Don't smoke they don't smoke!

We read an article in ARA about the new regulation that prohibits smoking on bar terraces, university campuses, and music festivals. The large photo illustrating the article, by Júlia González Grego, shows us three beings sitting on a terrace smoking. These three beings, who are hinted to be members of the discriminated-against, the guirior collective, are not the worst thing they do. One of them has taken off his socks (his feet must be sweating). By this I mean that if the waiter comes to the sock-wearer and tells him not to smoke, he won't care, if you'll allow the summery pun. On campuses and at music festivals, things will be even worse. Who will tell students (and professors) not to smoke on the grass? Who will administer justice? Some bikers in black jackets that say “Vaping Angels”?

Many of the young people we know don't drink alcohol and soft drinks “to avoid gaining weight” and don't smoke “for health.” High-proof alcohol with sugary drinks makes you gain a lot of weight, it's true. Wine or sparkling wine make you gain very little weight, but whoever wants a “psychotropic effect” doesn't choose these elegant and leisurely drinks, which the WHO, on the other hand, ridiculously equates with high-proof alcohol. Tobacco is generally incompatible with sports, it's true. So, at music festivals, in nightclubs, what young people do is drink water. Just water? No, with synthetic drugs, which they say don't make you gain weight, are psychoactive, and don't make you choke for lack of air while dancing, they say. The medium-term effects on the brain (concentration problems, memory loss, psychosis...) are exactly the same to them, because thirty years is a long way off. I'm bothered by tobacco in an enclosed space, but I can tolerate it in an open space. I just want to say, with this, that when a “fun” activity is prohibited, it is quickly replaced by another.