Don’t be silly, unless you are Steve Austin you aren’t going to be running anywhere at 60 mph. Cars are (obviously) much faster and can carry more than a human can. That’s why they exist.
It’s called “addiction” and “getting your fix”. Let’s not be euphemistic here.
Cigarette smoke burns my throat, cigar and pipe smoke nauseates me and has been known to cause vomiting in high enough concentration. Automobile fumes aren’t nearly as harsh. And smoking killed most of my immediate family, so yes I’m a bit of a “zealot”.
There’s just something about the smell of cigarette tobacco smoke that bugs the hell out of me. I’m not allergic to it as pipe and some cigar tobacco doesn’t bother me at all but the cheap tobacco used in cigarettes really gets my goat for reasons I don’t quite understand. The only time I truly find the smell unbearable is when I have a headache. When I’ve got a headache and I have to be around a person reeking of smoke it gets my stomach to churning.
All that said, I do think its unfair to chastise people for smoking outdoors. We (society) have driven them outdoors and that should be enough. I don’t like bad smells either but it seems rather silly to legislate against them. So far as having your hair and clothing smell like tobacco as outlined in the OP goes I just don’t buy it. The only time clothes and hair takes on the tobacco smell is when you spend some time with people smoking in an enclosed space. Walking by a bunch of people on your way somewhere isn’t going to make you reek of tobacco.
Agree. I’m very glad we no longer have smoking in a lot of indoor places like restaurants. Non-smokers like me pretty much got what we wanted. War’s over.
Smokers of the world are not responsible for your family’s weak genes. Your zealotry is unwarranted and unappreciated, as is your ridiculous claim that addiction alone accounts for smoking behavior.
You want it to be bad, so it must be bad, just like the Republicans wanted Saddam to be bad, so he must have been bad. Get your reasoning abilities out of the gutter, DT, you know better than that.
Alcoholism has killed a number of my family members – including my favorite aunt. (And she was sober at the time, sadly) And yet, I’m not in favor of Prohibition.
The answer isn’t to “ban” cigarettes – people already know they’re bad for them. Yet they smoke anyways.
If it were illegal to smoke on the streets in Italy almost everyone would be locked up. It is illegal to litter, even cigarette butts…yeah that’s going to stop.:rolleyes:
I never said anything about whether or not I support the idea of banning them (I don’t because it wont work). I was criticizing the attempt to compare cars and tobacco, and then Squink started mocking my dead family members and trying to pretend that tobacco is harmless.
Can I outlaw bicycling? I HATE THEM! They ride in the street like they’re cars, they never use hand signals, they swerve in front and around you wrecklessly, need I go on? They are aweful and cause accidents all the time. I’ve seen three since I’ve moved to Florida. They are dangerous and shouldn’t be on the street. Please? Can I outlaw them too? Pretty please?
On another note it’s kind of strange to me how this has changed many smoker’s habits in their own home. A lot of younger smokers I know (my sister included) won’t smoke in their own homes. They go outside to do it.
Pardon my skepticism, but I’m not sure the OP really wants to ban smoking “on the street”. His proposal is often framed as a mocking one by smokers who oppose indoor smoking bans (I’ve seen it mentioned on this board). The “point” is evidently to reinforce the idea that our air is so dirty already that smokers’ fumes don’t make much of a difference.
Indoors of course, secondhand smoke builds up to noxious levels so the argument is foolish. Outdoors, there’s enough ventilation so that there’s not a problem, with the exception of when smokers congregate outside buildings so that you have a run a gauntlet of smoke to get in (or pass by). There are already laws in some places that address this.
This is entirely my experience and my view - it’s not the tobacco smoke that bugs me, it’s something else in the cigarettes that sets off every allergy I have. Even being in close proximity with a heavy smoker who is not smoking but reeks of it can set it off. Pipe tobacco, roll-your-own, cigars - nada (although cigars are nasty for other reasons).
Having chased smokers out of offices, restaurants and bars, I’m quite happy to let them smoke in peace outside provided they dispose of the butts properly. Littering is still littering.
History suggets otherwise. The US led the charge on anti-smoking laws by several years. Minnesota in 1975, San Luis Obispo, California in 1990, then the state of California in 1998, followed by New York.
Only in 2004 did Ireland follow suit, followed by Norway. The UK in 2007, India in 2009. Nepal in 2010.
I’d submit that a law like this is most likely to happen first in the United States.
That is not true. Your zealotry blinds you to everything but harm. Your antitobacco crusade is an unjustifiable attempt to impinge your opinions on the lives other others. What’s next for you, outlawing atheism, or religion? That’s the mindset you’ve put on display here, and it’s not pretty.
Show me a city where tobacco smoke has turned the skies brown DT. Cars do that routinely, and they smell. Your nose has just become accustomed to that perfume. If you tried, you could get used to cigarette smoke.