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| | The Austin Chronicle News: Smoke This! |
 | | And despite all the owners' protestations of helplessness, the barely veiled threat to "jobs," should the ordinance pass, is different only in degree from Rockdale's Alcoa aluminum plant threatening its workers' livelihoods should the company be forced to obey the law and stop polluting the Central Texas air. |
 | | Much has been rightly charged about the puritanism of some smoking opponents, but for every self-righteous nonsmoker, there is a smoker who believes he is "free" to light up anytime, anywhere, and to use the entire surface of the earth as his personal ashtray. |
 | | By the same token, it is astonishing to hear ban opponents, in 2005, attempting with a straight face to pretend that the dangers of secondhand smoke have not been scientifically demonstrated a battle that Big Tobacco lost, by a knockout (not to mention its own secret research), more than a generation ago. |
| www.austinchronicle.com /issues/dispatch/2005-04-15/pols_point.html (864 words) |
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