Two days ago I was slowly killing myself with a cancer stick in a parking lot, and some old hag with nothing better to do than yell at total strangers called out, “What are you trying to do, kill yourself?” Today I was buying a pack of lung treats and another old hag starts to tell me that I should know better than to buy cigarettes. Now I am a peaceful man, but you people need to fuck off and die. During these last two invasions of my privacy I could do nothing because I was on the job and in uniform. So I can’t tweek on people. You want to know what I say when I’m not at work? The last time some bow-headed sorority whore came up to me and said, “Smoking is bad for you,” I looked her dead in the eye and replied, “So is pissing off a stranger…” Why do you people give a fuck what I do? I am a health care professional and I fully realize that smoking is bad for me. I ask you, WHY DO YOU CARE? If your lives are so sorry that you have to carry your little torches in the world and bother strangers with your health crusade, then you need to start smoking so you can end your lonely little life that much quicker. I hope you get cancer from my second hand smoke and choke on the blood that you cough up. Leave me the fuck alone!
I smoked a pack and a half a day for seven years, up until three and a half months ago. I assure you, I was equally as adamant as you were about my free will to fuck myself over if I wanted to.
Now I chew, but not nearly as much as I used to smoke. I chew one pouch of Redman a week, as opposed to almost ten packs of smokes a week. I’m saving about $200.00 a month. $200.00 bucks! I am more productive at work since I’m not always going outside for a smoke.
Quit now and take up chew if that’s your perogative. It works for me at the present and I plan to quit that soon too.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.
I think.
Health care professional, huh?
I’d say you might want to work on that bedside manner, doc.
I may have personal opinions about your habit, but I cannot see any point in telling you (a complete stranger) something about smoking that is already clearly written on each cigarette box. (The health warning.)
This is somewhat akin to telling a fat person who is having an ice-cream cone - “That’ll make you fat” or “You shouldn’t eat that”. It is the height of rudeness, especially from a stranger.
[hijack]However, I have heard a few smokers whine about how they “didn’t know” cigs were bad for them when they started smoking. (And these were people who were very young when the health warning was put on cigarettes.) Bullshit. All smokers know, unless they are illiterate, and cannot read the warning on the label. I won’t bother any smoker who is minding their own business, but I sure as HELL don’t want to hear them playing the “victim” card.[/hijack]
how you kill yourself is your problem
as long as you dont blow that fucking shit in their faces
like you said they should go get a life
It gets worse than your experience, Mr… er… Pig Born. At school yesterday, I saw a friend light up (in the “designated smoking section”). A few seconds later, I heard a high-pitched girl’s voice exclaim “Jesus, are you trying to kill yourself?!?” She ran up to him… and offered him one of her own brand of cigarettes, which she went on to claim was a “lot smoother” than the “piece of shit” that my friend was smoking.
It’s a Fucked, Fucked, Fucked, Fucked-Up World.
A good response is “It takes one to know one!”.
It’s just inappropriate enough to make people think twice about continuing to rag on you for smoking, while not painting you as a total psycho.
“I know you are, but what am I?” works just as well.
Even though I’m no longer a smoker, I agree.
And I love the Cerebus reference.
I realize this was a rant, and as a life long non-smoker (but for a couple of really drunken nights in college) I agreed with you until you said:
Excuse you? What a fantastic display of the ignorance you purport to hate. If you are not bothering others with your smoking then they should leave you the hell alone. You want people to be considerate of your habit? The return the favor pal. Try being considerate of the fact that some of us do not want our clothes and hair smell like an old bar room ashtray and our lungs to fill up with noxious particles that were just inside of you! Dumb-asses that pull this “I’ll blow it in your face” shit lose all right to whine about the self-appointed health gestapo.
Oh, fuck off, Thrasybulus. The OP’s remark was obviously directed at the people who bug him for smoking, and not everyone in general. Although I’m a born-again non-smoker, I do agree that people need to stop being so fucking judgmental with regard to smokers and their habit. Certainly, no one should be as crass as to come up to a smoking stranger and drop a comment like “You’re killing yourself.” That’s just asking for it.
Fuck off? Moi? Did I disagree with the OP for being annoyed at what I referred to as the “self-appointed health gestapo”? I too believe that some people are overly judgemental. What I do take umbrage at is the group of smokers who are representative of the reaction I quoted within TE-PB’s post. Your comment that the OP comment “obviously” was only directed at that small group doesn’t matter. Just as there is a vocal health gestapo, there is also a group of smokers that have developed an “it’s my right to do whatever the hell I want” zeal in reaction to incidents like the one described by TE-PB. Whether TE-PB falls in to that category or not is unclear from the OP and it OBVIOUSLY appeared to me that it could have been the case. Despite whether TE-PB would fall in to that category or not, TE-PB would be just as guilty of the same boorish behavior complained of in the OP by reacting with that attitude.
Therefore, please feel free to take a grade school course so you can learn to use words like “obviously” in their proper context.
Naah. THespos is right. It is obvious that the OP is only referring to the people who are bugging him. Re-read the OP.
Even if it were obvious, as I said in my reply:
I happen to believe it would be wrong to claim that the irresponsible behavior of his/her tormentors somehow confers the right to act irresponsibly towards them. Pardon me for trying to make a call for civility in the Pit. (I realize this probably is not the best place for it as Pit posts sometimes engage in hyperbole for dramatic effect rather than out of serious indignation.)
Yeah, you’re right, Thrasybulus. The next time someone comes up to TE-PB and bugs him, regardless of the fact that he’s within the bounds of acceptable behavior, he should immediately throw down his pack of smokes and say, “Thank you, stranger. Thank you for saving my life.”
Geez, Thrasybulus, if people like you ruled the world, we’d never get to use our middle fingers.
To all those who feel the need to condemn smokers:
Next time you see someone walking, you had better stop in their tracks and explain that every step they take they are moving that much closer to death. While your at it you better make sure they stop breathing cuz you wouldn’t want them to get one breath closer to death.
WHO cares how quickly you move towards death? Were all moving towards death, some of us much faster than others and we don’t even know it! Heck I could just die from a heart attack in the middle of this sentan… erp
Someone I once knew had a great comeback for unsolicited commentary on the dangers of cigarettes.
If I quit smoking can I die of anything I want?
Which of course, one cannot. Or another friend of mine said, “Why should I quit smoking so I can live 10 more years in the rest home and not remember why I did any of it anyway.”
And we are still left with examples of people who smoke for 50 or 60 years with no apparent link between smoking/dying and people who die of lung cancer who never smoked a cigarette in their lives. And before anyone unleashes the flame-thrower, I’m not saying smoking doesn’t have negative health consequences for some folks. Just that one should never say “always” or “never”. (While saying “never” in the same sentence.)
Personally, even if smoking and horrible disease were invariably linked, isn’t a horrible, painful death punishment enough for those of us who smoke? What is to be gained by sin-taxing me on my way to the mortuary? The government should be paying US since we won’t be around to drain unsocial insecurity and medicare in our old decrepit ages.
Okay, I’m done.
Pohjonen
You are right. There is no middle ground between the those two ways of dealing with the problem. (Flipping them off and walking away would have been my suggestion but I guess its either blow smoke at them or thank them.) And how do you know I don’t rule the world? 
Actually in these instances, I find “stop saying everything I say” particularly effective.
Example:
Obnoxious Asshole: “Stop smoking!Do you want to kill yourself?”
Pig: “Stop smoking!Do you want to kill yourself?”
OA: “What?? I don’t smoke!”
Pig: “What? I don’t smoke!”
OA: “Stop it!”
Pig: “Stop it!”
OA: “Moooooooooooooooooom!!!”
Pig: “hee, hee, hee!”
Incredibly effective. Almost as good as “stop hitting yourself!”
Zette
Because I just looked out the window and it’s still there.
Thrasybulus, let’s agree to disagree. I say that judgmental assholes who go up to strange people out of the blue to tell them that they’re killing themselves probably deserve to have smoke blown in their face (at a minimum). You disagree with that. Move on. And I suggest you head in the general direction of MPSIMS, because people who post in the Pit tend to fantasize about doing nasty things to the people that piss them off. It’s probably too shocking to you and your sensibilities.