Recently I heard a caller on KSL declare that a government requiring him to wear a mask in a public building violated his personal liberty and is the sort of thing that leads to a totalitarian government.
When I was growing up, people smoked in their office buildings, in restaurants, at sporting events, and on airplanes. When science showed that secondhand smoke was potentially lethal – could actually cause cancer in nonsmokers near the smoker -- smoking in public places was outlawed. Did that violate the personal liberty of smokers? Some of them probably felt so. If they did, they were thoughtless of the safety of others. Our democracy may be in trouble, but prohibiting smoking in public places is not among the factors that have weakened it. Public smoking bans have not brought us closer to totalitarianism. They have just made us safer.
Doug Mortensen, Millcreek
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