# Smoking....YOUR humble opinion **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 31, 2006, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656 "2006-03-31T04:03:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/61 "2006-03-31T22:02:33Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > To all those who support smoking bans in restaurants, bars, and other _private_ places: fuck you. I blow the thickest, most noxious, jet-black, fire-roasted, 100% Syrian latakia smoke in your general direction. If you don’t want to smell smoke, the solution is to not patronize an establishment that allows smoking, rather than get the government to enforce your personal preferences on everybody else. Unless you own the property you’re standing on, you have no moral right to a smoke-free environment. > > Me, if I’m outdoors, or in a building that opens to the outdoors (mainly thinking of Agnes Arnold Hall on the U of H campus – imagine a multi-story building without exterior walls) I cheerfully ignore non-smoking ordinances. Tobacco always tastes better when consumed while standing directly beneath a “no smoking” sign. I haven’t been ticketed yet. > > I swear, smokers are too polite for their own good. If we keep it up, we’ll allow ourselves to be legislated out of existence. The solution is to ignore the mewling whines of nanny-state non-smokers, and to puff boldly, openly, and without remorse. Can’t we all just get along? Sheesh. A little bitter, aren’t we? I can only assume you’re against any adaptations for disabled people as well? (Why force business owners and other private properties to build ramps, widen doorways and install special facilities for those in a wheelchair? They could just stay home.) I don’t have a moral right to breathe? Huh. Well, you keep on proudly huffing and puffing and I’ll keep rushing by you, inhaler in hand, hoping I can don’t start wheezing. Damn asthmatics, trying to breathe! ---
**Author:** ![Thirty-Nine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f0a364/32.png) [@Thirty-Nine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thirty-Nine)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/62 "2006-03-31T22:28:02Z")
Include me in the ‘should be legal in bars because of the free market’ crowd. Especially since this happened in cafés with no government intervention (correct me if I’m wrong) – it shows it can happen. Another thought I’ve had: You used to have two choices when you wanted to avoid looking like an idiot and doing nothing in those awkward silences: get a drink or light up. Now people just keep going back to the bar. I don’t think this is wholly unconnected to the ‘binge drinking’ problem. I’m also highly sceptical that the government is actually concerned about its citizens health, for the reasons others have stated. Either they’re looking for votes, or there are other interests at play here – which industry is benefiting from anti-smoking? ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/63 "2006-03-31T22:30:55Z")
> [@](#): > > I can only assume you’re against any adaptations for disabled people as well? (Why force business owners and other private properties to build ramps, widen doorways and install special facilities for those in a wheelchair? They could just stay home.) I’m not against adaptations for disabled people – I have a brother who uses a wheelchair. I _am_ against forcing business owners to retrofit their facilities to meet minimum guidelines established by some group of bureaucratic weenies. > [@](#): > > I don’t have a moral right to breathe? Huh. Well, you keep on proudly huffing and puffing and I’ll keep rushing by you, inhaler in hand, hoping I can don’t start wheezing. Damn asthmatics, trying to breathe! Of course you have a moral right to breathe. You have several options to accomplish this, when around smokers on private property. You can wear a mask. You can ask the smokers to go somewhere else. You can stand upwind, or go somewhere else. You can ask the owner of the property to prohibit smoking on his premises. Heck, you can idiotically stand next to the smokers and suffer in silence. Or you can take the crappy way out, and have the government force the owner to disallow smoking on his property. If a smoker wants to smoke in a building, and the owner and operator of that building has no problem with it, and there’s nobody else who has a contractual right to have the building remain smoke-free, the number of other people who should have a say in whether the smoker smokes or not is exactly zero. ---
**Author:** ![barracuda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@barracuda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barracuda)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/64 "2006-03-31T22:45:37Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Your right to not smell clouds of smoke ends where your property line does. > > I know. I just don’t care anymore. > > 0 0 0 \<— smoke rings, blown just for you You. sir, are the reason the ante upped from courtesy to legislation - because you figure your rights trump all others. So, in your case, I gloat because of non-smoking laws (which I really don’t like) and hope you get nailed smoking that big whatever under a “NO SMOKING” sign. If you could manage to resist arrest, I’d be very happy. ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/65 "2006-03-31T22:53:35Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Of course you have a moral right to breathe. You have several options to accomplish this, when around smokers on private property. You can wear a mask. You can ask the smokers to go somewhere else. You can stand upwind, or go somewhere else. You can ask the owner of the property to prohibit smoking on his premises. Heck, you can idiotically stand next to the smokers and suffer in silence. Or you can take the crappy way out, and have the government force the owner to disallow smoking on his property. And if I should be unfortunately encounter you outside the state-owned building in which I work, proudly puffing away in front of the “No Smoking within 25’ of Entrance” sign, you’ll blow smoke in my face for daring to ask to you to move. It’s precisely the few (over-, imo) reactions like yours that makes me not want to avoid all such contact with smokers. And to clarify, you’d be just peachy with you not being able to take your brother to a concert because the owner didn’t want to fulfill the orders of some “bureaucratic weenie”? ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/66 "2006-03-31T23:40:54Z")
> [@](#): > > You. sir, are the reason the ante upped from courtesy to legislation - because you figure your rights trump all others. And those pushing these laws don’t think the same? They don’t believe their desire to not smell smoke overrules a bar owner’s right to run his business as he sees fit? I at least would not smoke on private property where the property owner doesn’t allow it; it’s only the state that I defy. > [@](#): > > If you could manage to resist arrest, I’d be very happy. Sorry; I have enough sense of self-preservation to always be 100% yes-sir-no-sir when I’m around the state’s hired goons. > [@](#): > > And if I should be unfortunately encounter you outside the state-owned building in which I work, proudly puffing away in front of the “No Smoking within 25’ of Entrance” sign, you’ll blow smoke in my face for daring to ask to you to move. Now where did I say I’d do that? My remark about “blowing smoke in [your] general direction” was not a literal statement of fact, but an expression of my contempt for those in favor of smoking bans. > [@](#): > > And to clarify, you’d be just peachy with you not being able to take your brother to a concert because the owner didn’t want to fulfill the orders of some “bureaucratic weenie”? I’d be fairly upset. I’d realize, though, that my desire to take my brother to a concert doesn’t trump the venue owner’s right to manage his building as he wishes. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/67 "2006-03-31T23:50:29Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Your right to not smell clouds of smoke ends where your property line does. Wrong. If one must phrase it in terms of “rights,” your “right” to create clouds of smoke ends at its outermost at your property line. You have no “right” to smoke, on your property or off it, and there is nothing that I’m aware of relieving the several states of the power to regulate smoking. States and municipalities are perfectly within the boundaries of the law in banning smoking in bars, restaurants, schools, libraries, public thoroughfares and anywhere else they so choose, including your own house if they want. As many others have said, a lot of the impetus behind anti-smoking ordinances is the sort of boorish behaviour you pride yourself on engaging in. If you find anti-smoking ordinances burdonsome, you have the same redress to the appropriate legislative bodies as the anti-smokers did in getting them passed. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/68 "2006-03-31T23:55:27Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > You have no “right” to smoke, \*\*on your property \*\* or off it… I’m mostly with you, but you really overstepped on this one (the bolded part). I believe that one has the right to do anything one wants on one’s own property, if it’s otherwise legal. Smoking is legal. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/69 "2006-04-01T00:06:02Z")
Leave the bars, and I don’t really care where else you don’t want me to do it. Just remember that eventually, when they’ve made cigarettes $350 a pack with taxes, and we all stop buying them, they’ll come for something you like next. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/70 "2006-04-01T00:08:50Z")
> [@](#): > > You have no “right” to smoke, on your property or off it, and there is nothing that I’m aware of relieving the several states of the power to regulate smoking. States and municipalities are perfectly within the boundaries of the law in banning smoking in bars, restaurants, schools, libraries, public thoroughfares and anywhere else they so choose, including your own house if they want. Yes, I do have a right to smoke, and any government that infringes on that right is oppressive and evil. The government certainly may ban smoking, and attempt to enforce that ban, but I feel obligated to heed it only inasmuch as I desire to avoid punishment; certainly, I feel no moral obligation to obey such an unjust law. What the government deems legal or illegal has no relation to what is right or wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/71 "2006-04-01T00:34:00Z")
I’ve personally trained three bengal tigers to maim passing smokers. I don’t hang out with smokers becuase I fear their nicotine virus will infect me, and I know they also want to rape and eat my children. I’ve been known to torture smokers in my basement. > [@DianaG](#): > > aurelian, if you’re near a group of smokers, and mention you have asthma, most of us are more than willing to put them out. We don’t smoke to piss other people off, or to make them sick. Having witnessed asthma attacks before, I presume **aurelian** is generally not in the proper physical state at the time to make such a request. > [@kanicbird](#): > > Now somewhere along the way smokers got it in their head that smoking was a right and would just lite up any-ol’ place they felt like it, which really p’d off many people who had to smell that stank. I think that happened around the same time they had to measure their three-by-four-foot designated smoking space with a ruler. Once they were finally somewhere they could smoke, they couldn’t ask if anyone objected because if they did they’d have to drive for miles to find another place. > [@barracuda](#): > > You. sir, are the reason the ante upped from courtesy to legislation - because you figure your rights trump all others. Maybe he’s frustrated because non-smokers’ rights have trumped all others’. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/72 "2006-04-01T00:51:45Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > I’m mostly with you, but you really overstepped on this one (the bolded part). I believe that one has the right to do anything one wants on one’s own property, if it’s otherwise legal. Smoking is legal. My point is that the State has the power to make it illegal if it so chooses. It’s illegal for minors to possess tobacco. It’s illegal for anyone under 21 to possess alcohol.\* It’s illegal for everyone in the country with the exception of like one guy from an old federal program to possess marijuana. And so on. It’s just as illegal for a 19 year old to possess alcohol in her home as out of it, so the property line makes no difference. > [@yBeayf](#): > > Yes, I do have a right to smoke, and any government that infringes on that right is oppressive and evil. Well, no you don’t have a right to smoke. Unless you know something I don’t, and can cite the Supreme Court case that recognized said right? Or are you perhaps suggesting you have a natural right to smoke? If that’s so, then your natural right to smoke is trumped by everyone else’s natural right to breathe. quote=yBeayf]The government certainly may ban smoking, and attempt to enforce that ban, [/quote] You’re contradicting yourself. > [@yBeayf](#): > > but I feel obligated to heed it only inasmuch as I desire to avoid punishment; certainly, I feel no moral obligation to obey such an unjust law. Nice to know all the drama queens aren’t on the anti-smoking side. Yeah, I know there’s little filips in various alcohol laws; I’m talking about in general. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/73 "2006-04-01T01:31:24Z")
> [@](#): > > Or are you perhaps suggesting you have a natural right to smoke? If that’s so, then your natural right to smoke is trumped by everyone else’s natural right to breathe. Yes, I am speaking of natural law. And your right to be free of smoke ends where your property line does; beyond that, you have the right to be free of cigarette smoke only as much as the owner of the property you’re on allows you to be. > [@](#): > > You’re contradicting yourself. The government has the ability to say “smoking is not allowed”, and attempt to physically stop people from smoking. It doesn’t have the right to do so, however. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/74 "2006-04-01T01:40:35Z")
Y’know, it would have been nice if we could have had a discussion about smoking without it turning into a war. Moved from IMHO to the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/75 "2006-04-01T01:46:45Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > And those pushing these laws don’t think the same? They don’t believe their desire to not smell smoke overrules a bar owner’s right to run his business as he sees fit? I at least would not smoke on private property where the property owner doesn’t allow it; it’s only the state that I defy. Please keep it up and blow some smoke rings in my direction from under that no smoking sign, you are hurting so called smokers rights much more then you are helping. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/76 "2006-04-01T01:49:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Please keep it up and blow some smoke rings in my direction from under that no smoking sign, you are hurting so called smokers rights much more then you are helping. If being meek and accomodating has led to our present state, we can scarcely do worse being assertive and angry. ---
**Author:** ![Updike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@Updike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Updike)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/77 "2006-04-01T03:32:13Z")
It’s obvious that what the anti-smoking crowd wants is no smoking at all. After all, they’ve banned it indoors, but then bitch about people smoking outdoors. WTF? In some situations, I think indoor smoking areas would actually be better for non-smokers than the current situation. (no groups of smokers near the entrances). Not that a building owner would have to offer a smoking area, but the should be able to. Make it enclosed, and out of the way. Think basement, parking garage, rooftop, whatever. The smokers would have a place to go, and the non-smokers wouldn’t even be affected. An example of reasonable accomodation is at Phoenix Sky Harbor International. In the terminal, past security, near the gates, is a smoking lounge. It’s completely enclosed. Just a door to enter, I don’t even think there’s a sign. Seriously, if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never notice it. And with the hundreds (thousands?) of airport employees, I’m sure they could find a few smokers to handle the janitorial duties. So the smokers can smoke, and the non-smokers are not affected in any way. What is wrong with such accomodation, if I might ask? ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/78 "2006-04-01T03:55:30Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Yes, I am speaking of natural law. And your right to be free of smoke ends where your property line does; beyond that, you have the right to be free of cigarette smoke only as much as the owner of the property you’re on allows you to be. That’s just fucked up. My body is my property, in a way that’s far more fundamental than how any physical property belongs to you, and you have no right to cross the property line of my body with your smoke without my consent, just because I happen to be standing on a piece of ground that you own. > [@yBeayf](#): > > The government has the ability to say “smoking is not allowed”, and attempt to physically stop people from smoking. It doesn’t have the right to do so, however. Can you point to, oh I don’t know, _anything_ that indicates that the State does not have the power to regulate smoking up to and including the point of banning it? Or are you only interested in repetitively repeating the same tired little libertarian rant over and over? ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/79 "2006-04-01T04:11:58Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > That’s just fucked up. My body is my property, in a way that’s far more fundamental than how any physical property belongs to you, and you have no right to cross the property line of my body with your smoke without my consent, just because I happen to be standing on a piece of ground that you own. I assume you want to lock up people who walk around breathing out air infested with the cold/flu/whatever virus they’ve caught, which is much more likely to affect your health than walking through a cloud of smoke on the street. **Otto** , you’re being inflammatory. At least, I hope you’re being inflammatory and you’re simply overstating yourself, not expressing how you really feel. It’s “just fucked up” to allow somebody to enjoy a legal product in the open air or in their own home? Nobody’s forcing you to go to any home where smoking is permitted. Are you aware that the smoke is actually not nerve gas? Most smokers have directly inhaled massive amounts of the stuff, and aren’t dead yet. The tiny bit of it that may pass through your nostrils every once in a while as you walk by a crowd of smokers who are, by the way, only lumped together outside because of anti-smoking laws, probably won’t kill you. Think it smells bad? I think lots of people and things smell bad (and I can tell, now that I don’t smoke anymore ;j ) but they have the right to their awful perfume/food/whatever. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656/80 "2006-04-01T04:39:25Z")
Too much to get this into one post. Accuse me of post-padding, but there is some ignorance as a tax-paying, child-educating (Head Start), that I must fight. Developing, as it were… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-your-humble-opinion/350656.md?page=5)