speaking of smoking: smokers vs non-smokers

In My Humble Opinion
1

As a former non-smoker, I am pretty sensitive to when and where I smoke. If I have a non-smoker in my car, I’ll hold off, etc. But what is UP with non-smokers being so in your face about it?

There’s this chick in my Antro class. On the first day of class, she was babbling on her cell phone about how a smoker had the nerve to pick up on her! She went on and on about how she’d have to *disinfect * her house if he came over and how she doesn’t want to kiss an ashtray. I just shrugged it off and made a snarky comment to myself about how she should shut up and take what she can get (she’s not particularly attractrive, is all I’m sayin’).

Then at break, she made a big show of coughing and covering her face with her sleeve and commenting how littering is a $250 fine and what gives smokers the right to throw their stanky buts on the ground?

Every week it’s the same spectacle and I just try to avoid her because I don’t want to hear her squaking. But the other night I was on my way back from getting my textbook out of my car during break and I was coming up behind her as she talked on the phone. My class is in the Allied Health building and she was on her phone going on and on: Allied Health. HEALTH! This place should be called Allied CANCER! She was standing in the most direct route to class, so instead of going around the building, I started to cut across the lawn to avoid her (in spite of the fact that I had on strappy sandals and the grass was soaking wet). Then she looks at me and says to her friend, Oh, speaking of CANCER, her comes another one!

So I’m a bit peeved, but I try to ignore it and take my seat (I was sitting two seats behind her that nite). The professor asks everyone to come inside and when she comes in she announces to no one in particular that she was waiting for all the smokers to come inside first because she didn’t want to walk through a cloud of smoke and it’s not fair because it’s so cold outside. Then she spent the rest of the night rubbing her hands together and trying to “warm up”.

(Seriously. What a bitch. From now on I should chain smoke upwind from her.)

I’ve been told that I should confront her about it. As a fairly reasonable person, I cannot fathom this. But I don’t think that I deserved to be treated this way either.

Thoughts?

2

Ehh…while I agree with her opinions…I think she’s got a serious blab problem. Perhaps she watched someone slowly die from smoking and feels the need to prosletyze non-stop. Perhaps she should have her cell-phone surgically removed.

Oh and stop smoking, cancer isn’t the worst way it can kill you. I’m sure you wanted to hear that from me. :stuck_out_tongue:

3

Read Connie Willis’ Bellwether. It will at least help you feel better. :slight_smile:

4

While this person seems like a huge pain in the ass, I doubt confronting her would change her behavior at all. If anything, it would just give her something else to blab on the phone about. “Oh, and here comes the smoker who doesn’t want me trying to save everyone’s lives.”

5

This kind of reminds me of the religious people who are complete assholes and totally sanctimonius. Come to Europe! You can smoke anywhere here!!!

Lol. Just tell her that she is ugly and fat next time, if it is true then it should shut her up. One typical type of American that I hate is the rabidly anti-smoking American. How we got from a society that treaty smokers equally in the 70’s to one where they are treated like serial rapists is beyond me. There’s a joke about that in a South Park. I can’t remember how it went, but one of the kids said something about some race, or religion and they all had to go to “tolerance camp.” At the end when they had the tender moment and everyone learned their lesson someone completely berated a smoker in front of them.

Maybe she’ll get a brain tumor from cell-phone usage! That would be the end of irony, wouldn’t it?

IMO if its outside, then she has no right to complain. Where do people get off acting in such an awful manner? I hear that California is full of a lot of shallow people. Are such people like that common? I am not trying to dis CA, its just I want to know in case I ever get a chance to live there or something :slight_smile:

6

First off, yes, the woman in question is being pretty bizarre and overly dramatic for the most part. She is not the boss of you. But I’d say she is within reason to bitch when smokers throw their butts on the ground. Someone’s gotta pick those up later, do they think their mom follows them around campus?

But you say you were a non-smoker and are now a smoker. By that phrase can I assume that you were a non-smoker in the early part of your grownup life? What in the world caused you to take up smoking at an advanced age? Most smokers I know got hooked young.

7

I’m a former smoker. A month ago I found an excuse to quit smoking. I’m in good health, but I was finally able to walk away from cigarettes. I’ve resisted the urges so far and I hope I can stay away from them.

That said, I would have loved to have been in your shoes so that I could have pulled out a smoke, lit it up and puffed in her face. All the nic fits in the world would have been worth it.

8

your classmate sounds too bizarre for words. maybe she is a former smoker who feels like non-smoking is her new religion. as long as you’re not bothering her she should leave you alone.

but as a non-smoker, i have to say that smokers don’t fully realize how offensive the habit is, partly because smokers lose their sense of smell. for a non-smoker, cigarette smoke is a sharp, acrid and extremely unpleasant sensation. imagine somebody opening a bottle of ammonia cleaner and spilling it all around you. moreover, being in a smoky environment (a bar, a club) means that your hair, your clothes and you will smell like smoke until all are throughly scrubbed. i know people who set aside clothes that they only wear to clubs because the smoke smell is so difficult to remove, and they don’t want to ruin their good stuff.

it also doesn’t take much smoke to have an impact. i have been in 500-seat theaters (modern, well-ventilated) where an actor on stage lights a cigarette, and the smell hits everybody in the house in seconds. multiple farts would be less intense.

but as someone else asked, the real question is, if you got through your idiot teen years without smoking, why start now?

9

I doubt the OP wanted questions about why she started smoking, since this thread is about super-anti-smokers.

I would also like to add that not all smokers completely lose their sense of smell. Mine might not be as great as it was in the past (which doesn’t mean much, as I could smell my mom cutting watermelon from across the house with my door closed- I have quite a sense of smell) it is still better than most people I know.

And I’d also like to complain about non-smokers who bitch when people are smoking outside. On my campus they’ve recently painted blue lines about 10 feet from all the buildings’ entrances and you’re not supposed to smoke past these lines. They’ve also put out ashtrays at these lines. So all the smokers stand on the edge of these lines, finishing their cigarettes before they go to class. I was sitting on a bench near one of these lines one night, when a woman who arrived after I did had the audacity to ask me to move because she was an asthmatic and that cigarette was killing her. Excuse me? I was sitting here first, no one made you walk over here. I moved, because I didn’t want to be a bitch, but honestly, she can walk away.

I understand the smoking ban in restaurants (I don’t like it, and I think that the restaurants should have the option of having a smoking section and the non-smokers can choose to dine elsewhere, but that’s a different story) because it’s an enclosed space. But outdoors, the smoke’s not exactly overpowering unless you’re 2 feet downwind of a smoker.

And I never understand the former smokers that become so vehemently anti-smoking. Of all people, you’d expect them to understand how it sucks to be a smoker, how we’re treated like vermin, and how hard it is to quit.

10

I’m not a smoker, but I don’t have a problem with others smoking. I think there are some common-sense places we can agree on being non-smoking, such as small enclosed spaces (sometimes with recirculated air) such as airplanes, trains, buses, subways, etc. But not being able to smoke at a restaurant? A bar? A casino? Okay, so a lot of casinos are built on sovereign land like reservations, so the last one isn’t that good of an example, but still. All I ask is that smokers are considerate of where they are and not litter, and I’ll do the same.

11

I acknowledge that the OP didn’t ask to be questioned about why she started smoking, and she is free to tell me to kiss off. I was just curious.

But you seemingly defending her starting smoking juxtaposed with your closing paragraph… it my made head spin.

12

Ask any smoker if it is truly worth it, and you’ll probably get the same answer (excluding teenagers, as they think they’re invincible). You waste hundreds, if not thousands of dollars each year on something which does not benefit you, which will probably harm you in the long run, and then you get berated by people for doing it. And then, if and when you decide you don’t want to do it anymore, it’s a bitch to quit.

Smokers know it is bad for them, they know they should quit, but they don’t. Either they don’t have the willpower or the motivation to do it. I have friends who are always trying to quit, with no success. I’m not kidding myself. Right now, I enjoy smoking. I like having a cigarette after a meal, after sex, first thing in the morning. It hasn’t gotten to the point where I only do it out of habit. And I seem to be less addicted to the nicotine than just wanting to have something to do with my fingers. When I got bronchitis this winter, I quit cold turkey for a week and found that as long as I held an unlit cigarette, I was fine. Yesterday I ran out of smokes and didn’t feel like driving to the store, so I only smoked like 3 cigarettes (I usually smoke a pack). I know that I enjoy it too much right now to stop, so I’m waiting for a good reason (like when I decide to have kids).

I’m just saying that most smokers have a love/hate relationship with cigarettes, and I personally don’t appreciate other people’s comments. I just thought that since she started this thread because she was irked about a crazy non-smoker, questions about her reasons for smoking were probably not appreciated. But that’s my opinion, not hers.

13

  1. Kissing a smoker IS like kissing an ashtray. I dated one. When she quit, it was magnificent.

  2. I don’t know about disinfecting the house, but my clothes and my hair smelled like it until I bathed and changed clothes after time spent around her.

  3. What does give smokers the right to throw their nasty butts on the ground?

  4. Yea, people who don’t want to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke are such bitches!

That said, she is a bitch.

14

“She” being the person the OP is griping about, not the OP.

15

Yes, we are all as shallow as shallow can be. All of us, all incredibly shallow in our infinitely various ways. Don’t move here. You’ll hate it. Really, I promise. (It’s crowded enough already.)

16

I smoked for 15 years and when I quit I was amazed at how strong the smell of smoke was, even from the next room or outdoors. I couldn’t smell it when I was smoking and thought people were exaggerating about the smell.

Breathing smoke can cause cancer throughout your body systems and I can see that someone wouldn’t want to breathe it, regardless of the smell. It’s just very bad for a human being to inhale smoke filled with carcinogens.

The smoke is apparently really offensive to her so as hard as it is, try to respect that and forgive her for being a complete bitch. that way you get to be the more mature person.

17

Smokers didn’t have equal treatment in the 70s, they had preferential treatment. They pretty much smoked anywhere they pleased, in stores, at any table in a restaurant, etc. Some were considerate, and would put out their cigarette or move if asked (remember, there were almost NO nonsmoking sections then, so a nonsmoker who objected to smoke had to ask every smoker in that vicinity to refrain). Most would not. Most would insist on continuing to smoke in elevators and in crowded rooms, despite the fact that these places had signs up saying that they were nonsmoking areas. So not only did smokers violate common courtesy, they also were a major safety hazard in some of these places. I think that the current antismoking atmosphere is partly a backlash against those times.

I know that my own antismoking agenda stems from the fact that if I get a lungful of smoke, it will make me cough and wheeze for 20 minutes. I have congestive heart failure, and I really don’t need to be doing such things. So when I have to go through an entrance with a clump of smokers around it, I can count on losing half an hour of my day, simply to start breathing again, and I’ll also get to walk around with blurry vision, because my eyes will secrete a nasty thick mucus in reaction to the smoke. This will happen no matter where I encounter the smoke, it doesn’t matter if it’s inside or outside.

I think the reason that so many cities pass laws to make restaurants completely nonsmoking is because so many people have had experiences like mine…I’ll be sitting in a non-smoking area, and someone will walk through the place with a cigarette. Sometimes the smoker stops to chat with someone, effectively making the area a smoking area again, and spoiling all the nonsmokers’ meals. Or people light up at the end of the meal, forgetting (or choosing not to remember) that they took a nonsmoking table. In the case of fast food restaurants, nonsmoking areas were a joke, smokers would simply sit and smoke anywhere, no matter what the signs said. And, of course, very few restaurants had any sort of physical barrier between smoking and nonsmoking, so it was entirely possible to be seated at a nonsmoking table, but have a group of smokers seated at the next table.

I can muster very little sympathy for smokers who feel put upon. If they’re my age or older, likely they indulged in the behaviors which led to this swing in public opinion. If they’re younger than I am, then they certainly knew the risks involved when they started, and probably they knew that many people don’t like being around smokers.

18

As a non-smoker with cancer, I would have gotten in her face over this just for the fun of making her squirm.

19

Your classmate is being an ass. She seems consumed by other peoples habits and being vocal about it without actually speaking the smokers directly. Are you sure there is someone on the phone when she is speaking loudly enough for you to hear, or is it strictly for your benefit? If she has a problem with your smoking, then she should tell you once and let that be the end of it. Once she makes her position known, she really doesn’t have to keep harping on it. So, yes, confront her and let her get it off her chest, acknowledge her position and let her know that you understand her reasoning but that you will continue to make your own decisions and that nagging from an acquaintance has very little influence on your lifestyle.

[mild rant, merely an explanation of position rather than an attempt to persuade]

That said, I don’t like the effects of smoking.

I don’t have any problem with the smokers themselves, but the smell is really annoying. During the winter months the smokers at work congregate in the underground garage to smoke out of the elements. When we have to walk through the area, our clothes pick up the smell of stale smoke even if there isn’t a smoker there at the time.

The health risks for the smoker is their problem and while I may be concerned for their well-being, it is their choice. I sometimes feel that they are not giving me a choice for a health risk by smoking near me or around building entrances so that I have no choice but to breathe the smoke as I enter a building. I will sometimes hold my breath while I ‘run the gauntlet’.

I also notice that some smokers also don’t care too much about littering, as they simply throw the butt underfoot or ‘away’ without making an effort to find an appropriate receptacle.

Kissing a smoker may be like kissing an ashtray (I don’t know), but kissing a coffee drinker when you haven’t had any is not particularly appealing either. And the health effects of the caffeine addiction…and I keep seeing empty coffee cups blowing around the streets and in the bushes…

damn coffee drinkers…

[/mild rant]

20

I think it’s really arrogant for her to comment on smokers who are smoking in smoking section. It would be different if you were smoking in the building, or somewhere that she’s forced to inhale it. For God’s sake, you’re outside, if I heard her making little passive-aggressive comments I’d tell her where to stick it.