Righteous folks who care about people are often offended by the comparison between how smokers are treated in the healthist 21st century and how Jews were treated in the fascist 20th century.
The offence is caused because they believe the propaganda about smoking and want to try and save people who smoke from themselves. Their stance comes from a caring perspective but they don't realise that they have been lied to by those who not only hate smoking but people who smoke too.
They say that it's outrageous to compare not being able to have a fag with what happened to the Jews and I actually agree with them. But for smokers the issue is not about being able to smoke or not. It's about how anti-smoking propagandists backed up with Govt money and resources are inciting hatred against people who smoke to turn wider society against them.
Even if they stopped smoking the hate would continue. Their alleged rotten teeth wouldn't suddenly be clean and white would they? Any fatal illness they might have picked up wouldn't suddenly get better would it? They'd still be considered as a smoker even if they had stopped smoking wouldn't they? They'd still be accused of having contributed to global warming and the deaths of millions to come from their past "passive sharing of smoke" or "passivrauchen."
That is where the comparison with what happened to the Jews - motivated by the same kind of hatred - is relevant. After all, even some Germans back in the days of Nazism believed that all Jews had to do to stop the hate was change their religion. After all, religion is a choice isn't it?
Their Govt told them that Jews were as poisonous as mushrooms and like a bad mushroom could kill a whole family, Jews could murder a whole village, a town or even a nation. Perhaps it was the righteous of those times that cared about people who jumped on the bandwaggon of hate against Jews for the "greater good" and allowed the holocaust to happen by passive compliance.
Just as Jews then were promoted as greedy, selfish, dangerous, and fat smokers, so are smokers today compared in similar terms.
What was missing from wider society then to enable to climate of opinion to swing with the Nazis against the Jews - and other undesirables - was the principles of tolerance, fair play, and compassion.
Just as it is missing from THIS intolerant person who refuses to believe the world is big enough to share because he personally hates smokers - ie: people now defined as a lifestyle group.
Just as protection of the Jews and positive comments about the Jews was banned in the 1930s, so is any protection of or positive comments about smokers banned in the 21st century.
Whatever people might think of smoking, how ever much they may fear it, hate the smell of aromatic tobacco, or care for those they want to save from themselves, no-one can deny that the bottom line on this issue to keep both sides happy, and to end hate, is tolerance, choice and respect for people's differences and beliefs.
I don't believe that this will end in the gas chambers for smokers but how far down the road of hate do we want to go as a society? I believe the constant attacks on smokers by the state with public support will end with them being forced into sub-normal classes, criminalisation with laws made against them, and ultimately being locked up as the Jews and other undesirables were before the holocaust happened.
I find it ironic that ordinarily fair minded and compassionate people who are offended by the comparisons of hate directed at smokers now and Jews then are persuaded by the tool invented by Himmler - propaganda.