. Isn’t it interesting that no one seemed to be bothered by the drinking? Excessive drinking can cause cirrhosis of the liver as well as countless other ailments. The fallacious logic utilized by these anti-smoking fanatics can hardly be taken seriously when not universally applied to all other substances.

More importantly, allowance of this sort of behavior is a slippery slope. Asking someone to leave the bar because they smoke is no different than asking someone to sit in the back of the bus because they are black. Maybe tomorrow these same zealots will come up to my roommates and tell them that they cannot have an abortion outside Planned Parenthood. Hey, next week, maybe there should be a rally at C-Street trying to convert those deviant homosexuals. I just hope that they have enough T-shirts left over for me.

I am disappointed in the Daily Illini for positively spinning such a malicious group of people, and I am disappointed in Brother’s for sponsoring such an event. Such treatment of your patrons (not to mention your smoking, off-duty employees cowering in the corner) is shameful.

Dan Sullivan

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