I don’t smoke. I would never cough it up around a smoker, or ask them to put it out, or vote to pass legislation against them. I think they should be allowed to smoke in bars and nightclubs because of the nature of those establishments. I even allowed smoking in my apartment before my daughter came on the scene.
All that said, I have to say something to the smokers that call ‘bullshit’ when someone coughs around you. Listen. You stink. You fucking smell so bad, especially your fucking BREATH when you lean over my desk after your break, and even more so when you have a ‘halfy’ cigarette in your pocket or whatever.
Your smoke in the parking lot reeks enough to make me gag if I catch the wrong breeze. I don’t make any show of gagging because I think one should repress such urges out of respect for others. It is rude to make others feel that they are making you uncomfortable. That is why I suck it up when someone comes around me with their perfume or their nasty, sharp ass cologne.
Because I KNOW there is something I’m doing that they suck up. They may not want to see my fat ass wearing low cut tops, or they may not want to smell my fish cooking (I eat fish almost every day).
I love city living, so I suck it up, and others do too. But, just because you see someone coughing, that does NOT mean they are just full of shit. Your smoke is disgusting. They just aren’t willing to take the high road and skip the passive agressive expressions of disgust.
Sorry, I have no sympathy. Yes, it’s silly that you can’t have actual smoking allowed bars for smokers only but maybe if actual allowances for non-smokers had been made early on it wouldn’t have come to this.
Smokers had plenty of years of inside smoking where non-smokers got the short shrift. Restaurants, bars, etc. could have made non-smoking areas true smokeless areas but it wasn’t done. I can’t tell you how many times I was seated in a non-smoking area only to have the table next to me light up and the a/c blow it directly toward me or how many times I had to walk through the smoking area to get to the non-smoking area. Non-smoking areas were jokes. So for years establishments and smokers both ignored non-smokers wishes and comfort, is it any wonder it finally bit you guys in the ash?
Except they set up non-smoking bars. You know, where the owner didn’t want people to smoke on his premises. The fact that more were not set up is probably less of an indicator of malicious smokers not caring about non-smokers, but more a reflection of market forces.
Bottom line, non-smoking bars didn’t get critical mass without state compulsion on their side. Why not? Probably because non-smokers were more willing to go to bars with smoke than smokers were to go to bars without smoking.
So instead of setting up non-smoking bars, or patronizing non-smoking bars that did set up, the reaction was to force the issue by banning any bar from allowing smoking.
As for no allowances, that is utterly ridiculous. I remember smoking in cinemas, in offices, in shops, on 'planes. None of those happen to any noticeable degree any more. But that wasn’t enough. Pretty much the last public place indoors one could smoke was a bar. And I don’t have a problem with that. It wasn’t as if there was a law requiring every bar to allow smoking. So when you talk of allowances, why not look at it that way?
So, did it ever occur to you that if everytime you saw him, you closed your front windows (the real solution to the problem, let’s be honest), that he might figure it out, and sit somewhere else?
Besides which, if there is such an overriding prevailing wind, that always blows it into your house, from 30ft away, it shouldn’t take long to dissipate after he’s spent, what, 12 mins to smoke a but.
Regardless of what is coming into your house on the breeze, unless regulated by law, if it so offends you, then the course of action of first pursuit, for any thinking creature, should be close the windows. ( In this case, that would be for about 25 mins. )
You feel entitled to tell someone, across the road from you, what they can do on their own porch, because it’s easier than closing the windows for a few minutes. You are the one with the delicacy, it’s on you, not him.
This is kinda what I was going to add. Though you still ‘smell’ it, the carcinogens are unlikely to exist in a concentration large enough to do anything but stink.
Sorry, but you’re gonna hafta leather up, cupcake.
Either that, or stretch an extension cord out to the street with an industrial size fan. Which would be amusing to see on video.
Yup, I get it, “reasonable” is what DianaG thinks is reasonable. The times and noise levels that you consider acceptable to regulate are what ought to be regulated. Anybody who disagrees with you about, say, whether it’s okay for the next-door neighbor to blast jackhammer-level music all afternoon is merely being a “bitchy, puritanical, whiny and incredibly self-involved douchebag”. (Og forbid, of course, that the neighbor should even consider using, you know, earphones so he can have his loud music while keeping it to himself.)
So, how’s that attitude to “compromise” working out for you smokers? Making you lots of friends and sympathizers among non-smokers and inclining them to be more tolerant about the inconvenience of your smoke, because it’s worth putting up with a little inconvenience for such nice people? Leading to the relaxation of more smoking bans and giving you more legal opportunities to smoke in public? No, I kinda thought not.
If you’re going to aggressively draw the line in the sand at legality, and say that you can smoke all you like anyplace it’s legal and just flip off anybody who’s bothered by it, then don’t be surprised if more and more people who are bothered by smoke will push on the legality issue. If non-smokers have to listen to smokers calling them delicate flowers and whiny douchebags anyway, at least they can have fresher air to breathe in the meantime.
Oh. No, not obvious to me at any rate: you did refer to policies “such as taking smokers out of bars”, but I thought you were just using bars as an example of an unintended negative consequence of universal indoor smoking bans. Sorry.
So, how many designated smoking bars were there proposed to be on average in a given city, anyway? Would all the smokers who could no longer smoke in cinemas and offices and shops dutifully trudge off to the nearest smoking bar downtown whenever they wanted a smoke break, wherever?
I doubt it. ISTM that as soon as most indoor locations went smoke-free, there were plenty of smokers smoking outdoors all over the place even when it was still legal to smoke in all or some bars. Not surprisingly, because the average smoker generally didn’t want to schlep over to a bar for every cigarette break.
Therefore, I’m skeptical about the claim that not allowing a few designated smoking bars to be exempt from universal smoking bans really significantly increases forced exposure to other people’s smoke. Yes, there are now groups of smokers standing outside bars so that passersby have to breathe their smoke, who would formerly have been inside the bars where passersby could avoid their smoke. However, there are groups of smokers standing outside every other type of establishment, too, and I doubt that having a few smoking bars available here and there in the city would really do much to move them indoors.
I didn’t USED to draw the line at legality. There was a time when I’d have been happy to put my cigarette out for anyone who asked. That time was before I was huddled under an awning in the freezing rain, so bite me for suggesting that I should continue to appease you fuckers.
Hell, we don’t even get an awning anymore. Out in the rain, no awning or windbreak. Nada. The company tried to ban it on “their” sidewalk, but that failed - partly because it is public property, and partly because they didn’t want to be liable if some got run over going to the opposite side of the street.
:dubious: “Appease”? As in, you feel you have some kind of innate right to be habitually putting annoying amounts of smoke and stink into the air that other people are breathing?
And that it’s just as important as the other people’s right to breathe air without your smoke and stink in it?
And that therefore, the two conflicting rights are obliged to compromise with each other to find a solution that’s more or less equally satisfactory to both parties, and if the compromise is very unbalanced, then that’s “appeasement”?
See, this, right here, is what seems to me to be a crucial difference in perspective. IF the right to habitually exude invasive pollutants is as valid as the right to not have to deal with other people’s invasive pollutants, then sure, smokers and non-smokers should try to accommodate each other’s preferences in a more or less balanced way. But that’s a pretty big IF, and by no means everybody agrees with it.
The other way of looking at the premise is that not habitually exuding invasive pollutants should be the default, and that everybody’s entitled to expect that as the default. According to that viewpoint, spewing invasive pollutants is an occasional privilege, not a habitual right, and dependent on the gracious forbearance of the people who have to put up with the pollutants.
I actually believe that neither of these two premises is automatically and intrinsically “right” or “wrong”. But people who live in the same society and don’t agree on which premise is the right one are very likely to clash. ISTM that the reason smokers and non-smokers get so pissed off at each other is that the smokers are thinking according to the first premise, and the non-smokers are thinking according to the second.
That is, many smokers feel that putting smoke into other people’s air is in some way a right, one that needs to be balanced with other conflicting rights in a spirit of mutuality, but nonetheless a right that is now being unfairly infringed by draconian smoking bans. Many non-smokers, on the other hand, feel that putting up with smoke in their air is a favor that smokers were constantly demanding of them, and that they finally got tired of granting.
If I were to invent fart-in-a can and go around all day spraying it into people’s faces, would anyone argue that I have an innate right to do so? What if fart-in-a-can were a health hazard? Would I still have that right?
Well, many people wear polluting amounts of perfumes and other fragrances that smell a lot worse than fart-in-a-can, so if they have the right, say, to spray Axe (blecch) everywhere they go, then I don’t see why you can’t do the same with fart-in-a-can.
Well, that would be another thing to take into account, and probably would open you up to more restrictions. However, I do think it’s fair to say that the people who don’t like your fart-in-a-can should not deliberately exaggerate its health risks just to make it more easy to restrict it.
If you’re advocating the Nonsmokers’ Premise in general (i.e., that nobody has a right to habitually spew invasive pollutants), then you should stand up for that as a general principle, not try to overstate the specific hazards of fart-in-a-can in particular.
I smoke Black and mild Pipe tobacco cigars and Get comments from ladies of all ages that the smoke is very pleasant, guys(and some girls) will ask for a hit off it.
Finally the thread is returning to what really matters.
Actually, no. Worth a shot, maybe. Then again, my first indication of his smoking is smelling it, by which time it is already too late to close the windows.
Seconds. And he probably takes less than that.
No I don’t. Read carefully. I just go harumph on the internets and behave cordially towards him the very few times we interact. I think we have all agreed since the beginning that he is in his right to smoke life away on his porch. He doesn’t need to be bothered by my displeasure. That’s my own business.
OK, I can start farting. I can pretty much do it at will (it’s a gift). I guarantee, after one whiff, it will be “OH GOD PLEASE STOP FARTING AND GO BACK TO SMOKING!”. Seriously. I can make my dogs leave the room :eek:
They are when you get down into the specifics and separate the good laws from the bad. That article was no longer available but I am guess it was something like we saw when Allegheny went totally smoke-free and the State was talking some exceptions for certain bars and situations. Our county and state tavern associations pointed out that if that went through, most taverns in Allegheny County were basically dead. People would just drive a few miles and have a beer and a Winston legally next door in another county. The fair thing was for the state to match the county or for the state to overturn the county to equalize the field. Taverns are like casinos; smokers spend more. So any bar that can allow smoking, or allow more smoking space, has an edge over those who cannot or will not do so.
Ohio is much stricter in their “ban” than PA. Early results are that Ohio bars along the border with us are taking it on the chin and the smoking bars around places like Sharon are looking to expand. So compromises are being talked in Ohio. But to work they are going to need to go state-wide with one uniform law.
The right to smoke was in the Constitution right around the same place as the right to live a smoke-free life. We both seem to have the pursuit of happiness but I see no real promise we’re ever going to find it.
Define “other people’s air” for me if you would. Back when I owned my tackle business, we were mostly wholesale and the door was “two layers deep” on a buzzer system to get in. I always made sure anyone standing there had time to read the sign on the first door “Many of us here smoke. If smoking bothers you, please leave and we’ll be happy to send you a list of our competitors through the mail”. The building was basically sealed with all air coming in and out going through some serious filtration; it was that way when I bought it. My employees (9 full time and 3-8 part time) also had the option of working from home and never coming into the building; the space was more because sometimes some of us just wanted to get out of our respective houses. It was basically a combination of central storage and a sort of clubhouse.
Under the current laws here in PA, that wouldn’t be allowed. “Our air” has become “your air” as long as you don’t smoke, complain loud enough, and prefer others do as you choose.
So yes, I have some sympathy. But not very much; very little really. And that is saved for specific individuals or cases like the OP.
(The guy who bought me out tried to do as I did; he ended up in court eventually and lost. Times changed and somehow “his” air became public concern. Shortly after that he took his production to another country and just ran the shipping from his basement. It wasn’t just over the smoking; it was more that and a growing list of useless and silly government regulations for a small cottage operation. Jobs lost and nothing much accomplished.)