Two of the three cites provided came up to contradictory results, and the third was dishonest. They also evaluated on unrealistic situations, like standing 18 inches from a smoker for an hour rather than passing one on the street. You keep ignoring that and repeating the same wrong claim that it is conclusively harmful to you. CITE! Do I have to macro this? CITE CITE CITE CITE CITE. You’re make a claim, prove it, because you haven’t yet.
What contradictory results? You’re making it sound like one study found that there was evidence for harm, and the other ones didn’t (or maybe you think that secondhand smoke provides a health benefit? :rolleyes:).
Instead, all three studies found that there were varying degrees of evidence for harm to bystanders in certain situations outdoors.
With respect to the third study, while they gave an example of the effect that a bystander might encounter 18 inches away, the actual study looked at several distances up to six feet away.
Finally, if I pass a smoker on the street, and another one, and another, there is a similar effect to what I would encounter if I stood next to a smoker for an extended period of time (like I were waiting for a bus).
Well that, my friend, is just you. I smell craploads of exhaust fumes.
You haven’t shown how harmful. No offence, but we have to put up with negligible amounts of harm in our lives. You haven’t shown that a smoker walking past you has caused any more than a negligible amount of harm.
The key word here is “negligible”. As in - not worth consideration. If we removed every negligible harm or inconvenience from life we’d (a) live in coccoons wrapped with cotton wool; and (b) wouldn’t even notice the added health benefit of doing so, as it would be negligible.
When it comes down to it, this is an argument that you don’t like it, not that it causes harm. The amount of “harm” caused by a smoker walking past you is negligible. So is the amount of harm a cold day does to you, or a beer, or a Big Mac.
You’re a grown-up (I presume). Accept that your life involves negligible harm and inconveniences.
In that case, call the cops. They’ll laugh at you, because you have no such right or entitlement. You can’t invent rights and assign them to yourself.
Again, I can not believe that this statement is true. In a state of 3.5 million people, you are constantly exposed to cigarette smoke? I just don’t see how this is possible, unless you are actively trying to be exposed.
I’m not complaining about any such thing. I have no problem with smoking bans indoors, I don’t smoke in my home or in my car (that much). I rarely sat in smoking sections when they still existed. I have a problem with bans in straight up bars and people actually trying to ban smoking outside.
[/quote]
I’m not asking for sympathy; you appear to be. That you somehow live in a place where 100 percent of the population is constantly smoking, forcing you to breath it in.
Again, a straw man argument. Comparing the constant dumping of 21,000 tons of shit and sludge into the ground and comparing that to the relatively short time you are exposed to second hand smoke in the outdoors is a weak, weak position.
I’m not violating a damn thing, since I didn’t give you any rights to violate. The Hooker Company was violating the law, which is giving people the right to a clean environment. You keep overlooking that point. Smokers are not violating your rights since we have not given you any to violate.
You presented a single study. That’s not debunking anything. The report also kept using things like ‘may’, ‘can’, ‘at the very least’, certainly not statements of a concrete nature.
As another poster mentioned above, the reports do contradict one another and fall quite short of proving jack.
They are, but this is also a town where people walk quite a bit. And if you are on the Strip or downtown in Freemont, there are hundreds of people out and about. You’d have a hard time finding 1 out of 10 people smoking.
That’s not just walking either, it’s a walking mosh pit. So I can not believe that your experience in Connecticut is that much more dire than it is here for non-smokers having to be around smokers.
It certainly can be a factor, but so can a wide variety of other pollutants. I even found my own study, just for fun:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/247588/Exposure-to-Brake-Dust
I can certainly expand on that to include more than just mechanics and to further extend it to the number of times cars brake during the day and how much of that I breath in, etc., etc.
You have not shown proof, you have shown suggestions about causation. Nothing more.
Not really. We’ll just “put up with it” more in a judicial setting. As legislative efforts continue to run their course, the majority will see their breathing rights asserted and 2nd hand smoke problems mitigated to a misdemeanor courts issue.
Uh, no. What we accept as seen by ongoing efforts all across the country like the recent initiative at Richmond speedway, is that public smoking will eventually be relegated to dark corners of insidious shame where it belongs. That’s something YOU should accept.
At least until everyone finally wises up - dead or alive.
I have to admit, I’ve quit smoking for some time now, but reading posts like that makes me realize that I should probably go pick up a pack.
Well, here’s my video of my walk to work after getting off the subway. The only thing I smelled was the armored car (seen at the beginning of the video). It was putting out a very strong smell of diesel.
I challenge anyone to find anyone smoking.
I am sure with this evidence of the problems of people smoking outside our legislatures will be falling over themselves to do something about it (not).
(Was filmed at 9:30a in Chicago along Jackson Blvd. between Dearborn and LaSalle (at the beginning the building to my right is the Federal Building)…granted this is a bit past rush hour and people are mostly inside but honestly, beyond being a bit more crowded, this is pretty typical.)
That’s funny. You really need to get over yourself. :rolleyes:
Just in idle curiosity, If/when smoking outside is banned what will piss everyone off that needs banning next?
Earlier someone was claiming 35+ smokers in his walk down his street.
Not sure where that person lives but pointing out there is nothing like those numbers walking down the street in the third largest city in the US.
You’re just mad it does not comport with your preconceived notions. Happy to disappoint you.
You’ve got to be kidding me. On my ten-minute walk to lunch today, I found comparable numbers.
There are smokers at every doorway leading into office buildings, food courts, etc. One doorway (that I had to pass through to get to the food court inside) had six smokers. Add in all the folks clustered around the bus shelters, and it’s not very hard to run into a lot of smokers.
I haven’t taken a head count, but there are hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of people on the city streets during my walk to lunch. If we assume that 20% of them are smokers, and that none of them are permitted to smoke inside, why are you so surprised that the vast majority of smokers are puffing away while they are outside? Is it really so surprising that I counted a few dozen people actively smoking in my vicinity?
Maybe you just don’t notice other smokers. Whereas I am sure to spot them, because I recoil every time I get a good whiff of smoke, much less a cloud from a group of them at a doorway or bus shelter.
You are just a little confused right now and will feel better about yourself at the end of the day if you don’t do that.
Watch my video. Feel free to point them out to me. That video is not atypical. I’ll film everyday next week and you’d see largely the same thing.
You have said nothing about where you live, your neighborhood, the surrounding businesses and so on. For all I know you are walking in front of Phillip Morris world headquarters.
While each exposure may be for a relatively short time, as I have repeatedly stated, I am exposed to secondhand smoke outside repeatedly, day after day. And I wonder how many tons of cigaratte smoke is released into the air, every day, by the 45 million smokers in this country.
That’s interesting that you bring that up, because the Hooker Company didn’t actually break any laws, which is why they were never held criminally responsible. Instead, they were simply found to be negligent, and forced to pay for cleanup and restitution. (Such actions are against the law today, however.)
Similarly, people smoking outside are not breaking any laws, either–right now. The whole point of this debate is that I am of the opinion that smoking in public should be against the law.
It’s interesting that you seem to think that people do indeed have “the right to a clean environment” because allowing people to smoke in public violates that right.
Who do you think you are? A king? God? You don’t get to give me my rights. As it was so famously stated, I think that it is “self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
You have the liberty to do what you want, but you do not have the liberty to interfere with my rights.
As I quoted before, the “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
And you have presented nothing contradicting the study.
And really, is questioning the qualifiers the best you can do? Good science never makes “statements of a concrete nature.” All we can ever say is that there is good evidence for something.
I could be having the same conversation with a creationist… :rolleyes:
The usual stuff that the far right and far left are always trying to ban:
[ul]
[li]Guns[/li][li]Abortions[/li][li]Various books and music[/li][li]Fur coats[/li][li]Alcohol (open containers in public places or cars)[/li][li]Nude beaches[/li][li]School prayer[/li][li]Medical marijuana[/li][li]…[/li][/ul]
Some people just aren’t happy unless they’re trying to impose their own way of life on everybody else.
NOTE: If you wish to debate any of the above, we’d better start a new thread. We’re getting fairly well sidetracked here.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:255, topic:566434”]
The usual stuff that the far right and far left are always trying to ban:
[ul]
[li]Guns[/li][li]Abortions[/li][li]Various books and music[/li][li]Fur coats[/li][li]Alcohol (open containers in public places or cars)[/li][li]Nude beaches[/li][li]School prayer[/li][li]Medical marijuana[/li][li]…[/li][/ul]
Some people just aren’t happy unless they’re trying to impose their own way of life on everybody else.
NOTE: If you wish to debate any of the above, we’d better start a new thread. We’re getting fairly well sidetracked here.
[/QUOTE]
Suuuure, tempt us with all the good stuff and forbid us to talk about it.
Nude women at the beach in fur coats praying over me, well, alrighty then.
As I have repeatedly said, I am not contradicting your rights because I didn’t and can not give them to you. That’s the whole point of what I’m saying. You’re “rights” that you claim I, as a smoker, are violating are not being violated at all since they weren’t given to you to begin with.
How is that so difficult to understand?
When the person, such as yourself, is arguing in terms of absolutes concerning the effect a particular substance has on the body, then yes; questioning the qualifiers is certainly more than fair.
You repeatedly argue that smoking outdoors *will[i/] be more harmful than any other air pollutant. I’m saying it’s not and I’m pointing out that you have not and can not prove it beyond doubt.
As your posted report earlier stated, cigarette smoke is based on proximity, the closer you are to it the more harmful it can be.
As you walk through the gauntlet of smokers who, apparently, ALL smoke at the same time as you happen to be out walking; your proximity is in no way the same with all of them. So your exposure will continuously be different and, I would think in most cases, negligible.
And save insults like ‘creationist’ for the Pit; this is GD after all.
Well let’s see…
Assuming 45 million smokers who smoke a pack a day then they burn ~2 million pounds of cigarettes.
Sounds like a lot!
Let’s get some perspective on that number. By comparison ~ 2.4 billion pounds of gasoline are burned daily in the US (this is all just in the US).
If we only compare gasoline and cigarettes then gasoline accounts for 99.92% of air pollution from burning things in the US (just going by weight). Of course we could add other things like industry (wonder how much junk a steel mill pumps out) and forest fires and coal burning power plants and so on to the list of things that pour junk into the air. Added all together the pollution from cigarettes vanishes to insignificance.
Pot meet kettle.
That is precisely what you are proposing to do. You want to interfere with the right of someone else to smoke a cigarette while walking down the street for no more reason than it annoys you (you have not remotely proven an ill health effect from cigarette smoke outdoors short of standing next to a smoker and have them blow smoke on you for an hour…which no one does).
The study tells us nothing useful. If I measure “clean” air (no cigarette smoke) and then capture some air where a puff of smoke is of course you will note higher pollution levels. Of course if you stick your face next to a person’s mouth who is smoking an inhale all their exhaled smoke for an hour you will notice an effect.
No one ever does any of those things.
Have them measure my whatever-it-is level before I leave the house in the morning then have me go to work, passing people who smoke outside as usual, and have them measure that level again. If they can point to a distinct and unhealthy rise in the whatever-it-is they measure then you are on to something.
Look in a mirror. Despite any evidence you keep tootling the same baseless crud as a creationist would do. Creationists can cite “proof” too. It is bullshit proof that falls apart, as yours does, with a moment’s thought but to the True Believer there is no need to engage their brain. They just “know”.
Like a creationist you want to force your sense of things on others, by law if necessary.
Again, I don’t walk around a city street in close proximity to steel mills, forest fires, or coal-burning power plants. I am in close proximity to smokers.
First off, even if that were true, there is still no reason that I couldn’t make a case for banning smoking in public. We have similar bans (though not always enforced) on other annoying behavior like playing loud music.
Let me ask you this–what if I were to repeatedly blow spitballs at the back of your head? You couldn’t argue that I was harming you, but I don’t think that you’ll find anyone willing to defend this annoying behavior.
This is all beside the point, though. Secondhand cigarette smoke is known to be harmful, not just annoying.
So what if I stand next to a smoker for 45 minutes? How about 30 minutes? 15? 10? At what point do you think the “ill health effect from cigarette smoke outdoors” starts?
Besides, examples have been given in which people indeed may be exposed to cigarette smoke for an extended period of time, such as servers at an outdoor cafe, people waiting at a bus shelter, etc.
You are conceding that higher pollution levels will be noted if “stick your face next to a person’s mouth who is smoking,” but refusing to concede that there could be any effect on a person who is 18 inches away, or 2 feet, or 6 feet, or whatever. I’ll tell you what–I’ll make a concession: I grant you that I will likely experience no adverse health effect from a smoker on the other side of a city street. 
Truly, I just want to be able to walk down a city street without being forced to inhale the toxic exhalations of smokers. Is that so hard to understand?
Unlike a creationist, I don’t care what you do or what you believe, so long as you don’t impact me or my health, or that of my wife and child.
Read your article again. It plainly states that cigarette smoke effects are based upon proximity. So the closer you are, the worse they can be.
I have a hard time believing that given the relatively small size of a lit cigarette and that you walk by a person in a matter of seconds, is less harmful than exposure to larger pollutants that you experience on a daily basis in the absence of smokers.
You’re lungs are being hit with pollutants regardless of whether there are smokers outside or not.