Do you see that big ol’ 금연 (No Smoking) sign? Yeah, the one you’re staring at while you’re smoking that nasty trash. Right, yes, the one written in your very own language in your very own country.
Care to guess what it means, you selfish jerk? No? Well, I’ll be happy to tell you. IT MEANS NO SMOKING! That’s right, 바보 (fool); this foreigner actually conveyed that information to you in your very own language. And, no, asking me where I’m from does not make me suddenly forget that you’re stinking up the elevator or the subway platform. Nor does taking a swing at me (yes, actually happened one time–dude was too slow to actually connect). The next time you pull that stunt, I won’t move out of the way and you get to explain to your family why you spent the night in jail.
Better yet, on my way to work today, I think I’ll just puke on you. Can’t make you stink any worse.
The air intakes to our building are near the rear exit. They don’t like people smoking near them because, not surprisingly, it causes the air in our building to be smokey. So they posted some signs that say ‘Please do not smoke on the steps’. People used to lean on the signs while smoking.
So many places put “No Smoking” signs up where it doesn’t make any difference whether you smoke, that us smokers have learned to ignore them (here in California, anyway; can’t speak for other states or countries). It’s basically to the point that we have to bring a referee and a lawyer to find a place to light up. Near a vent? Put up a sign that says “Do not smoke here because there is a vent nearby and you will stink up the building.” Otherwise, “No Smoking” means jack shit.
Oh, is that why smokers are so aggressively inconsiderate? You’re deliberately ignoring the sign?
I’ve never understood why there’s any question of “equal rights” for smokers. If I want to expose you, or, for more emotional example, your child, to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, beacuse it relaxes me, or gives me something to do with my hands, I’m not legally allowed to walk around spraying God-knows-what onto you from an aerosol can. Even without “No spraying people with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals from an aerosol can” signs being posted. I simply don’t get to do it. And I know enough not to try.
Sailboat, It’s like this: Tobacco is a legal product. Not only that, it is a product that generates massive amounts of tax money and saves massive amounts of social se3curity money by smokers expiring early. Further, smokers really are just looking for a place to smoke. Really. Pick a spot.
Save it. Smiking threads have a tendancy to turn into train wrecks here. No matter what you say, someone will be convinced that you enjoy burning babies and puppies.
Sailboat, I do appreciate some of what you’re saying. And I admit there are a lot of inconsiderate smokers around. But a lot of us go out of our way not to expose you to our shit.
We smokers are vaguely-socially-acceptable drug addicts. It’s a social evil that exists as part of the society in which we live. We’re literally a dying breed and I predict that in a few years you won’t have to put up with us. But until we die, or the practice is made illegal and we have to go underground, we’re going to smoke. We have to, because we can’t give it up.
BUT, if non-smokers make this impractical to the point of impossible, we’re going to try to find a place to do it, even if it contravenes arbitrary or non-arbitrary reasons.
I speak as one who lived in the first country in the world to ban smoking in public places. It made me laugh as non-smokers complained that they had to walk past us smoking outside bars.
Look. You won. You put us out here. Just walking past us and our disgusting habit in the open air is not going to kill you. Get over it.
Your analogy is a non-starter, deliberately exaggerated with all the hallmarks of the anti-smoking agenda. There’s this thing called “air” that carries away smoke and other odors and gases released outdoors. There’s a lot of it around, and it’s good at what it does. Smoking outside is nothing like spraying aerosol toxins directly on someone. Smoke–which generally isn’t deliberately directed at any person’s skin or clothing in the first place–rises and leaves. That’s an entirely different ballgame than walking up to someone and spraying something on them. Now–forbidding smoking in buildings? That’s reasonable. I know smoke indoors bothers a lot of people, because it used to bother me when I was a kid. But outdoors nobody’s forcing you to inhale the stuff; if you’re more than a few feet away from the smoker you have no danger of being exposed to it. Even if you somehow inhale a fraction of smoke every once in a while walking by a smoker outdoors, how many people have you heard of who died of lung cancer from walking around near smokers occasionally?
Monty, the sign you posted, with the han-gul, is one of the few words I remember from when I studied and used Korean in the Army! I can still pronounce it, seeing as it’s phonetic, but I can’t read it anymore.
I must note there’s a different - and more ignorant - attitude towards smoking and rules that I’ve observed in east Asia.
I’ve never been to South Korea so I’m not sure if it’s the same there. But recently I’ve experienced stuff like a waiter in Vietnam seating me at a table next to a child in an open-fronted café recently, and me saying “I want to smoke so I’ll take the table near the sidewalk, away from the child”, and him laughing at me and saying “it’s OK, you smoke here, no problem”. I declined.
Or the people in Hong Kong who even five years ago would walk around the supermarket with a ciggie on the go, flicking their ash on the floor - something that’s only just been eradicated. And China… good lord, the men there smoke everywhere, to a degree that even I find offensive (and their cigarettes smell even more like dog shit than ours do).
For your information, we prefer to be called “pro-breath”. And it’s not exaggerated. I might have a compunction to expose (or risk exposing) people to toxins that’s as compulsory as your nicotine addiction. I can’t see inside your head to know how strong your compulsion is – neither can you dismiss mine.
What part of my theoretical addiction to exposing you to poison makes it less a “right” than your addiction to exposing me to poison?
<crickets>
Yeah, I can’t think of one either, except your implied claim that my theoretical habit is just that – theoretical. And it is.
Yours isn’t. Yet it gets defended as a right.
Smokers typically have reduced senses of smell. In my experience, they often are surprised when I can detect their smoke. I assume they’re not stupid – feel free to assert otherwise – so my best guess is that they think the smell “rises and leaves” efficiently. It doesn’t. Not very well.
Okay, how about right next to someone? As long as I get to expose you to toxins with my theoretical habit, we’re even, and I’m not picky about “dierectly onto”. Is it still wrong for me to do this, but okay for you?
Well I don’t know how many. Do you? How many people would be killed, or harmed, or made uncomfortable, if i walked around spraying my theoretical toxins?
Cancer (only one of the hazards of cigarette smoke) is unpredictable – the cellular change that starts it is like a stray bullet hitting something critical , a million-to-one shot. No one knows exactly when a particular case is started; no one knows whether a little exposure or a lot will start a particular given case. It is known that sometimes a little exposure does, and sometimes a lot does not. For you to claim that the amount I’m exposed to is insignificant seems to be asserting special knowledge.
Okay, 'scool, then :). I think maybe I was conflating your view with fetus’s view that ignoring no smoking signs was perfectly kosher; as long as you recognize that that’s not okay, I got no beef with you.