"Outgassing"??

How long will it be before this is no joke?

An article I posted in another forum drew a couple of comments from someone who left no doubt that she (at least I suspect it was a she) is a nicotine nanny. She claimed that a co-worker had had to go home sick because:

"... a client at the agency where we both work came in stinking of cigarette smoke and set off my coworker's allergies. Within a half-hour, she was completely stuffed up and her head was pounding! You might not think you're causing trouble for others with your "personal" habit, but cigarette smoke does not stay on and in your person. It travels across the room and clings to not only your clothes and hair, but mine as well. You have every right to smoke whereever it does not affect me. In my state, the law says anywhere outdoors is fine. Well, it wasn't fine for my coworker. The client she encountered smelled so heavily of smoke that I, who have a poor sense of smell, could smell her 10 feet away"

I replied that if her co-worker's allergies were so severe that the mere smell of residual smoke clinging to someone else's person was enough to send her home ill, it was surprising she could hold a job - one would think she would be confined to a sterile environment instead of out in the real world where there are so many pollutants.

She came back with:

"When you smoke in a public place, the smoke -- the actual chemicals in the smoke -- do not just hang out on your person. The smoke migrates in all directions and affects everyone around you. It also clings to your clothes and hair. What we are smelling on you is not just a scent, but the actual chemicals outgassing in our air space."

Apparently she is of the opinion that smoking should be confined exclusively to one's own home, and before going out in public, the smoker should shower to remove all traces of "outgassed chemicals" and put on garments that have been stored in a totally smoke free location. We must protect the "innocent" and the "sensitive" from the evil smoker.

Attitudes of this sort might be funny if they weren't so scary. Scary because this is the way our society seems to be headed and we're not doing much to stop it.