To quote Aaron Russo, Libertarian Presidential Nominee contender.
"All our freedom, all the time."
Our country was based on personal responsibility, not nanny state ideals. Each man, each person, each individual is responsible for themselves, their decisions, their ideals and beliefs. I elect a President to protect my rights, enforce the constitution, and REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.
The will of the people is not to be nursed by a moral authority, to be told what is right and wrong, to be told what they can and can't do of their own free will, unless they violate the laws of the Constitution by infringing anothers rights, or committing fraud.
I feel for Haethurn, and I can sympathize with how she feels. I lost my mother right before I graduted High School to the grip of cancer. I have watched my father smoke my entire life, and he has been smoking since he was 9 years old. (Born in 1933, when smoking was more than just accepted, it was promoted, AND a part of military rations.) No man, No person, NO BEING, has the right to forbid any person from nourishing, medically treating, or consuming any vegetable, drug, food, or substance THEY willingly choose to consume of their own free will.
I am a man, I am a free man, no matter what my government feels inclined to dictate. You may make a law, you may pass an amendment, but both would be a violation of the Constitution, in concept and tradition. Review the effect of prohibition, analyze what has been learned, and then look at how our government has lied and perpetrated the greatest violation against our own citizens, the War on Drugs. This in itself shows the folly of attempting to regulate the cravings, the desire, the appetite of free men. Volumes have been written, as many more will I am sure, however none I think say it better than the following examples....
The lessons of Prohibition in Hindsight....
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRAR...ies/nc/nc2a.htm
D.A.R.E. Program Report:
http://civilliberty.about.com/gi/dynamic/o...s.org/DARE.html
ACTUAL FACTS about the War on Drugs:
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/
EDUCATE YOURSELVES AMERICA, it is the only way we can learn in the existing system, if you don't prescribe to the general commercial network concensus.
Liberty is our founding, most essential goal of OUR government. It was the selling point that started the revolution for independence, the fuel for our founding, and the single MOST important guideline they sought to preserve in the writing of the Constituion. This has been the focus of destruction for the Establishment that has reigned power for the last 154 years in this country through the process of bi-partisan politics, and ensuring the power stay in the hands of the two major political parties through criteria manipulation for validity of debate qualification.
It is time to rediscover our roots America, the roots that have fed and nourished this society into the huge flowering tree of personal achievement, personal success, and personal empowerment that are being choked off by the Establishment, for the profit of the few, and the oppression of the many. We need to fortify our foundation of government, we need to reestablish our goals of our system, our goals of society, our goals as a people, to restore liberty, and strive for a government who seeks to empower the INDIVIDUALS, and not the Establishment.
"All our freedom, all the time!"