The turn of the Millenium has brought about a small change in the conscience of mankind as a whole. We're finally starting to focus more on the true value of life and it's real meaning. We're slowly losing our taste for corrupt governments, terrorism, warfare and all the associated pain and hardship. It looks that mankind, at last, may be heading for a brighter future.

Part of this growth has been the realization that smoking is bad for you. This coupled with numerous high profile court cases against tobacco companies has seen smoking become less and less popular amongst the general population. It's no longer seen as being polite or acceptable and there are now numerous extremely graphic television adverts to reinforce the message - "Smoking Will Kill You".

As part of this "War Against Smokerism" smoking cigarettes, cigars or pipes is being banned in more places each day. Initially it's just been in bars and in large shopping malls. Then the ban moved to the workplace and all shops, gas stations and most other places you can think of. The next step is the banning of smoking in all outdoor public areas such as parks and beaches for example.

This is where the problems begin. We now have extremism coming into view. A sensible proposal like the banning of smoking in the workplace and public venues is then taken by the moral minority of the world and abused. Like any extremists they'll push the laws as far as they can to get their own way - just to prove they can.

We now have employees crammed into airtight smoking rooms to have their breaktime cigarette. How long before one of them sues for prejudice against smokers? Or sues because they got cancer at a massively accelerated rate due to being exposed to toxic levels of secondhand smoke?

Is it right to do this? Smoking is a nasty habit. Does this mean that you lose all your civil rights as a human being just because you smoke? What about the massive pollution caused by cars? For example police on the streets of Bombay in India have to use oxygen masks every 60 minutes to flush their lungs out - the pollution is that bad. Is there any possibility that cars may be banned soon? Not likely.

Reformed smokers (there's no such thing as an ex smoker) can be the worst of the lot. They're far too fond of standing on soapboxes and letting their vapid opinions be known. They love coughing as loudly as possible when walking into a room with any smokers and dispensing random medical and statistical facts to people who couldn't care less if their head was on fire.

Smoking is a filthy, disgusting and unhealthy habit. Smokers, however, do still have the right to smoke and be treated like human beings. To treat them as any less than equal human beings is at best prejudicial and at worst borderline Nazism.