Forgive me if this is already a thread somewhere else, but why is alcoholism a disease, someone with a drug addiction referred to as being ‘sick’, but smokers just have a nasty habit? I am a smoker and quitting is very difficult. It’s been documented that smokers have a higher fall back ratio than herion addicts. So why are smokers seen as having a disgusting habit rather than having an addiction, which is what it is.
When you drink or use drugs, you can do some pretty nasty things: vomiting, deficating on yourself, dangerous behind the wheel of a car, etc
When you smoke, you can blow smoke rings.
Why the pity and sympathy for these other addicts, but not the smokers out there?
I hope that link works! You will see that there are many people here who realize what an addiction smoking really is. They have been extremely supportive of those of us who are trying to quit. If ever a smoker wants to quit, this is the place for them to be.
I really think we should patent this. Heck, I didn’t even have to toss out the money for a patch!
But they would presumably not be very sympathetic to those who didn’t want to quit. Any smoker who doesn’t flaggelate himself and decry his weakness and beg for forgiveness is still an outcast.
A more interesting question is, who here will stand up for the unapologetic smoker? Don’t all rush the stage.
Aaaaaah, but you’re wrong! And in fact, I’m a bit insulted that you presume that any of us would be unsympathetic to people who have decided they want to continue smoking. Do you really think that I’m so self-centered that I would condemn someone for something I’ve done, myself, for 20 years? Hardly!
If you want to smoke, that’s your prerogative and I would never tell you otherwise. Do you see any of us on this board actively soliciting people who smoke to stop? Or even to visit that thread if they don’t want to? It’s not like we’re going thread to thread telling smokers they need to reform. I’ve posted about that thread only one time, and that was in a thread someone else started about smoking, where they said they may want to quit soon, so I invited them to join us when they were ready. Same thing Jeannie did here. No one’s forcing anyone to click open that topic. And none of the participants are bitching at people who don’t.
But it is an incredibly supportive place to be, if quitting is what you want to do. The doors are open. Come in if you want. But don’t insult us by saying that because we’re choosing to quit, at whatever cost or difficulty, that that makes us bad or incosiderate people because we’re supporting each other in our efforts.
Shayna - who’s proud to say she hasn’t smoked in 2 weeks, 5 days, 14 hours, 34 minutes and 57 seconds.
It seems the point of my post has been skewed somewhat.
The question I am asking is: What is it about smoking that, to the general public, makes it such a nasty horrible thing? Smokers get no symapathy for being addicted as do alcoholics or drug addicts.
At my place of work, if you have an alcohol or drug problem, they will pay up 75% - 100% of the cost to send you through rehab. If you having a nicotine addiction, you’re told to take it outside and don’t throw your butts on the ground, use the butt can.
Take it outside! There’s a phrase I’ve grown to loathe over the years. From now on, whenever someone comes over to my place, I’m gonna tell them, “If you’re not gonna smoke, take it outside.” Let the non-smokers stand outside in the rain looking through the window at the party going on inside while the dog (which was thrown out for wizzing on the rug) tries to hump their leg.
I ask you, what’s worse? A little second hand smoke, or submitting your friends to that kind of humiliation?
Anyway, does anyone having any thoughts on why smoking is considered so evil while drug addiction and alcoholism is considered a disease? I’ve never heard of a car accident caused by smoking and driving.
BratMan007 said “I ask you, what’s worse? A little second hand smoke, or submitting your friends to that kind of humiliation?”
As far as I am concerned the second hand smoke is worse. It makes the house stink for days. If they really are my friends they don’t want to subject me to that.
My last cigarette was about 34 years ago and yes, many of us reformed smokers are worse than those that have never smoked when it comes to smoking.
You do however have my sympathy since I know how hard it is to quit. You still can’t smoke in my house though.
Ok, Diver, that last part there about being sent outside was just a joke. I realize that ex-smokers and non-smokers have difficulty breathing if there is second-hand smoke in the air. To me, lighting up a Marlboro in front of an ex-smoker is just as rude as downing a bottle of Jack Daniels in front of an alcoholic. I was just being facetious (did I spell that right?)
Good luck BRATMAN. Re: my post in the PIT ‘You Nonsmokers Piss Me Off.’ You’ll not get your question answered and will probably be attacked and any form of defense you put up will be ridiculed or shot down as insufficient. IF you post grows, the Moderator will move it into the PIT and you’ll be raped at large by antismoking fanatics who feel that absolutely nothing justifies smoking and turn blind eyes towards anything else that they do daily that is harmful towards people.
Oh, yeah, by the way. I smoke. I like it.
I believe the answer to your basic question is that it is Politically Correct to harass smokers. All over the media one sees spots designed to make smokers look stupid, followed by spots showing them ridiculed, followed by spots showing the health dangers followed by more spots pointing out how selfish smokers are in endangering others.
Hitler must have taught some of these people how to use propaganda. Even the anti-drunk ads take a second position to the smoking ones.
Plus, exsmokers get about as fanatical about smokers as Carrie Nation did about drinkers. They cannot smoke, though they still have the taste, and they don’t want anyone else to do so because it might tempt them into starting again.
It’s called projection.
When I pointed out how drunks are more accepted that smokers, one bright bulb pointed out that a drunk sitting next to him is not poisoning his lungs with his vapors. He ignored the potential for that drunk to later leave and plow over 6 or 7 people in his car.
It is possible to make a safer tobacco product, but even that was shot down in discussion. Good luck.
WAG: you can drink yourself to death in front of someone and it won’t make a blind bit of difference, but the minute a smoker lights up in front of a non-smoker they’re introducing possibly lethal chemicals to someone who didn’t want them.
Bratman, as long as you restrict yourself to facts, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Nobody’s gonna tear down your OP. You ask a valid question, to which people will respond in a civil manner - just as civil as you asked it.
If you want to see how NOT to approach this problem, I can wholeheartedly advice you to read Sentinel’s thread in the Pit, where he is being attacked over trivial and unfounded nonsense that he adds to his OP (the OP itself is just as valid as yours, albeit worded less civil - but yeah, it’s in the Pit).
As for an opinion, I’ll have to go with Mattk: smoking is an immediate thread to those around you, whereas drinking etc. isn’t. Sure, drunk driving is a bad thing. But not every drinker will drive home drunk.
The answer to your first question is: we’re working on it.
Smoking and alcohol addiction have a very different history in public perception.
It has been recognized for hundreds of years that alcohol is addictive. However, not everyone who drinks alcohol becomes addicted. This has led to the historical perception that an alcoholic is either weak, stupid or immoral, even though none of these are true. This causes a problem in that no one wants to believe they are weak, stupid or immoral - so alcoholics couldn’t admit they were alcoholic without also admitting they were flawed. However, the first step in curing alcoholism is to admit you have a problem. The health care professionals have worked long and hard to convince the public that alcoholism is not a flaw to be guilt-ridden over or conquered by “will-power”, but an illness which has a cause and a cure. There are still many people who fight this.
Smoking, otoh, has only recently been recognized as addictive. As such, it doesn’t really have the historical burden that alcoholism does - instead, health care professionals have had trouble just getting our culture to recognize it as a problem at all. The research that generated the comparison to heroin you mentioned is less than 10 years old (IIRC, certainly less than 15 years old) and it was fought violently by the tobacco industry when it came out.
Another difference between smoking and alcohol. Alcohol severely impacts your behavior, whereas smoking’s impact on behavior is almost non-existant. As a result, you can smoke anytime including at work, whereas most alcohol is drunk only at certain times. For instance, usually only the most addicted alcoholics will drink in the morning or at work. So it’s usually easier to tell that an alcoholic is impacting his/her quality of life than a smoker. Most people don’t recognize the problems that smoking causes until they’ve experienced the health problems directly or indirectly.
You can also cause allergic reactions in some individuals, make people’s eyes water, make the clothes of people around you stink, make people cough. And you will stink. I know you can’t smell it, but for reference, have you ever been near a person who hadn’t bathed in a week? You smell nearly as strong, and only slightly less nasty. If you have children and smoke around them, you make them more susceptible not only to colds and allergies, but to asthma as well.
The nasty things you mention about drinking can happen, but not necessarily. I’ve managed to drink for over 20 years, yet have never had any of the mentioned happen to me (Well, I’ve driven after one glass of wine sometimes)
But if I smoked one cigarrette, I would stink.
I think you’re using selective vision here. Most people I know are as disgusted or more so by drug and alcohol addiction than by nicotine addiction. Since you’re a smoker, you’re more aware of the attitudes people have toward smoking, but your perception of “pity and sympathy” is probably coming more from the media than personal experience.
If you really want to stop smoking, and know of a plan that costs money, have you discussed it with HR? You might find that they are as happy to pay for that as the others. The difference here is that if you indulge in your alcohol or drug addiction at work, most companies will fire your ass. Some companies will do this for drug addiction, period. You call that sympathy. They only offer the rehab to make sure the firing holds (and because sometimes they don’t want to lose good employees) Instead of complaining about how they are providing sympathy to others, maybe you should be grateful that they allow you to indulge your addiction whenever you want to.
Surely 5 minutes in a room with a smoker is not an immediate threat, but that’s beside the point. I have no qualms with going outside, sitting in special areas at the airport, etc to have a cigarette out of respect for ex- and non-smokers. What I don’t like is the holier-than-thou approach many people put on, “I don’t smoke and I resent the fact that you do” sort of thing.
And as for those who DO drive drunk, or under the influence of drugs, they pose a much greater threat to those around them. I am not a threat to anyone when I smoke while driving. Even when not behind the wheel of a car, drunks and people on drugs can lash out violently. If there is a smoker in your presence, you can request them to not smoke around you. If someone asks me nicely and resonably, I will usually comply, since I can smoke anytime. If there is a drunk behind the wheel of a swerving car, would you pull alongside them and ask them to pull over until they are sober, or do you try to avoid them and hope they don’t cause any accidents?
Hee’s a little example of how I, as a smoker, have been blamed for being a smoker, while minding my own business: I was once in a restaurant, in the smoking section because I requested to be there. In the smoking section, I feel I am allowed to light up a smokey-treat whenever the mood strikes me; before the meal, after the meal, during the meal if I want (giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘smoked chicken’) A lady in the non-smoking section, sitting near the smoking section asked me to put out my cigarette. When I refused, she got angry with me and I suggested if she didn’t like it she should request to be moved to another table farther away from the smoking section. She went on to exclaim that why should she have to move when she’s in the non-smoking section when I am at fault for polluting her lungs.
Was I wrong in suggesting she move? I was in the smoking section, I was allowed to smoke there, and I doubt sitting next to a smoker for the duration of one meal is going to do any serious damage to anyone. Just don’t make a habit of it. When I go to lunch with people I work with, I sit in the non-smoking section with them, out of respect for them being smoke-free. I do not insist the whole group sit in the smoking section so I can enjoy a cigarette while they suffer through it. I don’t smoke around children and I denounce smoking to my younger relatives (they think it’s hypocritical on my part, to suck down on a cancer stick while simultaneously saying how bad it is, but again, they don’t realize I SUFFER FROM AN ADDICTION) So why is it so difficult for people to be just as respectful for smokers sitting in the smoking area?
All I am saying is, there is sympathy for alcoholics, sympathy for drug addicts, but the smoker is reviled. Why is one addiction so much more evil than the others?
And yes, I expect this to be moved to the Pit any second now.
I never claimed smoking was not nasty. I know I reek of cigarette smoke after having one, and if read my previous post, I do not smoke around children (not just mine, ANY children) or non-smokers. I know smoking is a bad thing, and I am not defending it here. In fact, after catching my 13 year old cousin Jake smoking a cigarette with some friends of his from school, I along with Chris (a 24 year old cousin), told him how bad smoking is, and even threatened the older boys he was hanging out with that we’d better never catch them giving smokes to my younger cousins again, followed by the obligatory ‘or else’ (I know, threatening a 15-yr-old is not the most mature thing to do, but have you ever tried reasoning with a 15 year old from Kentucky?)
And if you happen to be a 15 year old from Kentucky reading this, thanks for reading, glad you can be here, I’m sure you’re wonderful people.
I am just wondering why the difference in attitude between one addiction and the next, and zyada made some very good points.
Sorry to harp on the nasty aspects - I must have run into too many rude smokers who have denied the health and cleanliness issues. Most of the smokers I know now are very nice, I’m glad I can count you as one of them!
- Thanks!