Misses the old America

Dear Editor,

It is with sadness that I have to say this isn't the America I grew up in.

There was a time when people had the right to chose what they did, where they worked and how far they went. At that time, people took the responsibility for their actions, good or bad. There was no blaming the school or a program on the TV. Girls didn't go to high school if they were pregnant and neither did the young men who got them that way. They quit school, got married and he got a job to support the family he started.

It seems to me that more and more, this is becoming a communist society where the government makes all of the decisions and people have no say in how to run their businesses, or use the property they bought.

I realize that some rules have to be in place so that emergency crews can do their jobs of saving lives and property, but people can't be protected from themselves.

They tried that with prohibition and people still found a way to procure alcohol. Banning smoking will only increase people's ingenuity in ways to circumvent the ban. What has been signed into law is little more than discrimination against a segment of society that paid a net tax of $66,658,156 between July 2003 and June 2004.

Every time some idiot needs money for some stupid thing they add more tax to cigarettes, not soda or junk food that only make people obese and in danger of diabetes, high blood pressure, and the other health issues associated with obesity.

No one has addressed the problem of sick children being in public eating establishments, sneezing and coughing, filling the air with the germs that made them sick. No one has addressed the idea that the Clean Indoor Air Act was just a smoke screen to placate a segment of society. Every time a customer enters or leaves a business, the pollutants in the outside air come inside.

I shudder to think what this country will be like in the next 10 to 30 years, and I really have no desire to find out.

Unfortunately, my grandmother smoked for 50 years and lived to be 102 so I will probably live to see a time when people can't even pass gas without filling out an environmental impact statement.

Sincerely,

Robert Yost

McCook