Smoked meat is yummy!
I have something called a smoker I like to cook meat in, while I’m consuming alcohol.
The neighbors LOVE it. 
Not quite a wash - I believe the figure is that, overall, society saves about 17 cents a pack in health care costs. Smoking, in other words, is good for the deficit.
That’s why preventative care does not usually save money. It is expensive to die old, given the many interventions available. Dying of lung cancer is relatively cheap, and saves all the incidental costs of care that are incurred mostly in the last years of life.
Regards,
Shodan
This is precisely the problem.
Some people smoke cigarettes. Of those people, some are inconsiderate assholes. Some of them are addicted and they’re killing themselves and the people around them. Because of them, you want to pass a law saying that I can’t enjoy a pipeful of tobacco once a month.
Some people drink alcohol. Of those people, some are obnoxious and some are seriously addicted; they drive drunk and kill people. Because of that, you think modern society doesn’t need people like me who really enjoy a drink or two with dinner or before bed sometimes.
Well, you know what? I had some neighbors who mowed their lawn when I was trying to sleep on Saturday morning. Their mower was loud and it belched smog. Let’s ban lawn mowers! Some people use way too much perfume and it reeks and makes my eyes water. Let’s ban perfume! Some people eat fast food and throw the wrappings out their window onto the street. Let’s ban fast food!
How many holier-than-thou “non-drinkers” have caffeine addictions? Maybe they should be taxed heavily for it?
I’m sick of people with a nanny-state mentality that want to trample on my rights to do something in moderation (or taxes me heavily for it) because other people abuse the privilege.
I guess you missed the part where I said “at least the ones who cause problems for others.”
The lawn mower problem and whatever caffeine addiction issues you might be referring to do not exactly fall into the same magnitude of societal ills as drunk driving and cancer patients. But to be fair, most municipalities do have noise ordinances, so I think you are grabbing at straws here to a certain degree.
Again, apples-to-oranges. If you are against something because it infringes on your human rights fine. But your rights might end where mine begin in cases where we disagree. And in cases where society at large is concerned, the minorities rights will be weighed against the majority in their favor most of the time.
But smoking, unfortunately for those stupid enough to want to indulge in it, is not one of those cases where they will be looked at favorably as far as the public and societal issues are concerned. Just not gonna happen. It’s too stupid and causes too many problems for rational people to think otherwise. Rational people meaning the ones making laws against it and the judges upholding those laws.
But I think your hot toddys before bedtime are plenty safe, so not to worry. 
Outdoor Smoking Banned in Village of Great Neck
On Long Island. And good for them! I recall back when “everyone knew” smoking bans in restaurants and bars would never work. When seatbelt laws would never work. Things change.
Questionable, depending on what sort of cite you can dig up to back this (and which I doubt takes into account the drag on the economy due to missed work and other factors).
I’d anticipate in any case that new therapies and diagnostic protocols will erase whatever “benefit” to society there is in smokers dying prematurely. For instance, a new study suggests that lives can be saved by doing regular low-dose CT scans of smokers in an effort to find early treatable cancers. If this becomes regular practice it’ll be extremely costly (not just from the cost of the scans, but due to all the biopsy procedures investigating tiny lesions, many if not most of which will turn out to be nothing). Dr. Jackmannii stands to make some extra bucks, though.
Smoking has been very, very good to me. :):rolleyes:
Yes, but you define “cause problems for others” as everything from personal annoyance on up. If we get to define my being annoyed as all it takes to make something illegal–hoo, boy, have I got a list!
Actually they didn’t work when they were haphazard.
Too lazy to find the cite just now but I recall around Chicago where a suburb banned smoking in bars and restaurants. The merchants there, after the ban was in effect, howled that they were losing business because people were driving to neighboring suburbs and they were losing business.
It was only when the state issued a blanket ban that it “worked” because smokers had nowhere else to go. When they could drive 5 more minutes the businesses with the ban suffered. When smokers would have to drive an hour then not so much.
At this point they step outside. Now the OP wants to ban them from smoking outside. I am guessing when you close all avenues for smokers things will not turn out well. Basically you are on the doorstep of full prohibition of smoking. Prohibition caused huge problems when it came to alcohol…not seeing why it’d work with smoking.
Our jails are filled with people who smoke pot. Want to add cigarette smokers to the list?
I’m willing to bet insurance will not pay for those expensive CT scans for smokers and willing to bet smokers, by-and-large, will not pay for that expensive procedure out of pocket.
So what changes? Awesome that medical tech can be of help here but few will take advantage of it which, on balance, probably will not change the economics of it noticeably.
When you add up the costs to society of smoking versus the “benefits” (considerable sin taxes paid, die sooner so collect less SS and so on) I am not sure the smokers are a net drag on society. Certainly, if smokers are, then not as much as is bandied about (e.g. $90 billion/year which only tallies smoker’s medical costs…how much do old people cost?).
As for lost work sure that is a cost but balance that against farmers having a job growing tobacco and Phillip Morris doing business and such. Again, not sure how it all pans out but when you mitigate the costs of smoking versus other economic activities it evens out.
Hell, you just said you receive economic benefit from smokers. Add that to the list as well.
Lawn mowers are among the most polluting machines we use. They are downright terrible pollution-wise.
I cited earlier how exhaust particulates were considered the primary cause of air pollution deaths which account for 3% of all deaths in the US (pretty sure that did not include smoking). Note these are deaths imposed on others. You live in a city, you get the air pollution. Not like you choosing to light a smoke.
Drunk driving is a disaster usually inflicted on others.
Caffeine and smoking are ills a person chooses for themself.
I am with you 100% in not wanting you (or me or anyone) on the road driving drunk because they may kill me. If it was just them it’d be tragic but their own lookout. It’s not so no problems legislating against them. If they want to get drunk fine…just don’t drive.
As noted, till you can cite the danger imposed upon you from a waft of smoke from a cigarette while you are outside, you got nothing. It may annoy you but it won’t kill you. Certainly it is less dangerous than the exhaust spewing from the car that just drove by not to mention a truck or bus (and if you think otherwise ask yourself if you had to either take a toke on a cigarette or wrap your lips around a car’s exhaust pipe and take a breath which you’d rather do).
Want a worthless seatbelt law? Come to South Korea! The law here requires everyone in the vehicle to wear safety restraints only on the expressways. Everywhere else, only those in the front seat are required to wear the things and the driver is required to suggest to the rear seat passengers that they wear the belts. Of course, that’s not the rule I enforce in my car; everyone in my vehicle wears seatbelts or they can get out and walk.
I didn’t say the laws wouldn’t get more restrict. This is America, land of if someone whines then it’s restricted. Thus the laws on booze, drugs, prostitution, pornography, or pretty much anything else that isn’t downright Puritan. Of course the laws will get increasingly strict. Expecting otherwise is as pointless as expecting a cite out of Der Trihs.
What I was talking about was the effectiveness. On one end of the law you have total freedom to light up anyway, including in middle of a hospital. On the other end no one can light up anywhere at all, even in their own home. Both extremes are pretty obviously moronic. In middle somewhere is a reasonable course that discourages smoking without going so far it drives it underground with all the problems prohibition brings with it. I believe a ban on any outdoor smoking would be too far to the prohibition side of things and bring in unintended consequences that are worse than if there was no ban at all.
So how’s that fight against cocaine going, a drug that has FAR fewer users than cigarettes? Would you describe the police’s actions against that as ‘very easy’?
Here’s an idea, don’t go to the designated smoking areas. You get no second-hand smoke, smokers get to smoke. What’s wrong with that? Why is everyone so set on punishing smokers instead of a live and let live solution that solves the complaint of second hand smoke which no one can seem to show actually causes any harm in an outdoor environment to begin with.
As long as your list includes public smoking along with the majority of others bending their legislator’s ears I think we will get traction on that one!
The distinction you seem to be missing here is nobody is complaining about the trucks and buses, except maybe the EPA and people using it as a poor analogy to the smoking problem.
I grew up on Long Island. if this is the way they want to go, then to hell with them.
Come to Los Angeles some time. We have “ujnhealthy air” days thanks to trucks and busses and cars. Plus, low rider cars are annoying, hot rodders are too fast and too noisy, and some play their radios too loud. Ban them now.
The point is that such laws punish the wrong people.
If you want to deal with rude, obnoxious smokers, don’t ban smoking on sidewalks or raise tobacco taxes. Instead, determine how those smokers differ from well-behaved smokers and make that illegal (good luck with that, BTW).
If you want to deal with drunk driving, don’t craft stupid open-container laws, increase alcohol taxes, or forbid selling alcohol on Sundays. Instead, tighten up the DUI/DWI laws and enforce them.
No need, same here. And it’s been addressed in legislation for smog checks on vehicles and nationally at the automobile industry level by the EPA along with being tied to requirements for road construction grants to the states - no worries. The rules are becoming more stringent all the time, as they will with public smoking no doubt.
Personally I just try to avoid the stuff that bothers me. Not too difficult for me to avoid inversion days downtown and I don’t hang out with the bangers anyway, so no biggie. That’s a little hard to do when the object of your nausea happens to be another person standing nearby poisoning the atmosphere.