People in places like LA who complain about second hand smoke from the driver’s seat of their Hummer are very amusing to me.
Fuck yeah. Screw those sanctimonious non-smokers who will chastise me as they scatter their SUV fumes in my face. Or who will spray their anti-germ sprays, which make me cough and smell nasty, in the name of “health.” I make way less pollution than a car or an aerosol can. I don’t doubt that there are health problems associated with secondhand smoke, but guess what? There are health problems associated with everything. Everything!
And if you don’t like it, then don’t leave your house or use any chemicals at all. And don’t drive your car, especially not around me, a non-driver who does not relish getting a lungful of smoke that is far more toxic than my piddling cigarettes. And don’t dare use your anti-stink Oust sprays around me, do you know what’s in those aerosol cans? Carcinogens! And you’re forcing me to be exposed to them, without my consent. Mountain fresh, my ass.
Know why smokers get dirty looks from others even when they’re smoking where they are allowed to?
Cause you stink!!
Same reason the lady that puts on too much perfume gets dirty looks. Same reason that the guy with horrendous body odor who hasn’t showered in days gets dirty looks. Same reason the guy with garlic/onion breath gets dirty looks.
Sure none of them are doing anything illegal. But when your in my space and you STINK, I’m gonna give you a dirty look.
Oh, yeah, that would be me. Even with my own mother.
And I look forward to those laws with eager anticipation.
Because people should be free to do what they want as long as it doesn’t actively harm others, even if it is dangerous and harmful to themselves. Being overweight is dangerous, and causes much more disease and harm than second-hand smoke. Are you going to next lobby the government to force people to be physically fit?
I have no problems with making restaurants, air planes, malls and other such places non-smoking. I think it’s asinine to go so far as to make smoking illegal.
Cars stink too.
Yep, and if I’m sitting at an outside eating area and someone backs their car up to it and lets it run while I’m eating I’ll give them a dirty look too.
Give them a dirty look? Sure, go ahead I would too. Attempt to legislate that people can’t operate their legal vehicles close to where you’re having a sandwich and we’re talking a little bit crazy.
You’re absolutely right. Marijuana’s been illegal for decades. Heroin, too. Cocaine, too. And it’s worked: The trade in those substances has been absolutely crushed by prohibition, and the “industries” supplying them have totally collapsed. Why, if it weren’t for illustrations in textbooks and some museum exhibits, no one today would even know what a marijuana leaf looks like.
Fucking idiot.
You can’t get high on normal, measured, regular use of small doses of tobacco, much like various native peoples in South America chew on coca leaves all day long without getting high. Taking large amounts of tobacco at once can certainly induce altered states of consciousness, and it was used as an entheogen by native peoples. If tobacco is outlawed, I guarantee you’ll start seeing people using it as a recreational drug and overdosing on the stuff.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Mebbe you wanna quarantine everybody with an infectious disease, too? And nobody’s allowed to wear those goddamned wool sweaters anymore either. Some of us are allergic to 'em. Let’s outlaw all use of pesticides and cleaning products, too. Bye-bye internal combustion engines. Bye-bye plastic and rubber products. Can’t be too fucking careful after all, can we?
A single molecule? That’s entirely absurd. You guys have lost not only all sense of proportion, but all semblance of rational thought.
You’d have to make it illegal worldwide to have much of an effect. I don’t know about the states but from where I’m sitting in the centre of Dublin I can walk 5 mins to find people selling illegal tax free cigs on the streets. Every few weeks a shipment worth millions is caught coming through but that only scratches the surface. Illegally imported cigarettes are already freely available here and sold way more openly than grass. They are cheaper that a normal pack BTW which are about $8 a pack over here thanks to the high taxation put on them.
Allergies are the exception, not the rule, and wool doesn’t tend to spread out in a cloud. People don’t choose to get infectious diseases. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t hurl DDT like confetti at passers-by in the hopes of killing a rat.
For cigarette smoke there is :
- Harm
- No Benefit
- Controllability/Choice.
Out of curiousity, has anyone knowledgable actually looked at the report and assesed it for validity? I seem to recall that every other study I’ve read on secondhand smoke has made some pretty shocking jumps with their statistics. (I’m not gonna have time to read and absorb that shit until at least Friday, and frankly I don’t care enough to–I smoke only in a room of my house designated partially for that purpose, and infrequently at that, so my dogs are minimally in this fight at best.)
Heh. That reminds me of something from a previous thread.
Exactly. You have the right to own a gun. You have the right to use it-- to shoot it – sometimes, in some places. You do not – ever – have the right to shoot AT ME with it, unless you’re claiming self-defense.
I’m asking angry smokers to slow down a moment and look at it from my perspective.
Some of you seem to claim that:
[ul]
[li]you like shooting at me (smoking around people)[/li]
[li]you’re addicted to it (this argument doesn’t excuse serial killers, does it?)[/li]
[li]you used to be allowed to do it (before there were governments you could attack people at will; does that make it right to do so now? Do you also hold slaves?) [/li]
[li]you’re a *bad shot * and unlikely to hit me[/li][/ul]
None of those claims matter. Would we accept them for other behaviors people do that cause damage?
That last one is this one especially amusing. “The odds of getting cancer from one little whiff are miniscule!” Okay, blindfold me and let me take one little shot at you with this handgun. The odds of my hitting you in one try are low – you shouldn’t mind, right?
Oh, and my 3,500 other friends are waiting to take THEIR low-odds shots too, as you go about your day. That’s right, cumulative risk from lots and lots of people. Still feel comfortable being shot at? What, you were never comfortable being shot at?
What are you complaining about – you can hide in your cave, you don’t have to come out here in public with us shooters!
Give me a break. It’s poisonous, carcinogenic, and addictive. No reasoning – none – justifies inflicting it on other people.
“But the risk is low,” you say. Well, addicts are notoriously poor estimators of risk. But even if it is low, why should it become MY risk?
Here’s another thing to think about. In each and every thread I’ve seen about this topic, smokers call vocal nonsmokers “whiny” and attempt to demonize them. It comes across as…what’s the word…whiny.
I see a lot of you are offended by nonsmokers coughing. That’s something my father used to do – fly into a rage when someone coughed because he thought it was a comment on his smoking. He’d pitch a fit even when one of us choked on a saltine, because he thought we were sending nonverbal disapproval. It was stupid, annoying as hell, and frankly psychologically unhealthy for a grown man to behave that way.
I will not suppress a cough, that might be entirely unrelated to your smoking, to spare you from feeling persecuted. (Talk about whiny, geez. People cough and you come to message boards and grumble that it might have been about you.) I was born to breathe oxygen, and to cough if necessary. So were you. You may have since adopted a habit – that does not supersede my natural right to breathe.
I know where the problem is. The Surgeon General knows where the problem is. YOU know where the problem is.
Now I don’t mean to be rude to anyone, and I am sympathetic to those trapped in addiction. I don’t look down on you. I think we can talk about this --and work together to limit smoking’s effects on those who don’t smoke – without being rude.
But can we have this discussion without you people implying that I have to silently let myself be poisoned in order to spare your delicate feelings? Give me a break.
And rest asssured, whether it’s “bans” or some other method, we very much need to move toward limiting smoking’s effects on nonsmokers. Or else turn the discussion in the direction of more active self-defense.
Why should I die because your sixth-grade peers thought smoking looked cool?
Sailboat
Get your head out of your ass. Those drugs affect your senses, in relatively tiny doses. Tobacco would require (if I understand ybeayf) smoking a giant cigar in 5 minutes to get a similar high. Without the high, what would be the point of breaking the law? (this is my primary point, btw) People trade in drugs illegally because of the effects they have. There is no big illegal trade in prescription anti-fungal creams, it’s in prescription painkillers that make you high.
Even with the high, there are much more potent substances that won’t require a wheelbarrow’s worth to make any money off of. Tobacco is a lousy illegal drug, no significant “benefit” to taking it, it’s low potency, so high volumes are needed, and you run the same risks of being caught.
It’s different than buying untaxed cigs. You can buy an untaxed cig and smoke it in public, right in front of a cop, or your boss, or your mother, and nobody will be the wiser. The only personal risk is in the transaction, not the possession or use. It would have to be just like marijuana purchases, on the sly, kept hidden in public, hoping the cop that pulled you over doesn’t notice it and ruin your year. All that, for what, again?
By the way Uncle Beer, if you’re against hypocrisy (and flat-out deception), you’ll denounce the campaign by “Smoke Less Ohio” to pass a constitutional amendment limiting smoking statewide.
This group is actually funded by bar and restaurant owners who are hoping to fool the public into voting for their toothless amendment limiting smoking in some public places but allowing it in restaurants, bars, bowling alleys etc. It’s a an especially sleazy ploy given that there will be a simultaneous ballot initiative to effectively ban smoking in all public places in Ohio. If the “Smoke Less Ohio” amendment and the initiative both pass in November, the constitutional amendment takes precedence, and the municipal smoking bans already on the books around the state will be overturned.
How’s that for deception, sleaze, and overriding local citizen action?
Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
The bubble should be around you. A smoking room should be isolated completely and then you can enjoy your smoking to nyour hearts content. Then you could watch and enjoy the effects of accumulated smoking would have on the room.
Smoking slights are not imagined .That is the point of the study. Cancer , and heart disease are not slights.
Cost of smoking should include cigarette burns on auto and home upholstry. Burn marks on office furniture. Little burns in sweaterss. And home fires with people dying.
Actually, tobacco is quite a high-potency drug, and rather low volumes are needed to satisfy one’s addiction. A pack of cigarettes may seem like a lot, but if you open them up and weigh the tobacco that’s in them, it’s really not that much. I have a fairly heavy snuff habit, yet only use 2 - 3 grams per day. And the line between maintaining a baseline addiction, and taking enough to have mind-altering effects, is surprisingly small.