On moral busybodies:

First this:
"Texas physicians, distraught over witnessing patients dying as a result of smoking cigarettes, are promoting smoking bans, according to Texas Medicine magazine." (release here, article here)

Houston City Councilwoman Dr. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs compares secondhand smoke to a terrorist attack or epidemic. Dr. Donna Bacchi, an American Hospital Association board member says activism (like her part in supporting bans in Lubbock and Austin) "is physicians' duty."

My favorite quote in support of bans on smoking is from Houston's Dr. Joel Dunnington who says, "Millions of Americans are exposed to secondhand smoke everyday. At a restaurant I prefer to have my food smoked, not me." [emphasis mine]

Why do we need doctors getting the government to prohibit us from doing things that -- admittedly -- are bad for us but we choose to do? If I don't want to sit in a smokey restaurant, what is stopping me from taking my money somewhere else? If smoke bothers so many people, why don't restaurants prohibit it themselves? Oh, wait! They already do, because it's good for their kind of business. Why does the government need to get involved at all?

Where does it end?

Right here...

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis

p.s. -- Remind me to post more on this quote "Every reputable scientific organization in the world that has looked at tobacco smoke pollution has concluded it kills people" [emphasis mine] and what I think (with the help of Ms. Rand) of "reputable scientific organizations" and the people who run them.