Thats my take on it too.
The large majority of rabid anti smokers make up some (totally false) medical reason why they can’t be around smoke, when at best most of em are only physically (mildly) bothered by it, and some of em probably only intellectually so.
And I say this as a lifelong non-smoker that has allergies and IS somewhat bothered by smoke (not that I ever bring that up to a smoker).
As I get older, I’ve come to realize that many folks will just MAKE up shit to support their position.
I smoke cigars in my own home… out on the porch. I choose to do this because I don’t like how the smell of cigar smoke lingers in a room and on upholstery for days after the smoke, and as a once-a-week smoker, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. When I’m visiting here, for similar reasons, I smoke cigars on the patio or in the garden.
But I would react poorly to someone who came into my home, saw my humidor, and said, “I hope you don’t think you’re going to smoke one of those in here!”
So Bricker again, what did the lord and lady of the castle think? Did they support Prince Smokey or Prince Toady or yell at both of royal pains? Just curious.
No question that the complainer was rude to be giving orders, although likely was caught by surprise when smoke suddenly started (not that that excuses, but perhaps explains).
However, smoking does physical harm. Yes, cancer is something of a crapshoot, being a statistical possibility, but smoke causes other, less serious, but more immediate harm. It’s toxic, it contains particulates and chemicals, it changes blood pressure. Someone in your house cannot avoid these consequences unless they leave the premises. And we all understand that some people really hate smoke, for its smell, for its immediate harm, for its long-term risks, and for the fact that other people can inflict it on you without your being able to avoid it.
So basically lighting up around guests, issues of nausea or dislike aside, is like inflicting something on them and then daring them to either leave or make an argument. Choose your metaphor – it’s like making everyone eat salt, without checking to see who has high blood pressure; it’s like making everyone hug the cat, without checking for allergies; it’s like sneezing on everyone when you have a cold; whatever.
And believe me – smokers who don’t ask know darn well that they should ask; this is the 21st century, not asking is passive aggression. Smokers are very defensive of their habit, having suffered a lot of ostracism for it, and they retaliate as soon as they feel challenged. My dad used to blow up in fury if anyone coughed, perceiving it as a cowardly way of complaining about his smoking without confronting him. God help the child who got a bit of food stuck in the wrong pipe – one harrumph and dad was stomping around refusing to make peace.
Smoking around other people without asking is like handing out lottery tickets: “Win a hideous death!” You may argue that the odds are against any given guest cashing in that ticket – and the odds are pretty hard to calculate, you may be right – but you’re still handing them those tickets. People are going to feel uncomfortable about that, as guests, even if they’re too nice to show it.
Both sides have rudeness and passive aggression to apologize for. And it’s possible one side is fibbing to exaggerate its cause. But only one side inflicted poisoning, smoke inhalation, and the cancer lottery on its guests.
Hijack, but an anecdote smoking-related culture clash:
I was having one of my many, many housing problems back in Bulgaria and I got the handyman from my school to come over and fix whatever it was. He’s working away and I’m in my room when I smell…cigarettes. So I go check it out, and he’s puffing away. INSIDE MY HOUSE.
Me: Wow, I was wondering what that smell was.
Him: Yeah, I’m smoking a cigarette. Continues to smoke.
Me: Wondering if I can tell him to stop smoking. He is, after all, helping me out.
Him: Continues smoking and fiddling around with broken whatever.
Me: Gives up and goes back to bedroom.
I don’t miss this shit at ALL. America is awesome.
Certainly reasonable, and I wasn’t implying you had some kind of right to. I am a cigar smoker banished to the patio or the garage (when it’s cold) in my house too.
In my fantasy world, though, there are certain places (DR, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba) where the streets would be filled with kindred spirits, offering me lights as I pulled a cigar from my pocket, wherever I happened to be, indoors or outdoors. Oh, and every cigar would be fantastic, too! 
Oh, elucidator, if you obeyed the OP’s admonition to get your mind out of the gutter, you’ve not gotten a tenth of the fun out of this thread that you should. Consider – instead of the dull and predictable rehash chasing the manners and morals of smoking and anti-smoking all ‘round the mulberry bush, you could, with half-closed eyes, have gotten this:
QED: “I’d have gladly abstained or gone outside to do the nasty if a guest politely requested that I do so….”
Sublight: “one of the few upshots of having had a disease contracted by doing the nasty is that now I simply have to clear my throat and (everyone in the office stops doing it)….In any case, I advise staying on the sidelines. It doesn’t sound like getting involved will have a positive effect for anyone, least of all you….”
Chief Pedant: “Medical conditions exacerbated by casual nearby doing the nasty are largely BS….Stay on the sidelines and just enjoy the show. That’s what Christmas family gatherings are all about.”
Chimera: “Hell, I don’t like doing the nasty, but in other people’s cars I’ll give my approval if they ask - because it’s their car - as long as they open their window.”
Shayna: “About 1/3 of my Danish family does the nasty. I used to do the nasty. We would visit every year at Christmas and the house was constantly filled with doing the nasty, as it was the central gathering point for several big family gatherings during the week. We stay with my in-laws….I quit doing the nasty in 2002. The first visit after I quit didn’t really bother me, as I recall. The next visit, however, was absolutely torturous….I ended up in bed with a fever, coughing up green phlegm….But what was I to do? It’s their house, and my father-in-law has every right to do the nasty in it if he pleases….Well, my mother-in-law….simply declared her house a non-doing the nasty house during our visits. Visitors could do the nasty outside or not at all. Since she doesn’t do the nasty, she actually loved being able to have a week with a doing the nasty-free house herself!”
Martha Medea: “As a nation, Dominicans are not tolerant of doing the nasty. People like Bricker’s SIL are the exception. Dominicans won’t object if someone does the nasty in an open-air setting, but some may make disapproving comments. Doing the nasty indoors is practically unheard of.”
BigNik: “I live in the Inner West of Sydney. Doing the nasty indoors is almost unheard of in my social circle….This applies for doing the nasty with anything, too - if you want to do the nasty you do it out in the back-yard or on the balcony….”
Kambukta: “Are you serious Lynn that, even despite requests not to, your guests still do the nasty in your house?”
Lynn Bodoni: “They are my inlaws. They are NOT my friends….Congratulations on quitting. My husband had to quit several times before it took but he finally managed it. Now he says that he feels rich whenever he realizes that he DOESN’T have to have that money set aside….”
Cigarette smoke is carcinogenic, which means *a single exposure *can result in cancer. In fact, smoking is significantly more carcinogenic than asbestos exposure. Unless you are suggesting that screaming and ranting and cleaning carry the same potential to kill you as a known cancer-causing agent, I suspect that you have been misinformed.
Following up on **featherlou’s ** anecdote, I think for next year I might ask for a Christmas Eve smoking ban over there. My family is very old-school Irish, in that the wishes of a guest tend to be taken seriously and without question, so a request for a smoke-free environment might actually be accepted, notwithstanding the fact that the hosts are smokers, as are my uncle, his wife, and their two kids (one of whom had a cancer scare when she was 19, the other of whom has a 2-year-old daughter). And if not, we just won’t go, family relations be damned.
Now if we can just get a ban on Tracey’s oldest sister’s hubby being an asshole, we’ll really be making some headway on the Christmas visiting front! 
I’m a smoker (and an asthmatic, too!) and I don’t smoke indoors in my own home. I wouldn’t smoke indoors in anyone else’s home, too, unless they were lighting up.
I do smoke in nightclubs (which are pretty much the only public buildings here where it’s still legal) - but I hardly ever go clubbing anymore anyway.
CITE???
The Alberta Asbestos Abatement Manual(the link to the manual itself, mid-page is a pdf) includes a graph on page 19 indicating that the risk of lung cancer as a result of asbestos exposure is roughly 7% higher than normal. Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by around 12%. The combination of the two increases lung cancer odds by 70%. 
It’s just my MIL; my father-in-law passed away two years ago. She was asleep and unaware of the fracas, and it’s not in either combatant’s nature to seek a ruling from on-high after the fact.
I think that’s indicating that smoking increases your chances of getting lung cancer by 12%. That isn’t very much.
The bolded part of that quote (a humidor!) reminds me uncontrollably of a post I made to a Bricker thread awhile back, where he was complaining about being given inferior Scotch under the pretense that it was the expensive stuff.
I think the least Bricker can do is give us a video tour of his home, so we can all appreciate the accoutrements of true Gracious Living.
I never smoke in the house anyway. V V
I realize that Really Not All That Bright already asked for a cite, but the one you gave had to do with asbestos. I’m interested in being shown one cite (from a reputable source, 'natch) that states that a “single exposure to cigarette smoke” can result in cancer.
So…cite?
Secondhand smoke is a known human carcinogen - that means that it DOES cause cancer, but they can’t specify in what quantities, so the only safe exposure level is NO exposure. From the American Cancer Society:
You can’t say definitively that one exposure will cause cancer, but you also can’t say that it won’t. How many exposures in a lifetime do you need? Two? 20? 200? I’ll take my chances with as few as possible, thanks (especially with my family history of losing a sister to cancer already).
How about this?
Personally, I’d call those numbers significant. YMMV. In the meantime, my point that smoking is more deadly than asbestos exposure stands.
From this source,
A carcinogen, by definition, is a cancer-causing agent. There is no safe dose. A class-A carcinogen (or Type 1 or A-1, depending on who you talk to) is known to cause cancer in humans. Cigarette smoke is defined as a Class A carinogen, ergo, a single exposure could, in theory, cause cancer.
Now, wiki and/or cancer.gov may not meet your definition of a “reputable” source, but if you’d really like, I can go do some more poking around tonight and find a more definitive source.
No one has ever to my knowledge linked a single exposure to secondhand smoke with development of cancer. For that matter, no one can say with scientific certainty that a case of lung cancer was caused by the victim’s smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 50 years. The likelihood of getting cancer on the one hand is extremely low, at the other end of the exposure scale much higher.
If you’re looking for proof that single exposures damage health, check out cardiovascular risks instead. Deleterious physiologic changes have been demonstrated based on single exposures to secondhand smoke.
I love it when people make statements like this. It especially kills me when it comes from smokers whining about restrictions on their habit due to laws cracking down on secondhand smoke exposure in public.
“C’mon…what’s a little extra chance of death? Won’t you let me smoke around you (wheedle)? How about it? Only a 12% extra cancer risk…that’s not so much. You used to let me do it. It’s not fair!” (whine)
Sorry, tough luck.
Oh, fer fuck’s sake. I’m not going to derail the thread into a “dangers of secondhand smoke” hijack, so I’ll not post again about this. However, I’d point out that I asked for a very specific cite: namely, that “a single exposure to cigarette smoke can cause cancer”. Exactly that, which neither of you did.
Now, I don’t object to the statement that Jackmannii put forth (i.e., that “Deleterious physiologic changes have been demonstrated based on single exposures to secondhand smoke”). I’ve read (some of) those studies and, while the affected population is extremely small (and, as far as I remember, only composed of those with serious health issues), as far as I’m concerned, those findings are fact and can be referred to as such.
ALL of our cites support the idea that a single exposure CAN cause cancer - that is what “no safe exposure limit” means. If you are looking for cites that a single exposure WILL cause cancer, keep looking. No one here has said that; it is possible, but not likely. A single exposure WILL damage your lung cells (including paralyzing your cilia), increase the carbon monoxide levels in your blood, increase your chances of developing an ectopic pregnancy, reduce the oxygen delivered to a fetus, and reduce fetal movement, amongst other things, none of which are things most people want in their lives.