Maybe there shouldn’t be laws against either. The government can ban any fucking thing it wants to – after all, they’re the ones with the most guns. That doesn’t mean it’s right.
yBeayf, the link on snuff dangers (from the BBC) seems to work fine. Here’s the meat of it:
*"Snorting tobacco in the form of snuff is even more risky than previously thought, research suggests.
Although perhaps not as popular as it was in previous centuries, snuff has enjoyed something of a resurgence in some countries in recent years.
It has also been touted as a safer, and perhaps more socially acceptable, alternative to cigarette-smoking, and even an aid to quitting.
However, preliminary results from a team of researchers examining native American women who take snuff suggest that its carcinogenic effects may have been underestimated.
Although the numbers in the study are small, their analysis found an eightfold increase in the risk of developing breast cancer. "*
What does that mean? Do you also oppose legislation creating criminal sanctions or fines for any offense whatsoever, since it “usurps the freedom of others”?
I was wondering what you thought of a home-state ploy to short-circuit local and statewide antismoking laws using a deceptive campaign, but it doesn’t look like you’re willing to address this specific issue.
Once again, that was oral snuff that was being studied. Whoever wrote that article was an idiot.
Heh. Okay, if that’s humor, it is kind of witty. 
On the off chance it’s serious – I said I won’t suppress a cough to spare a smoker’s feelings. That doesn’t imply I’m spreading germs. I might suppress a cough for many other reasons. Even if I do cough, I cover it.
And I trust no one is arguing that nonsmokers are coughing significantly more than smokers. :dubious:
Sailboat
There’s a big difference between observing an activity, and being forced to partake.
Yes, yes, I know- “Just stay away from areas where smokers gather, and you won’t have to deal with it!”
Except when I walk outside my office, and have to weave my way through all the smokers hanging around outside. Or when I’m stopped at a light behind a smoker.
I close on a house today. One of the first things I’m going to have to do when I take possession is to go through my backyard and pick up the cigarrette butts. I know I didn’t drop them there- frankly, I’m not sure where they came from. I’m still having to clean up after someone, though.
My mother’s death can be directly attributed to her lifelong smoking habit. My son has been flirting with addiction to smoking this past year. Hell yes I’m pissed.
Where are you getting this? I don’t see anything about the Journal of Dental Hygiene or “oral snuff”, but the article does refer to “snorting” and previously known associations with nasal cancer - which don’t sound like to me like they’re referring to oral use.
And despite the relatively low attention given to snuff as opposed to cigarettes or smokeless tobacco for oral use, research exists on nasal snuff dangers. One would have to be in pretty severe denial not to think that chronic exposure of delicate mucous membranes to a tobacco product poses a risk of carcinogenesis.
From the fact that it’s referencing the talk given by John Spangler in Orlando in 2000, the contents of which were first published in that journal in summer of 2000.
That entire article is based on the reporter’s misinterpreting of the original talk’s references to “snuff” as referring to nasal snuff, rather than oral snuff. Oral snuff is banned in the EU, and it’s quite possible whoever wrote that was unfamiliar with the American usage of the term.
Do you even read the abstracts you’re referencing? That study focused on cancer of the gingiva (i.e. gums) among tobacco and betel chewers. Use of nasal snuff was correlated with oral cancer; if I had to hazard a guess, that’s likely because people who use nasal snuff in India are also likely to chew betel quids and smoke tobacco, both of which have been shown to cause oral cancer. If you can find any evidence whatsoever that nasal use of tobacco causes cancer of the gingiva, I’ll eat my handkerchief.
Alcohol is impossible to control because you can make it in your own home with regular food grade materials and non-specific hardware. Given sugar, a package of instant yeast, and a bucket, you can make alcohol.
Marijuana is in sufficient supply, for an illegal drug. If there was only as much tobacco in the US as there is marijuana, I doubt there would be complaints about smokers.
99% humor. The 1% non-humor was not aimed at anyone in particular. I’m neither a smoker nor an anti-smoker. I did wonder while reading through this thread how conscious those that are advocating their right to clean, smoke-free air are about what they introduce to that air. The more militant the stance, the more ironic it would seem to me if they drive a non-environment-friendly vehicle, leave the house when sick, etc.
Not entirely true. Much of the booze sold in the US during prohibition was in fact made not in bathtubs, but in Canadian factories - the foundation, among other thing, of the Seagrams fortune.
I had a great-uncle who was a gangster of sorts during the '30s, and made a living shipping Canadian booze south. He wasn’t very good at the gangster business, was shot full of holes by a rival.
Note that booze, unlike tobacco, is basically heavy and comes in breakable glass containers - yet prohibition did not really work. Prohibition on tobacco, which is a lot easier to store and ship, would be a lot harder.
Anyway, tobacco smuggling is already a fact of life - there used to be a lot of it into Canada, in order to avoid punitive taxation.
Ok, I don’t really have an answer for this, because I do support legislation for compulsory use of seatbelts and safety helmets, plus I live in a country where another’s health costs have far more impact on me (by raising my taxes) than, I presume, you do. However, I think that there is a difference between the two pieces of legislation: doing up your seatbelt is such a minor act that I don’t think making it compulsory is comparable to banning an entire form of behavior. Yes, it’s a weak answer, but I still think there is a difference, even if I can’t express it articulately.
Incidentally, I have heard off-the-cuff (and possibly humourous) remarks that smokers actually save money for the health service, since someone dying of lung cancer in their forties or fifties is much cheaper to treat than the immense amount of money spent on geriatric care for those in their sixites and seventies, most of it only palliative (is that the word?). Don’t know if this is actually true, though.
So basically, the combined efforts of law enforcement have been unable to curtail either supply or demand. It’s not even particularly expensive (consumption in the Netherlands isn’t significantly higher than elsewhere, and prices are of the same order of magnitude), and positively vast numbers of people smoke it. And it’s much less popular than tobacco. This really ought to be setting off alarm bells.
Certainly, there would be significant challenges involved in the illicit distribution of tobacco; it is quite voluminous to transport (although that to my mind is the only significant difference), but it’s absolute foolishness to look at the results of prohibition efforts through history and declare that this obstacle is going to stump the crooks. It’s a half-trillion dollars a year industry in the States alone; how close to that much money will we need to spend to counter the vast numbers of smugglers who will be seeking to profit from its prohibition? And why on earth do you want us to do so when it’s dying out through far less drastic measures? You haven’t answered the point that public tobacco use is already far less widespread than it was (and getting even less so). I’d appreciate it if you did; why do we need to enact what even the most optimistic must admit would be a hugely expensive bit of legislation to (maybe) achieve what we’re achieving already?
I try not to “hazard a guess” (always dangerous when it comes to scientific research). The study specifically mentions increased cancer risk associated with nasal snuff use. Without more work on the subject, it’s hard to tell if that might be due to something like a field effect on neighboring mucosa or exposure to carcinogens due to coughing up crap from snuff use (does the “rhinitis” from snuff use lead to increased postnasal drip?
If enough deluded people turn to snuff because it’s “safer” than smoking or oral tobacco use, we’re sure to accumulate extensive long-term data on the subject. Such data (in oral tobacco users) already demonstrate heightened risk of cancer (and systemic health risks from oral tobacco use, such as hypertension and increased serum cholesterol). If the snuff-using population thinks it’s going to be immune to such hazards long-term, it’s living in a fool’s paradise.
I’ll agree that putting smoking areas right next to a main entrance is a bad idea. But then your fight should be with the building manager, not the smokers who are enjoying their habit exactly where they have been exiled to.
First of all, congratulations, that rocks.
But are you picking up butts, or all trash? Cleaning up is cleaning up, no matter what kind of trash it is.
My point? Not much of one, save this: A bill is before the state congress to ban smoking at all public beaches. The reason is the butt litter. The thing is, though, the litter is not all that bad. Usually my GF and I are often the only smokers at the beaches we visit, and we always – always – clean up after ourselves. I usually look around and pick up any other butts I see as well, but there usually are none. On the other hand, coffee cup lids, rusty beer cans, and broken glass are a real problem. A smoking ban would do nothing that a simple carry in, carry out law wouldn’t do better.
Same here. Yay Sailboat! I think smoking should be banned. Smokers with children would be liable to having their children taken away if the smokers can’t stop smoking around their kids. It’s a crime in some localitys to have unsecured guns aorund kids, and that crime can get your kids taken away, right? Well, far more kids are killed by SHS than by their parents guns. Let the flames begin! :eek: 
But snuff & chew? Go ahead. It’s less dangerous (fatality wise) for you, and no danger at all to me or your kids.
Hear hear! I would add that I can see some justification for banning smoking in places like outdoor sports stadiums where people are packed together for hours. But SF has banned smoking on golf courses! Puh-leeze. There’s no way my cigar on the back nine is doing anyone any appreciable harm.
Well, that would only be ironic if smokers drove clean-fuel vehicles and were conspicuously conscientious about other emissions and airborne diseases, in order to counterbalance their smoking.
If they’re not, if they and the vocal nonsmokers all drive roughly the same mix of cars, then it’s a tie – we’d all be doing the same damage – but the tie would be “broken” by smoking. All that AND the smoke. You see what I’m getting at? The smokers can only call vocal nonsmokers “ironic” and/or hypocrites if they themselves are minimizing the other (nontobacco) pollution in their lives. I’m guessing there’s not a strong correlation between smoking and reducing emissions; but I admit I’m guessing.
Personally I use public transportation every day, recycle, and try to minimize my environmental “footprint”. Now that I’ve admitted that, I’m sure someone will find a way to say I’m an nutball extremist for living that way; and if I didn’t do it, they’d call me a hypocrite.
Sailboat
I agree with UncleBeer in that you’ve lost all sense of proportion here. Walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke will have absolutely no effect on the average healthy person due to the cilia in your lungs.
So, relax! Evolution took care of the problem before cigarettes were invented. You should be fine.
I don’t think it is a matter of hypocracy or insanity. It is simply a lack of a sense of proportion. Reading through this thread, I must say that I came into it agreeing with the “anti-smoking” crowd, and I’ve changed my mind - UncleBeer is right.
When people start talking about banning the activity, about taking kids away from parents, about “one molecule is too much!”, they lose my support. Get a grip.
The whole “debate” is trivial. Smokers and non-smokers alike should show courtesy and try to make life easy for each other, and everyone knows how - smokers, by not littering or otherwise being obnoxious with their habit; non-smokers, by not treating smokers like lepers. The “my way or the highway” attitude is okay for jerking around on a message board, but in real life it just makes for ugliness all around.