This disgusting habit should be banned

With all the laws restricting the rights of smokers to enjoy their God-given freedom to enjoy tobacco, you’d think our legislators would have addressed by now a habit even more harmful and offensive than smoking.

I am referring, of course, to the odious habit of chewing gum. While I’d go to jail if I lit up a cigarette in a movie theater, restaurant or in the workplace, gum-chewers possess the right to use their disgusting product in all of those venues.

Make no mistake, if I had a teenage child, I’d much rather see them smoke crack than chew gum. Gum-chewers are quick to condemn smokers but are oblivious to their own offenses against mankind.

Why am I so vehemently against gum? There are many reasons. It irritates the hell out of me to have to watch someone chewing gum. They look like a cow chewing its cud.

Also, chewing gum makes you look stupid. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks like the most ignorant, trailer-dwelling Jerry Springer guest while chewing gum. There is inadequate scientific evidence to back up my theory that chewing gum actually makes you stupid, but that’s because the powerful gum lobby has blocked such research for decades now.

I wouldn’t go so far to say that everyone who chews gum is stupid, but I can say with assurance that every stupid person I’ve ever met chews gum. Look at the most notable gum-chewers of the past few years. Britney Spears. George W. Bush. I rest my case.

Gum-chewing is not a harmless lifestyle choice, as some would have you believe. It’s a distraction to others in the workplace. It’s hard as hell to concentrate when the person next to you is chewing gum.

It’s extremely disrespectful to others. If they’re allowed to chew gum, then I should be able to masturbate in public. If that last thought disgusts you, then you have a good idea just how much gum disgusts me.

If our legislators had any sense, they’d outlaw or at least heavily restrict the sales and possession of gum. As it stands now, any kid with 25 cents in his pocket can go into a convenience store and walk out with a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. That should not be.

I advocate a zero-tolerance approach to gum. After outlawing the manufacture and sale of gum, anybody caught with it should be fined, then jailed, then executed in accordance with the laws of all that is good and right.

Chewing the stuff is disgusting enough, but smacking and popping it is even worse. The people who do it have no regard for the feelings of others. When confronted about it, they just laugh and keep chewing like the morons they are.

Remember the punishments that teachers used to hand out? They’d force chronic gum offenders to write, “I will not chew gum in Mr. Dart’s class,” 500 times on a piece of paper. I should be empowered by the state to force gum-chewers I encounter to do something similar.

As an alternative, they should be forced to scrape the gum off the seats of buses, or from under the desks of government buildings and schools. As a last resort before incarceration or capital punishment, a mandatory extraction of all teeth could serve as a deterrent to others.

The social costs of gum are incalculable. Untold billions of dollars are expended cleaning sidewalks because of it. Who knows how many fillings have been ripped from teeth because of gum? How many more people will have to suffer with a coworker obnoxiously chewing gum? Have we, at long last, lost all sense of decency?

If gum must be allowed, give the cud-chewers a designated area outside to indulge. I only ask that they be kept separate from the smokers. We don’t want them around. They will keep us from fully enjoying our smoke breaks.

I applaud the progressive government of Singapore, which outlawed the public chewing of gum in 1992. If only our government would show such courage. Society would be richer because of it.

I am totally serious about this. It’s an offense to others, it’s destructive to society and should be stopped. Now. Just say no to gum. Please.