Mike Huckabee Quotes

I'm still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.

I was opposed to the government mandating that restaurants not allow people to smoke, believing it becomes the customer's choice whether they go in or not. But then, I thought, 'What about the employees? Aren't they hostage to a smoking environment, even if they don't smoke?'

Does your desire to smoke anywhere, at any time, trump the right of others to breathe clean air … ? … The need to breathe clean air is more important than the license to pollute it.

I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.

I understand that people don't want to smoke. Fine. Don't smoke. You don't want to go into a restaurant where there's [smoking], don't go in there. But don't impose your will - the will of a few - on the lives of many.

Why should we be letting people smoke their cigars in their comfortable chairs in Raqqa?

I want all hellions to quit puffing that hell fume in God's clean air.

They're talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that's used by ten or more people in a week, which, I guess, means that Madonna can't even smoke in bed.

Tolerance of public smoking promotes the addiction.

I don't smoke, but people say that you get secondhand smoke. But this is a country that was founded mainly on the tobacco industry - tobacco and coffee. It's so surprising that they are now essentially making cigarettes illegal, when that is where the whole country came from.

They used to have a smoking section at most airports. No more. They now have these glass-encased rooms. You're not just a smoker, you're an example to other people. You're an exhibit at a futuristic zoo.

I would rather people not smoke. I certainly appreciate the fact that smoking is not legal in restaurants and bars. That used to stop me from going out at night because you'd go someplace and your clothes would reek and you wouldn't enjoy the experience and that affects your rights. It's always a question. Whenever you are talking about these issues, it's not a question of restricting rights. It's a question of restricting whose rights, and providing for whose rights and that's a tricky balance.

They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts.

If somebody invented cigarettes today, the government would not legalize them.

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

I just don't want anyone messing around with my pure smoking pleasure.

We don't want to come off as pro-smoking. Even though we didn't smoke real cigarettes at all, you want to be careful of people's sensitivities.

Last year in a historic move, the state of New York passed the very first cigarette fire safety standard.

I think it's horrible that people have to be told. Don't smoke! Everybody knows it's bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.

There are enough no smoking places now.

In Hollywood you can't even smoke in a bar anymore and yet in the movies they're always showing people smoking. I don't get it.

The culture is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn't part of normal life: people don't encounter it normally, they don't see it in their big supermarkets, they don't see people smoking in public places, they don't see tobacco vending machines.

WHO has transformed its war against smoking to a war against smokers.

Cigarettes are bad, but taxes and big government are worse.

This is not a prohibitive society. We're not going to tell people they can't smoke. We learned that we can't tell people they can't drink.