IT's not REALLY about smoking

As of April 1, 2012, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, 79.8% of the U.S. population lives under a ban on smoking in "workplaces, and/or restaurants, and/or bars, by either a state, commonwealth, or local law," though only 48.2% live under a ban covering all workplaces and restaurants and bars. Everyone from the AMA to most of main stream media promotes the idea that "Because cigarette smoking is bad for you it should be regulated or outlawed", people by the millions have jumped on the band wagon. I ask the question, "Are smoking bans as much a health issue as they are a personal rights issue"?

Once we give ourselves the mental OK to feel comfortable with banning "something" for being unhealthy what is there to stop "everything" that's deemed unhealthy from being banned? It's easy for someone to say, "Heck I don't smoke so why should I care if they ban smoking"?  The issue won't be obvious to you until they do ban something you like to consume, then suddenly you'll care, but the "We can ban anything that's not healthy" genie will already  be out of the bottle.

 Once they have banned enough things in this world that we can consume that are deemed "unhealthy" what is there to stop them from taking the next leap to things that we do that can be deemed as dangerous or "unhealthy", and frankly who gets to make these decisions for me and everyone else?