I did not agree to those ads. They infringe on my civil rights to partake of legal drugs. I started from A: peer pressure because everyone else in school smoked, B: Menthol cigarettes were advertised as being ‘good for you,’ C: every movie in the theater showed manly men smoking, preferably a cigarette made from the sweepings of the curing shed to show how tough they were and D: NO ONE said there was any harm in it.
By now I’m hooked and I enjoy it.
Boy, let them use the same tactics to get people to stop drinking because alcohol is #2 after smoking for killing people and watch the outrage hit the streets then. Men and women would rise up in arms to stomp those ‘TRUTH’ people if they attacked the sacred beer barrel, bootleggers would have stills perking in every closet and buyers lined up to buy hooch! You’d probably be whining like crazy if you couldn’t have the occasional beer or mixed drink!
HEY some of this stuff looks real familiar – like I mentioned it and got my ass ate out in my post. I think you all better keep an eye out for the Jackals who are lurking around out there on the SDMB. They probably followed me here, so be prepared to stand up for your rights.
You guys are smoking something other than cigarettes if you really think you deserve any sympathy.
Boo hoo hoo. You ignored the warnings on the sides of cigarette packages, and all the easily accessable warnings about smoking that have been around for a very long time. Instead you were a sheep and started smoking because your friends smoked, and because it looked “cool” in the movies. Well, doesn’t that make you look just brilliant. Well boo hoo hoo to you.
Go ahead, smoke. I won’t complain or try to stop you from smoking in designated smoking area. I won’t preach a sermon about the evils of smoking to you, while you are minding your own business. I won’t glare at you or treat you badly if I see that you smoke. (I have friends who smoke - it’s not an issue - they just go outside to smoke…none of my business.)
Just don’t smoke in an enclosed area, where people who actually have allergies to it might have a bad reaction. Don’t whine because you can’t pollute everyone else’s air, I mean, that’s just absurd. Don’t whine because cigarettes cost too much…no one is putting a gun to your head making you buy the damned things.
Basically, don’t whine to people who have had better ways to spend their money than on cigarettes. Don’t whine to people who decided that their smoking friends’ peer pressure was a poor “excuse” to start a smelly, expensive and addictive habit. These are the wrong people to expect any sympathy from.
I mean, go whine to the other smokers out there. Have whine-fest as you puff away, OK?
What exactly do you want from me? To feel sorry for you because cigs cost too much? Because you can’t smoke on a plane? Because there are some annoying ads on TV? (What? Like TV isn’t full of annoying ads?) Please clarify what part of my “perspective” you want me to open. And, I am biased. I don’t smoke. You are biased as well. You do smoke. So…?
Why? Too close to home? You don’t like your whining being treated with the lack of seriousness it deserves?
I could argue with you ad infinitum, but that would be a waste of time (you’re not getting my point- it’s like talking to a brick wall). Just go away and quit trying to derail my op.
Silo, thanks, you are providing me with much amusement today! I notice how you do not answer my question, merely “whine” that I am trying to “derail” your OP. SO…let’s take a look at your OP, shall we?
Why is it “over the line”? Is it the truth, or not? You can complain that it is a dumb ad, knock yourself out. But…is it the truth, or not? My guess is that there will be ample stats pointing to it being reasonably accurate. Truth hurts, huh?
Boo hoo hoo. You can’t spread your foul-smelling smoke in an enclosed area. You poor victim you.
Boo hoo hoo.
Don’t think it’ll go that far. I agree…restricting smoking in wide open areas is pushing it too far. But…Oh My Gosh. The basic complaint here is that they are passing laws restricting smoking. Which is usually a great relief to the majority of people who do not smoke. Many of them sneeze, are allergic, are made ill, etc., by the smell of it. I cannot muster up a lot of concern about restrictive smoking laws. You act is if you think they’ll be making baby’s milk or a diabetic’s insulin illegal next. Sheesh.
This huge puddle next to me is all the tears I am shedding over the realization that you smokers are having to pay high taxes on your smokes. Because, I understand, they make you buy the cigarettes. You have no choice in the matter. Completely out of your control. Boo hoo hoo. You poor victim you.
Well, stop whining and quit already!
Granted, if you are in an open space, minding your own business, and someone comes up and harasses you, that is out of line. But the majority of this OP has been about:
Bellyaching about some strident anti-smoking ad. Sheesh, man, turn your eyes away if it offends you so much. Don’t like to be reminded that smoking actually kills? You poor delicate flower you…such fragile sensitive feelings you have…just turn away, light up another smoke, and all the distressing memories of that nasty ad will be blotted out of your head.
Bellyaching because smoking is heavily taxed. Boo hoo hoo. No one forces you to pay the money. Quit yer bitcin’.
You can’t smoke wherever you want. Boo Hoo Hoo. What a shocker. You of course never knew that a lot of people do not like, or are actually made ill, by the smell of smoke. So it is a grievous burden upon you now to have to use some self-control, and not light up just anywhere. My heart bleeds for you. You poor victim you.
I am not a smoker, but I come from a family of smokers. One grandmother died of emphysema, the other has chronic bronchitis, and my father has had a heartattack. None of this has affected the smokers in my family! If “thetruth.com” thinks they are accomplishing anything, they are crazy. Smokers will not be swayed by television ads, labels, or taxes!
While the “truth” ads are annoying, the ones I can’t stand are the Phillip Morris ads advocating kids to “think. don’t smoke.” PM was forced to air these ads because they were found guilty of marketing to kids. Regardless of what you think about that idea, I am disturbed that our government was able to (in effect) force a company to advertise against itself.
As far as the “boo hoo hoo” issue is concerned- true…you don’t have to smoke, but why force smokers to pay an arm and a leg for a cigarette? It is obvious that increasing the price of cigarettes does not significantly impact a person’s decision to smoke. The government is just taking advantage of people who are addicted.
If an establishment wants to become nonsmoking because that’s what the majority of customers want, then fine. But the government shouldn’t decide for everyone. God forbid we let the market sort it out. Thank goodness for my paternal government. I’d be lost without them.
The theory of a sin tax is a joke. I don’t mean to hijack, but will all of you in favor of high cigarette taxes be singing the same song when this tax is extended to foods with little or no nutritional value! How would you feel about having to pay extra for caffeine? sugar? a big mac?
But it’s because they are stupid. I’ve met many a smoker and non-smoker, and this I can tell you…no one has ever been persuaded to quit by an advertisment!!! People only quit when they’re ready. (people who say they want to quit, but can’t are whiny maggots.)
BTW, here in sunny California, you cannot smoke in ANY public building of workplace. The one and only exception is the ‘cigar bar’ ( a place that sells only tobacco products in a bar type atmosphere), and the legal arm-wrestling about those is not over. There are too many laws, IMHO.
Yosemitebabe, i’m not whining rather bitching (isn’t this the place to do that). You have this inevitable need to deem my thread as a pity party (your one dimensional viewpoint). The taxes don’t hurt me cause I have plenty of money, how ironic, boo hoo hoo for you poor girl. The truth ads are crap, they provide no truthful information just gestapo scare tactics. Yosemitebabe you’re acting like a troll (not even a good one). Post again here and I will make a mission to go derail one of your threads. BTW (this is the pit so) fuck you.
Silo, this is the Pit. One man’s “bitching” is another person’s “whining”. I can be sarcastic and make fun of your “whining” in the Pit. I call it as I see it, especially here. This does not make me a troll. This is the PIT. (And Hell, I haven’t even used the “F” word yet! I’m not even doing the Pit justice if I don’t use profanity! ;))
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. You don’t like my sarcastic reaction to your OP? (It’s obvious you don’t.) Well boo hoo hoo to you. This IS the Pit! You don’t like the idea that there are people out there who don’t feel sorry for smokers? Well, go live in a cave then, because that’s the only place you’ll be able to avoid the vast amounts of people out there who feel the same way I do. Plenty of people do not see smokers as the most put-upon group in the Nation.
I notice that you offer very little in the way of a coherent response to my comments. Hey, I laid out your OP step-by-step and commented to every bit of it. And it isn’t like I am the best debater in the world, surely there is something more you could say in response, some hole in my argument you could find. But what do you say back instead?
Ooh Ooh Ooh. I am so scared. First off, I don’t see how I am derailing anything. Other people are still responding, other people are still offering their opinions. It’s not like I have single-handedly stopped that. And, I am responding to the OP. What? What?!? Did you really expect everyone who read your OP to agree with you on every point? It doesn’t work that way, hun. It seems to me that you are unhappy because you don’t like my responses to your OP, so you are saying that I am “derailing” your thread. Whiner.
Oh, and about this line:
Then why are you whining about the high price of cigarettes? Hey, you’re loaded with dough, go buy your impoverished smoking friends cigarettes! Help 'em out, the poor deprived sods!
Yes, Mr. Rilch and I have joined other people into “speaking easy” at cigar bars. The one we go to is in a mini-mall, next to a liquor store. 'Nuff said.
Silo fight back! The antismoking fanatics are in a holy war with us smokers and will dredge up any little bit of improbable crap that they possibly can to attempt to feel superior and righteous in so doing.
You have to remember that many of these people are the same type that followed Jim Jones into single minded oblivion, marched with Carrie Nation to create prohibition, shovel their money to crooked television ministers, and walk around feeling good about themselves because they scarf down tofu and sipping $20 a bottle wine between guzzling beers from mini-breweries. Many are ex-smokers who still have the taste and in order to resist the temptation to start using the evil weed again they have to make sure not one else uses it, or, if anyone else does, they should not enjoy it.
Say anything concerning pro-smoking and you will be savaged by these fanatics with single minded zeal, absolute lack of compassion, backed up by any form of antismoking information they can produce and then demanding you to produce line, text, page and publication of anything potentially good you have read in the last 20 years that goes contrary to their beliefs.
We have Smoke Nazi’s in this country who obviously took lessons from Hitler and demand that we respect their civil rights while they trample all over ours.
These are the type of people who will run like hell to donate thousands to save the sick whales while ignoring the sick and poor humans laying in the streets. These are the people who use water softeners that dump 80 pounds of salt a week back into the ground and then wonder what the government is going to do about the mysterious salt intrusion into the fresh water supplies.
These are the people who fight restrictions on commercial fishing because of their rights to consume inexpensive fish and later wonder why the government did not do something to prevent the fishing grounds from being over fished and wiped out.
Fanatics!
By the way, these are the same people who expect YOU to be sympathetic if THEY suddenly face some form of crisis that they could have avoided but did not – like alcoholism.
Coming from someone who is so weak-minded that he started using an addictive drug because all his friends did it and because he believed preposterous advertisements which made dubious health claims, the irony here is fucking hilarious.
Sentinel, good post (you don’t seem to get much praise). Thanks for reiterating that YBabe is full of it. I wasn’t about to wander off into her oblivious points. I would never get laid if I made points like those. With the exception of Ybabe, everyone has given good replies.
And why is that…? Sheesh, man, look around you. There is a reason that Sentinel doesn’t generate a lot of respect around here.
Oh, I’m full of it, all right. Full of sunshine, full of good cheer… Just because I won’t offer you pity and (how did you put it?) “empathy” because you willingly chose an expensive and smelly habit, it doesn’t make me full of it. It does, however, make you full of something if you are actually expecting sympathy. Reality check here.
??? What? What the hell are you talking about? “Oblivious points?” Please clarify. Is this your way of telling us that you aren’t up to offering a coherent rebuttal?
Why did you put this in the BBQ Pit if you did not expect some sort of argument or heated exchange? Did you really expect everyone to step into line and agree that you poor smokers are all a bunch of put-upon victims?
You’re no fun. Where’s the witty rebuttal? Where is the sharp retort? Where’s the coherent and well-thought out reply? That’s what I usually expect from fellow Straight Dopers. Too bad, I guess that’s not your strength.
You’ve got to hit the Y-mouth babe directly between the eyes. Concrete is thick and the brain behind it is small.
yosemitebabe WHO didn’t start some ‘nasty’ habit without being influenced by someone else to do it? Like drinking, pot smoking, drugs, swearing, fanatical infringing on others civil rights or using phen-phen?
Come closer – a little bit closer so I can blow smoke in your face.
Heck, I’ve got friends who are hooked on doctor prescribed tranquilizers and pain killers and some who just cannot put down the bottle.
Better you should be bitching at the tobacco companies to produce a safer form of cigarette. Smokers are not going to stop smoking but they can be forced into using a safer product if it replaces the more hazardous one.
Terrific. Take the smokes off the market, force them all to use a smokeless nicotine delivery system like, say, gum (gee, isn’t that available now?), and they’ll all just switch quietly. Uh huh. You bet. And then gold doubloons will rain from the sky.
You know, unlike many people here I actually enjoy the anti-tobacco advertisements. They’re funny as hell.
My favorite is the one where a whole bunch of teens thank big tobacco for cigarettes.(“thanks big tobacco, I love being addicted, having smelly breath, blah blah blah”) The reason I love them is because of the underlying message beneath them.
The underlying message, apparently subtly placed by the tobacco companies, is that ugly people don’t smoke.
Just because I won’t offer you pity and (how did you put it?) “empathy” because you willingly chose an expensive and smelly habit, it doesn’t make me full of it. It does, however, make you full of something if you are actually expecting sympathy. Reality check here.