Damn, I was SURE you were a Sagittarius.
– Uke, who smokes tobacco and enjoys it and isn’t thinking about quitting, and all you clever wits out there can just go ahead and skip the “Cancer” astrology joke because I already thought of it and discarded it
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mikan *
**
Not quite. You’re reducing my argument too much. I’ll phrase it yet again.
Smoking bad.
Other things are just as bad.
People don’t regard these other things as bad as smoking.
That’s dumb.
But you recognize this since you make this very same point below:
**
Exactly. It’s completely arbitrary. So smoking isn’t actually any worse than drinking, it’s just presently “cooler” to dig into the smokers. If people who insult smokers admitted that they’re doing it because it’s socially acceptable rather than acting like there is a valid reason for singling out smoking, then I’d have no problem. Nothing to rant about.
Glad to have you on board, mikan.
**
Yeah, another implication that the OP was written while I was hugging my teddy bear, bawling about how unfair the world is. It’s a rant. This is the Pit. Anything else I can clear up?
Hey, ** Alphagene**, whadaya got against people named Oberon? Or Fallopia, for that matter? 
You say you plan to quit soon. I wish you luck. I finally stopped after 24 years of pack-a-day smoking and many short “quits,” so I know it ain’t easy. That was eighteen years ago, and I am certain I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t quit. I don’t know how old you are, but I can tell you for certain, the longer you wait the harder it gets. Good luck. Really.
Seeing as how the OP was inhabited by your Pedro, Sally, Koko, and other imaginary play-friends, who could have guessed that your teddy bear was not with you as well? My bad. But that’s the way the ball bounces, Bucko.
I see. So what am I supposed to do when my neighbor sits on his deck and lights one up and the foul effluvium drifts through the window into my bedroom and down the hall? Move? I can close the windows, and I usually do, but it’s kind of too late. The stuff is already inside and it stinks. I should trap it there? Besides, I don’t see why I should have to be the one to alter my behavior and shut out the tradewinds because of his addiction. He can go inside and stink up his own domicile. It would be an actionable offense if I went over to his place and hawked up the phlegm that his noxious fumes have generated in the back of my throat onto his shoes. But he can send something over the wall that actually enters my body against my will and desire? Feh.
You see, Alphagene, this is why smoking isn’t in the same sort of category as drinking or driving. If he sits out on his deck and has a beer, it doesn’t bother me a bit. It doesn’t trickle in through the window and wet my bedsheets. Hell, I don’t even know it. If he revs his car up and shoots off down the road, fine; the noise and stench are but an instant, and are shortly borne away on the next breeze. Smoking’s got a long, insidious and tenacious tentacle and I don’t want it in my space.
Thank you, Alphagene, a wonderful post. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that so few people appreciated it.
That’s your opinion. As for me, beer stinks and I can smell an open bottle at fifty feet. The smell of beer on a person’s breath is worse for me than the smell of cigarette smoke.
Beer is the nastiest tasting liquid I’ve ever encountered. I’d rather drink gasoline (regular by choice - unleaded is too greasy.)
Cigarettes don’t have any flavor. I’ve tried them, didn’t get the point.
I smoked a pipe for about a year, gave it up because my tongue felt burned to a cinder. There are some pipe tobaccos that taste good, though. Avalon was my favorite.
I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I don’t jump other folk’s asses for doing what they like, either.
Hardly anyone I know smokes any more. This means that I am now used to social groups with no smokers at all. Sometimes, however, I am in a group with one of my two friends that smoke. (Social smokers, FWIW, they only light up when having a drink). Because I am so unused to smoke now, I sure as hell notice it when they strike that match.
So I badger them to quit. I know that this does not endear me to them. But they are actually my two closest friends and we all love eachother like members of an American sit-com, so their smoking and my badgering are never going to damage our relationship. We’ll still be grumbling at eachother when we’re 72.
I don’t like the badgering. And I’m not doing it for their benefit, so I can’t claim any altruistic motive. It’s just that, unlike when we were all students, I’ve grown used to smoke-free environments and I hate being plunged into a smoke-filled one. By smoking, they make my life a little more unpleasant. By badgering, I make their life a little more unpleasant. Not as some kind of karma-fixer, I hasten to add. Just because I really want the day to come when I no longer have to suffer this small but significant misery and I hope to speed that day forward.
So should the unlikely day come that we are both part of the same social group, gene, you can expect me to badger you too. Not too much - certainly not to any more annoying an extent as I find the reciprocal smoke - but I’ll do it. I won’t do it because I’m worried about your health, wealth or love life. I won’t do it because I’m worried about my health, wealth or love life. I’ll do it because my world will be a better place when you don’t smoke. Pure selfishness. And it ain’t no number of pretty OPs that’s gonna fight that particular motive.
pan
It was a well written post. I appreciated it. But it’s the drugs talking. Hey, they say Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan” while he was all snorted up.
ETS=Environment Tobacco Smoke. It’s the proper term for secondhand smoke or passive smoke.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
**I see. So what am I supposed to do when my neighbor sits on his deck and lights one up and the foul effluvium drifts through the window into my bedroom and down the hall? **
Calm down. Are you seriously suggesting a person does not have a right to smoke on his own property? You may smell it, but trust me, it’s not going to hurt you unless you’re living with him for the next thirty years or so.
I take it you don’t drive with the windows rolled down, so you avoid breathing the car exhaust fumes that enter your body against your will?
I would be very interested to see how much ETS actually is in your house from your neighbor’s. Perhaps you can get someone to test the air quality in your home. I think you would be shocked at the results.
http://www.ornl.gov/Press_Releases/archive/mr20000203-00.html
FTR, ORNL is the Dept of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory
I doubt it. And I’m calm. You were the one who suggested that it was my business to keep my nose out of his way. I was merely pointing out the difficulty of doing so when his smoke enters my house.
And are you seriously suggesting that I do not have the right to have my own property smoke free? I’m not altering his environment. He’s altering mine. Where did I say I was worried about it hurting me? It stinks. Sometimes it does give me a headache and sometimes it does generate mucous. I don’t imagine for a minute that I’m contracting cancer or likely to die from any of that. But I don’t want to smell it and I don’t see why his rights trump mine when I’m not performing the offensive action. Actually, I think the Victorians had the right idea. Smoking Rooms. Smoking can be permitted in rooms set aside for the purpose and nowhere else. Like that’s going to happen. Well, I can dream. 
Meanwhile I reserve the right to bitch about it.
And, yeah, I keep the car windows up; that’s why God made air conditioning.
That’s not my opinion, that’s my experience. I don’t like beer either, and never drink the stuff, but IME I do not know when he is having a beer, the fumes do not enter my house and I do know when he is smoking because the smoke does. I’ve never jumped on his ass about it, either. I shut the windows and come here and bitch because that’s what this place is for. Thank you all.
Generally, I move if I find myself in an area where smokers are indulging. I don’t lecture or berate them. I do for preference seek out areas where the activity is not permitted (and I am old enough to remember when it was permitted just about everywhere short of an open gas line. I take no pleasure in the memory of wandering disconsolately from pillar to post in bus terminals and airports seeking a breath of fresh air, having restaurant meals ruined or watching movies through a blue haze.). But this is my house and it makes me unhappy when it smells like that.
Yeah, and you should be glad that the smokers give you their damned expensive nicotine and tar for free! Sheesh. Ya just can’t be a Good Samaritan these days.
As far as the health benefits of smoking. The Master speaks