It’s not magic. He was addicted to caffeine and you’re addicted to nicotine. No difference. Still, there are ways of getting that nicotine without smoking, and I don’t see why you’d willy want to be addicted to a substance that is quite costly and is coupled with a lot of other unhealthy side effects.
Maybe you should just let it go. You were looking for civil rights in the Constitution, so let’s just assume I have a better understanding of it than you do, so don’t try to question it.
ps. Religion is also voluntary, unhealthy (Ramadan fasting) and protected.
Maybe I should just let it go? The fact that you’re claiming it’s a civil right to smoke? No, sorry, I can’t let that go. You do realize the purpose of this message board is to fight ignorance, right?
Add to the benefits of smoking:
- It boosts Jackmannii’s retirement funds.
Quite a bit of my income as a pathologist derives from diagnosing diseases caused by smoking - not just the cancers (there are now 15 types of cancer that have been linked to smoking, including malignancies of the mouth, throat, pancreas, bladder, kidney and leukemia) but also the assorted chronic ailments caused or made worse by smoking, such as gastroesophageal reflux. On the one hand it’s depressing to diagnose a new small cell lung cancer in a 48-year-old man who will likely be dead within a couple of years; on the other, the biopsies, brushings and needle aspirates add cash to the till. And while autopsies are a very small part of my overall practice, occasionally I get to collect at the very end for one of those too.
So don’t listen to the naysayers, Superhal! You’re money in the bank, and i appreciate you and the other dogged smokers.
Smoking makes you stink and accidentally light assorted items on fire.
It litters.
It drops the value of your car and your home.
It costs money.
It crinkles your skin and stains your teeth, hands and mustache.
It makes you look like a dope standing outside in the cold.
Some of the secondary health consequences, such as a prematurely soft weenie, are underappreciated, in my experience, but I realize you want to leave those out.
Most of all, it limits your acquaintances to those willing to hang around smokers. In the business world and in life in general, this can have substantial consequences.
From a social perspective, it’s actually a terrific idea. Smokers are very productive and tend to croak before sucking their retirement benefits (your relatives excepted). This is a net cost savings to society. So by all means, have at it.
We hate it when you bring back your library books and they reek. (For some reason, Chilton manuals are the worst - do people who repair their own cars just always happen to be chain smokers?)
And you do smell. You don’t realize it because you can’t smell anything. You reek and if I stand next to you when you’re smoking I reek too. I hated it like hell when they put in a local smoking ban in bars, because I don’t think it’s the city’s right to tell a business owner what to do like that, but I do like going out for a drink and not reeking like an ashtray afterwards.
Similarly, I’ve gotten so used to not contending with cig stench that when someone blithely comes in from his smoke break, his or her reek repels me, and I’ll bet ten years ago that same level woudn’t even have made me blink.
I’m a smoker. It’s pretty hard for me to quit - I did manage it once, for about half a year. I think the evidence that smoking is quite hazardous is pretty clear and for me was the main reason to try to quit. Economic considerations are not interesting to me since I make enough money to smoke (and I probably spend more on alcohol anyway).
If you want a few another reasons: it stinks up everything - really - and it’s bad for your sense of smell and taste. I love good food, and I’m actually bothered that I can’t taste it as well as I could if I quit smoking.
It reduces your fitness and stamina, e.g., your ability to walk up a couple flights of steps/play softball/tennis/golf/skiing
It makes your teeth yellow
It reduces your sense of taste
Depending on how much you smoke, you may have to plan parts of your life around your habit - finding a place to smoke after a long plane flight or while you are watching a baseball game or concert
Life insurance is more expensive
It takes up more time during your day than you think
http://healthliteracy.worlded.org/docs/tobacco/Unit3/1why_people_smoke.html
Smoking is good for stress reduction and weight loss. I think those are 2 of the big reasons people take up smoking and do not quit.
It’ll take me a while to dig up the polls I’ve seen showing these 2 factors are big reasons people take it up and refuse to quit, but I’ll do it if need be because dammit I love you guys.
As far as weight loss drugs like Wellbutrin can help with smoking addiction and weight loss. And a variety of medications, lifestyle interventions and alternative therapies can help with stress. So a person can achieve the goals of weight loss and stress reduction w/o the cost and health risks of smoking.
Also young people take up smoking due to peer influences and to look/feel mature as big reasons. I have no idea what other activities they could do to fulfill those urges. Maybe having sex and drinking or something. Damn kids.
Plus there is the pleasure some people get from smoking.
Kids only think they look mature when they smoke, when in reality, everyone knows they’re dweebs. If they want to look/feel mature, maybe they could ditch the bullshit homeboy anti-culture and opt for a flannel suit, a job, and proper English.
If the good Lord wanted me to get pleasure from smoking, He would never have invented illegal drugs or sex! ;)
Is it really a pleasure in the true sense, or is it just the temporary alleviation of addiction? I’ve tried smoking a couple of times, and I found nothing pleasurable in it at all.
I know a guy who can’t sit through a meeting calmly without rushing out to smoke every 40 minutes–especially if it involves any uncomfortable thoughts at all. If he can’t smoke, his rational thought shuts down and he says whatever he thinks will make the meeting finish as soon as possible. I don’t know why anyone would want to be free of this kind of distraction only while in school.
On the other hand, smoking a cigarette is a socially acceptable way (amongst smokers, at least) to interrupt whatever business people are doing and mingle. So if that’s what you need, then perhaps that’s enough of a rationale to continue doing it.
I once thought about calculating how much the time that people devote SOLELY to smoking itself reduces the GNP. Maybe someone who smokes could do that instead of their next few cigarettes.
Really? I’ve never smelled anything worse from someone than smoke. Nor have I run across non smokers who leave a stench behind that lasts for such a long time, or attaches itself to everything. When you smoke you are putting out enough that it’s visible to the naked eye, after all.
Has it occurred to you that your nose may be rather inured to the stench of it by now?
Well, except that coffee is a whole lot less damaging to the body, and drinking coffee doesn’t affect anyone but you. Someone drinking coffee can be right next to me and he won’t affect my health in the slightest. Consideration for others is a good reason to stop smoking.
I suppose a good reason to quit is to avoid being discriminated against then.
No, it’s pleasure. At least biologically. Nicotone results in an acute rise of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine The problem with cigarettes is that its combustion aberrantly modifies host DNA molecules. This can be reversed by cellular repair mechanisms (I think they’re called Base Excision Repair and Nucleotide Excision Repair) but as we age, those systems can’t keep up and cancer inevitably results.
I’ve always wondered whether if you could protect people from cigarette-induced DNA damage by injecting them with IL-12 which increases cellular output of repair proteins. Grr, too bad I don’t have a lab (yet) and government funding to figure that out. Damn, I want to be a researcher. 
- Honesty
I don’t smoke but I don’t think smokers should be discriminated against. We should stop treating them like slow-moving suicide victims. I do agree that that they should not be able to smoke in the public. Second-hand smoke is a carcinogen and should be regulated by the government. <shrug> But I hate to see smokers from having employment or housing. That’s absurd to me.
Well, cigarettes have really bad health effects other than cancer. Smoking causes COPD and emphysema, and increases your risk of heart attack and stroke.
Using your question in the strictest sense I’d say almost none.
Perhaps the only reason I could think of is the smell of smoke offends some people around you.
I think smokers go on the defensive a bit, because the social norm is becoming smoking is socially unacceptable. Many things in the past that were the norm, we simply don’t do now