There’s nothing terribly new here. Secondhand smoke, in addition to making things unpleasant for non-smokers, causes or worsens serious diseases and increases the likelihood of fatalities in non-smokers. As the heavy majority in the U.S. (and increasingly so, around the world), they will use this latest report to make their personal space a little safer, and more power to them.
I’ve always thought how marvelous it is that the SDMB’s acknowledged smokers are this way…considerate, thoughtful, non-littering etc. Just like smokers in general.
Unless they’re not paying attention. Or having a bad day. Or seizing on some tone or glance from non-smokers that they can use to take offense at and justify their antisocial behavior.
Which is why we need anti-smoking laws and serious enforcement.
Cast aspertions as ye may. I stand by my claim. Ever since I got busted (by a dog warden) for throwing a butt out of my car window, and absorbed the data about second-hand smoke, I’ve taken a long look at how I used behave while smoking, and have mended my ways.
I’m only talking about the thankfully small number of people who shout, or make very obvious hand-flapping gestures out of proportion to their exposure. None of which would make me try to “justify” anything. Now if only we can get the inconsiderate smokers to be a vanishing minority too. Which is why I urge activist non-smokers to concentrate their ire on the really bad ones, not to exaggerate the effects of those trying to reform.
Just what we need. More “nanny government”. Maybe we need anti-jerk laws to lock up loud and obnoxious morons who feel some overpowering urge to stand right next to someone who is smoking. Just. Move. Away. From. Them.
Yeah, I rarely bash anybody with the two by four I carry around, unless they’re an asshole. :rolleyes:
Smoking near someone to punish them for their attitude is pretty much the same thing as punching them in the jaw for it. It’s gauche. It’s assault.
I’m so terribly sorry that you have to put up with the contempt of a portion of your fellow human beings. Poisoning them is not a measured response, though.
Then y’all could at least be honest about your intentions and encourage legislation that completely outlaws the sale of tobacco for smoking. Anything else makes you a hypocritical fuck. It’s death by a thousand cuts; just like the dickheads who wanna take away my guns. And I say this as an ex-smoker; a group of people who’re generally the most sanctimonious of this particular boquet of assholes.
I knew this line of “logic” would pop up sooner or later. While there is a (questionable by some) right to keep and bear arms, there is no such right to smoke.
What about when this isn’t an option, such as at a bus stop? Or, for that matter, why should the person who isn’t smoking be forced to move when it is the smoker who is intiating the passive smoking (ok, the link proves passive smoking is bad, but “poisoning” is hyperbole).
I’m kind of torn on this issue. I wonder how many of the non-smokers also use things like Sweet’N Low or Equal, or maybe have had some food cooked on a grill lately, or maybe inhaled some of those bus exhaust fumes.
It almost seems that Americans now insist on some Howard Hughesian bubble around them that’s germ free and odor free and smoke free and touch free and that the rest of the world needs to have some legal compulsion to not only respect that space, but to immediately grovel and beg forgiveness for any slight against that space no matter how real or imagined it might be.
The world we live in is a scary, dirty and often dangerous space. If the most you have to worry about is cigarette smoke then be thankful.
If we assume that we are criminalizing use in any enviroment where someone else is going to be exposed to passive smoke, and that the only person who is going to be effected is the smoker themselves- they can go ahead and knock themselves out. After all, we don’t ban bungee jumping or mountain climbing, although those are very dangerous past-times. It is a principle going back to J.S. Mill that the only grounds for forbidding an act is if it harms someone else. Smoking (when considered in a vacuum…insert obligatory joke here) harms only the smoker, who has made a choice to do so. Or are you in favour of banning suicide as well?
I’m fully in favour of restricting the circumstances under which someone can be exposed to passive smoke, however.
What a great idea, except that Prohibition doesn’t work. It just spawns smuggling and corruption.
So smoking will continue to be regulated and taxed.
I have no “intention” to get smoking banned anyway. People have the right to pursue activities that are self-destructive. They just don’t have the right to take me and other non-smokers down with them.
If you want to argue that governments should devote a heftier portion of their tax revenues from smoking to health initiatives, smoking cessation programs, litter control and protecting non-smokers, I’m with you.
Because outlawing it wouldn’t have any affect on its use. Just like prohibition didn’t put an end to drinking. An addict isn’t going to quit just because it’s now illegal. They will just switch to illegal sources for their smokes. At least some of the obscene profit can go towards providing health care. If it was illegal, none of it would.
“I now realize I smoke for simply one reason, and that is spite. I hate you non-smokers with all of my little black fucking heart. You obnoxious, self-righteous, whining little fucks. My biggest fear, if I quit smoking, is that I’ll become one of you.”
I don’t have one. At least one to which you (and many others) probably won’t find objections. So, again, what’s stopping you guys from introducing legislation banning smoking tobacco? Has that been done? I’m not aware of any such legislation being introduced.
Bingo. I think tobacco is silly, wasteful, impractical, and of no value whatsoever and I tend to think just a little bit less of those who choose to use it. But I have no intention of supporting legislation to ban it outright because of the reasoning presented by jsgoddess. If you want to slowly kill yourself over the course of twenty years, go right ahead. But when your smoking infiltrates a single molecule of carcinogenic material into my lungs, you’ve crossed a line.
My tolerance for being slowly poisoned varies with the degree to which I like the person doing the poisoning, of course. I make sure to stand upwind of my father if we’re both outside and he’s puffing away on a cigarette though.
Bullshit. Put tobacco on the same criminal level as marijuana. Do you think you could get enough marijuana to support a pack a day habit without going broke? Think you could smoke 20 joints a day without getting caught?
There’s also a huge difference between tobacco and alcohol/marijuana. You can’t get drunk or high on tobacco*, so why would someone bother to break the law to smoke it?
Yes, in the short term there will be continuing use because people are addicted, but in the mid-long term making it illegal will kill the tobacco industry.
*Well, maybe you can, but I doubt the high is anything like the other two.
To be honest, this is one of the reasons I’ve switched to using snuff almost exclusively. While the poor, mistreated smokers (and I don’t mean that sarcastically) are huddling out in the street, I can be merrily snuffing away indoors, out of the sun and the rain and the heat. And taking a pinch of snuff is so quick and unobtrusive, if you weren’t watching carefully you might never even know I was doing it.
The day they outlaw snuffing (which, unlike smoking, truly doesn’t affect anybody but the person doing it) is the day I start bombing government offices.
Now when I walk down the street I’ll have obese Americans telling me how I’m killing them because they can smell cigarette smoke. Of course it will take them a moment to get the words out between bites of McBurger and Crispy Creme.
I don’t know how serious to take a report like this from a fear-based Government. The CDC website has three headlines on their main page; Secondhand smoke, Firework Injuries and gasp Pandemic Flu.
This coming from a crack department that did nothing about AIDS for years.
What next? A report on how drinking is bad for you because it kills brain cells? How the toxins in household cleaners are really bad for you?