For a few years now, television ads sponsored by an anti-smoking Web site have offered some interesting fun facts regarding tobacco use and put tobacco companies and their lobbyists in some rather compromising positions. These ads, which feature attractive, healthy, stylishly attired young people - many of them with bullhorns - seek to tell us the truth about smoking cigarettes.

The truth is - and as it's been documented decades before these young rogues got a hold of a bullhorn - cigarettes are, in fact, bad for you. They cause cancer, emphysema and generally make you smell like a Denny's. And that's not a slam at family-style dining at competitive prices.

No matter how many television or print campaigns there will be, no matter how much the statistics point to a decreasing number of smokers in this country and no matter how high the volume on these bullhorns are, we've always known that cigarettes are a health risk. But so is alcohol use. So is McDonald's. Responsible, productive members of our society make uninformed, unhealthy choices every day and will defiantly protect their right to deteriorate at any cost.

As they should. Most recently in the battle to eliminate cigarette smoke in public places, the residents of Columbus, Ohio, passed a citywide ban on indoor smoking in public buildings. Columbus joins the list of places - New York City the most prominent - to forbid smoking in bars.

If cigarettes in bars are outlawed, then only outlaws in bars will smoke cigarettes. The point is this: Smokers already know they're running a health risk and they know the smoke is offensive to some. But taking away their right to make unhealthy choices is a violation of our rights as Americans to gorge and booze ourselves into an early grave. We hope East Lansing will stay in the fashion of letting citizens make choices for themselves, whatever that choice might be.