This is in response to the letter "Smokers don't need health lecture" (SN 10/10). While I agree that Craig Gunn might have been a bit extreme in calling smokers suicidal and murderers, I understand the point he was trying to make.

I detest smoking and would never willingly expose myself to it, nor my children. I agree that a person has a right to deface, destroy or abuse their own bodies; I see it all the time with multiple piercings, tattoos, smoking and drug abuse.

There comes a point where the person's right to smoke invades the person's right not to smoke, i.e. secondhand smoke. Now, if a person is overeating, fine, it's their health and the food isn't spilling over into my mouth.

If a person is shooting up, fine, it's not jumping over to my veins.

But when a person lights up, they have to exhale, and there is smoke coming from the end of the cigarette that will get into my lungs.

I now am forced to breathe those toxins, and unfortunately, so do my children.

I sit in the nonsmoking section of every restaurant I go to because I don't want to be exposed to the smoking section, but the only thing that separates the smoking section from the nonsmoking section is an invisible line that has no ability to prevent the toxins from floating over.

If you want to exercise your right to smoke, then go ahead, as long as you can do so without exhaling and without any of your cigarette smoke escaping from the cigarette and invading the air that I have to breathe in order to exercise my right not to smoke.

Jamin Villarreal
MSU staff