I am a smoker. Smoking is legal. I don’t smoke in non-smoking establishments, around groups of people outside, kids, other peoples houses, whatever.
Where I live smoking is currently legal in bars. I smoke in the bar, if you don’t like it, get the law changed. I won’t whine a bit.
But 95 percent of you whiny second-hand smoke assholes will live a long life and die of something other than second hand smoke related illness, probably a heart attack/high blood pressure thing related to stress over trying to tell other people how they should live.
It’s fucking legal, so I don’t fucking care. It’s YOUR job to make it illegal, not mine.
I’m gonna go have a beer and a smoke while y’all are composing your scathing flames.
I find it fascinating that nearly every smoker who turns up in one of these rants is a “considerate smoker” (NOT that I disbelieve most dopers), but out in public most smokers are decidedly NOT considerate AT ALL and seem to go out of their way to breathe their poison upon the non-smoking among us.
In a perfect world all smokers would be considerate, and/or bars would have adequate smoker-eaters installed. Unfortunately it’s not, so we keep going 'round and 'round trying to meet some sort of agreement on smoking in bars.
Personally, I HATE cigarette smoke, it makes me gag even when it’s someone’s exhalation from 6 cars back while sitting in traffic. HOWEVER, as much as I hate smoke, I’ve always sort of considered bars the last resort for smokers. I’ve taught dance lessons in one of the night clubs in town, and I mostly stayed up on the DJ stand during class (pretty much smoke free there thanks to the excellent smoker eater installed above the dance floor) or made other compromises in order to keep away from the smoke. I mean, as much as I hate the stuff, these people need SOMEPLACE to go!
I have to say I’m one who is against smokefree bars, UNLESS they are inside a restaurant. Maybe we could strike a bargain, smokers get to keep most smoking bars if they will STAY OUT from directly in front of entrances to buildings with their nastiness. And stop taking your last puff and then walking on to the bus, or into the grocery store while exhaling. Will that work?
Come on, be honest, you knew when you posted that reply that “It won’t work.”
Anti-smoking advocates will accept nothing but total prohibition and smokers like me know that nicotine addiction is a bitch from hell. I will hopefully quit before it kills me, but can’t guarantee that.
But us smokers will fight to the death for that last puff with a beer and you guys will fight just as hard, which is fine.
But you guys will win eventually, and that is a good thing. But there won’t be any compromise, I mean it’s not a hazy issue.
I’d be somewhat more concerned about all this brouhaha if all the relative environmental risks were given equal weight.
On second thought, no I wouldn’t. It would be an open invitation to competitive victomhood.
Of course particles in air aren’t great for lungs. But guess what…lungs are also pretty well designed to handle air borne shit. None of 'em are wonderful but I’d have a bit more respect for recreational whiners if something like sense were applied.
There’s nothing funnier than recreational whiners pitching hissy fits over smokers at bus stops, by parking lots and beside busy streets. Their killer emations are sooooo dangerous compared to the gazillion vehicles belching exhaust into the air. I treasure a picture of a designated smokers’ area outside a sniffy LA hotel, carefully remote from the entrance…which was packed with idling cars, airport buses and right beside a fucking eight lane street.
Smoking is bad, bad, bad. Got it. Okay. It’s just too comfy a scapegoat. Too sensitive to bear even a random wisp of smoke? The slightest lingering trace of a nasty, unnatural cleaning product? The merest whisper of (gasp!) perfume?!
Amazing how such delicate violets somehow survive getting around in cars, in buildings heated and cooled with nasty systems that just ooze their dirty exhaust right into the air, sitting in chairs and walking on carpets that harbor mites, dust and shreds of unnatural chemicals from their very fabric!
Okay. Smoke can be unpleasant. It ain’t good for anybody but neither is most of the environment.
And what makes you think that people who are concerned about hazards of secondhand smoke are ignoring other environmental dangers?
Among the scientists and citizen groups that are working to curb secondhand smoke, I’m sure you can find many people committed to reducing air pollution and harmful environmental chemical exposures. We are not going to ignore nearly 50,000 deaths each year in the U.S. from secondhand smoke-related causes, merely because smokers think we should be attending to other concerns.
There have been many studies demonstrating links between secondhand smoke and morbidity/mortality. What’s your basis for dismissing them?
Bearing in mind this philosophy, what other mandatory health initiatives and antipollution measures would you discard on the basis that we should just stop whining and tough it out?
Thorstein, I’m shocked. Have you read the report? Do you have specific questions about the methods or studies used? This report is a pretty big deal and it represents dozens of studies over quite a long period of time. It also agrees with dozens of preliminary studies executed by both private and public health officials. The science seems pretty solid to me. When the tobacco companies were conducing internal studes, or agreeing with external studies, which showed the same thing, was that “panic science”?
So as long as smokers only kill 5% of us we should just butt out, right? I mean, that’s not even double digits!
Working on it, having a good bit of success too. Gotta tell you the attitude of “we’re going to continue polluting the air until you force us to stop” is doing WONDERS for my empathy/sympathy for you and your cuase. Could you do me a favor and let me know how prevalent attitudes like yours is among smokers? I said earlier that I’d rather come to a compromise than just flat out jack up the lives of 21% of the adult population. If half of that 21% have attitudes like yours though, I may just change my mind. I have a lot of sympathy for people who are addicted(a large majority of that 21%). People who are inconsiderate, or downright contemptous, of the effects their addition have on those around them? I rank them just slightly above those assholes with HIV who are on campaigns to infect as many people as possible before they die.
I’m sure there are many who are very concerned about every airborne pollutant, tobacco or non-. However, purely based on my experience, there is a lack of people making exaggerating coughing noises and flapping their hands over their faces every time a truck or a car drives past them belching fumes. Which is quite frequently in most city streets. I’ve also noticed a distinct absence of this kind of behaviour at cookouts.
A while back Penn and Teller did a show about manners and etiquette. It wasn’t about smoking, it was about an attitude. They interviewed various uptight “professional victims” and people who were so pissy I wanted to reach through the TV and slap them. Yes, one of them went on and on about some smokers (who were not even there) polluting HIS air. This assclown was angry about everything.
Penn called it The C.O.W (Center Of the World). He summmed them up in this way… they (the COWs) want everything their way, all the time. They don’t want any concensus, middle gound, or discussion about it. All or nothing.
I’m obviously not TVeblen, but I’m glad you asked. I’ve been so busy lately, I’ve not had time to do the reading beyond a skimming of the executive summary. You’ve given an indication that you’ve read the actual report; I’ll throw this out there to take advantage of that. So, my question is: what, specifically, do they mean when they use the phrase “exposure to second hand smoke” (SSH)? In the summary, they mention the various definitions and how they aren’t necessarily consistent, but I didn’t see any qualification (or quantification, for that matter) of the term “exposure” as related to the results. In addition, what is the quantification of “risk” as used in the talking point “any exposure to SSH puts someone at risk”? (Note: quotes used to frame the phrase, not to indicate an acutal quote.)
These answers are necessary to understand the findings. I ask for a couple reasons: (1) I’ve read some studies concluding that cigarettes can be immediately addictive. And yet, what they mean by “addictive” is that, over the course of months, a person self-reported that they felt the desire to smoke–once (or more). Which is a crap definition that, IMHO, is contrary to what anyone but the authors of the study mean when they use the term “addictive”. (2) The last study I read about the detriments of SSH (years back, a meta-study for which I have no cite nor even remember the year it was published) found that while (constant / prolonged) workplace and/or living area exposure had an effect, outside of that there was no statistically significant effect.
Perhaps I’ve simply overlooked the definitions; I’d appreciate your filling in the blanks for me, if you can. If not, I’ll read the thing eventually. But probably not for quite a while…
Then it would follow that these people would focus their concern on the greater danger. Here’s an experiment: We’ll lock you in an airtight garage with an idling car, and me in one with a chain smoker with a hundred cartons of cigarettes. We both have to stay there til one of us dies. How 'bout it?
Cranky are we? No, the “will it work” was meant to be sarcastic. Smokers aren’t going to quit polluting doorways or walking onto/into buses/buildings/grocery stores while breathing out their last puff. And some overzealous anti-smokers are bound and determined to ruin it for the more reasonable among us by whining about it until they’re (the smokers) forced into the bathroom with their shades drawn ala Animal House.
I do however believe strongly that bars (not those attached to restaurants, Please we’re trying to eat!), should be left alone. If a bar owner wants to make a his a non-smoking bar good for him, but I don’t think it should be made a law. That makes about as much sense as outlawing liquor or dancing in a bar.
And this from a person who hates smoking almost beyond reason.
The most interesting thing that I’ve been able to extract from this thread is that there exists a class of people who believe that passing by one or more smokers at a doorway represents a significant enough risk to their lives to warrant regulations restricting the existing rights of many people, but not quite significant enough for them to seek an alternate route, to delay their passage, or even to hold their breath while making a dash for it, since they can attest, in great detail, to the unpleasantness of the passage.
If I saw a bunch of punks openly wielding knives in a doorway, I’d probably steer clear, regardless of the inconvenience.
I’m willing to accept the conclusion of this report, that significant exposure to SHS can cause measurable health effects. And I know that it can be unpleasant to be around people who are smoking, even briefly, particularly if you do not smoke. But I am far from convinced that the primary motivation of most of the militant anti-smokers, including those in this thread, is really that they’re convinced that their lives are at risk from the sort of incidental contact with smokers being discussed.
It might be worthwile to talk a bit about the nature of the report. The report summarizes and analyzes approximately 900 studies, large and small, done by various entities over a large span of time. As such I doubt anyone has “read the report” as such, but reading enough of it to realize that instead of a bibliography, it has a database of sources, helps get a grip on how comprehensive this thing is. The answer to your question, quantitive analysis of risk and for what the risk is, depends widely on what health impact you are interested in finding out about. SIDS? Lung cancer? What? Here is one for Active smoking, household passive smoking, and breast cancer: evidence from the California Teachers Study. 39 data points were pulled from this study and included in the meta data the report was based on. The study controlled for "Age, Race, Family History/Index Disease, Age at Menarche, Parity, Age at First Full-Term Pregnancy, Alcohol Consumption, Body Mass Index, Menopausal Status, Hormone Replacement Therapy Use ". According to the abstract(or the summary thereof provided by the Surgeon General’s office)
This particular study studied people who have never smoked(and were exposed to SHS infrequently), former smokers, housemates of smokers, etc. and identified, quantified, and otherwise analyzed the role of smoking in their risk of breast cancer. It was one of the reasons the Surgeon General’s report, in chapter 7, concluded “The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke and breast cancer.”
Essentially the report is built on a framework which was begun with the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking back in 1964. Numerous methods have been developed to analyze such a large amount of data from individual studies which help weed out bad studies or studies with insufficient controls and possibly erronous data/conclusions. The use of this type of meta-analysis, and its risks, were discussed in Chapter 1, pages 21 and 22(PDF). In a nutshell, meta-analysis is less rigorous than traditional direct-observation analysis, but has both been shown to be accurate and has had controls developed to determine and weed out observational/author bias. The meta-analysis has been SOP for the Surgeon General’s office for some time.
One can talk about the validity of meta-analytical methods, but the reality is the vast majority of the first-hand source studies are saying the same thing.
If you have discrete questions, such as the quantities of SHS exposure for SIDS studies, we can dig that out, but there is no one “answer” to your questions because of the myriad of health effects of smoking and SHS multiplied by the myriad of exposure levels and timelines, multiplied again by the number and types of people who can be so exposed, multiplied YET AGAIN by all the genetic and other factors which could have also influenced that particular aspect of a subject’s health. Damn that was a hell of a sentence.
FTR, I do hold my breath while passing by the jerks huddled in the doorway. Or cross the street, or make as wide a berth as I can without walking out into traffic.
It’s not as if you can escape it. Lessen the nastiness as much as you can, but it pretty much spreads out in a wide arc of what was once air.
The building where my office is located has one doorway off of the street. Luckily there are only a few people who pull this crap, but always right in front of the doorway. And they don’t bother to “air out” before coming back into the building either because even if you miss them outside, the elevator frequently reeks of smoke.
I haven’t read pages 2-5 of this thread, but Mr. 2000 (Mr. 2001?) has made a similar point regarding his home state (Washington? Oregon?). I think that was in the smoking pit thread of June 2005. Ah, memories…
No they can’t. The legal age to but tobacco is 16. Since when did the legal age have anything to do with access?
To your first point; the New Zealand govt is bending over backwards to induce people to stop smoking, a nicotine patch programme that has the retail value of NZ$60 is subsidised by the govt so it costs the user about NZ$5. It’s the QUIT bit that is the problem. I have recently detected an odd but concerning symptom of my smoking…directly resulted from my smoking. It scared the bejeezus out of me. I SHOULD HAVE STOPPED! But I haven’t. Instead I am congratulating myself about cutting down.
Pathetic of course but perhaps the govt does need to protect me from myself (while most of us can live without interference) SOME people do need a bit of “OI YOU CAN’T DO THAT ANYMORE!”.
Too bad. It’s voluntary on their part to be puffing right there. It’s not all that voluntary on the part of the person trying to get to his job through the cloud.
No, the “will it work” was meant to be sarcastic. Smokers aren’t going to quit polluting doorways or walking onto/into buses/buildings/grocery stores while breathing out their last puff. And some overzealous anti-smokers are bound and determined to ruin it for the more reasonable among us by whining about it until they’re (the smokers) forced into the bathroom with their shades drawn ala Animal House.