I understand first hand the pain of suffering from your own decisions as well as the pain of losing one you love. To use that pain and the underlying circumstances for political or cultural gain (or to make yourself feel better) is stupid and illogical. It may be effective and emotionally powerful to rebut with a, "Yeah, well my (insert relative, the closer the better) died from (insert cause, especially good if it is a cause de jour)", but it makes for bad law, bad ethics and bad logic. Rue your behavior, but don't blame that which you abused. It's called free-will.
Bill Buckley Finds Joe's Tavern Close to Auschwitz
Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes. Solemn because I would be violating my secular commitment to the free marketplace. Contrite, because my relative indifference to tobacco poison for so many years puts me in something of the position of the Zyklon B defendants after World War II. These folk manufactured the special gas used in the death camps to genocidal ends. They pleaded, of course, that as far as they were concerned, they were simply technicians, putting together chemicals needed in wartime for fumigation. Some got away with that defense; others, not.
Those who fail to protest the free passage of tobacco smoke in the air come close to the Zyklon defendants in pleading ignorance.
Jacob Sullum of Reason Magazine makes excellent points in his discussion of free markets, Bill Buckley and the changed reasoning that almost self-writes illogical statements that follow such an emotional change. I agree with Mr. Sullum, who worked for Bill Buckley, but for me it is as if a favorite uncle just passed away and we all miss his brilliance and wit.
