Right Stuff

As I was driving to New Glasgow yesterday, I heard yet another new anti-smoking ad. This one was encouraging people not to smoke in their cars. It joins the efforts by this campaign to get people not to smoke in their houses.

Over the last couple years smoking in public places has become increasingly rare/illegal in Atlantic Canada. Now that there are very few places where one can smoke in public, the ad campaigns have switched their target. Instead of trying to influence where people smoke in public, they are now trying to change the way people smoke in private.

Now, I'm not a smoker but the path of this campaign is a familar one and it made me realize something. There's a reason why people, groups, organizations are so against having something they believe in altered (for proof from the right and the left, see conservative churches stance on gay marriage or pro-abortion activists stance on attempts to criminalize certain kinds of abortion). Once an opposing group gains momentum by making one change, they tend to keep on pushing for another change and another until the law, or at least society, reflects their views.

I'm not saying it is a bad thing that the groups keep pushing, in many cases I would argue for the necessity of the continued pushing (mainly in leftist causes but that's just because of my personal philosophy). It is just that if you have a belief that you hold dear and someone else has an opposing belief, it seems that compromising is going to be bad for whichever one of you is giving up ground from a legal or societal standpoint. Something to think about.