I have very little doubt that my views on the subject are much more carefully thought out than yours. You need to work on your manners.
O.K. I’ll put on my best manners and all. Sorry if I was too BBQ Pit for y’all.
But, I still disagree with you, LonesomePolecat, and will state again that allowing old people who are living in a high-rise building to smoke is a fire disaster waiting to happen … and to be captured for the 6:00 news.
I say that the authorities are very wise to prohibit smoking in such a dwelling. I would hope that those who don’t like those rules would be able to make other living choices that can accommodate their smoking habits, although in reality that may not be the case. Not all retirees have the financial resources to allow them a lot of flexibility in this regard.
But obviously, you and I draw the line differently regarding the individual rights of people in this situation to smoke in the privacy of their apartments versus the collective rights of all residents to have their personal safety maximized.
But because I draw that line in a different place than you do does not automatically mean – as you have stated – that I have not thought out my position as thoroughly as you have. That’s very impolite … which is the very crime you accuse me of committing.
But I’ll certainly admit that my confrontational tone may have set you off down that road. If so, I apologize for that and will make any future posts in this thread more GD than BBQ Pit. (But to cut myself some slack, don’t you think the subject of this thread makes it better suited to the BBQ Pit anyway?)
But we will just have to disagree on the proper balance of rights in the retirees in the high-rise dwelling scenario. No doubt we would also disagree on the rights of you, an apartment dweller, to smoke in your living room.
For the record, I don’t think you should be required to limit any of your activities beyond what is required in your lease. Smoke away to your heart’s content, unless you’ve signed a lease stating that you will refrain from doing so.
I think it’s great that some landlords are offering smoke-free buildings to tenants who want to live in such a place. These usually have slightly lower rents, due to the rate reductions these landlords get from their insurance carriers. I think the marketplace can accomodate all these choices.
Of course the government should intervene when a drug addiction, marketed at hooking chidren, kills 400,000 people each year; and we weep because a few thousand died on 9/11, yet we harbor and protect these domestic terrorists.
The delivery system is what seperates nicotine from most other drugs: smoking. This means that is effects everyone who inhales the smoke. It’s one thing to grant that people should be allowed to do what they want to in the privacy of their own homes, but what they subject their children to becomes the business of the government. Most smokers don’t care what they are doing to their own bodies, and by extension they don’t care what it does to the infants or children who beathe their second-hand smoke. Parents who smoke are much less likely to take their children to the doctor, because they don’t want to be confronted with the medical results of their abuse. The amount of nicotine present in an infants blood and urine is measurable as with any other drug. No child should be forced to breathe second-hand cigarette smoke; it’s Abuse.
And to echo others, nictoine in a tough addiction that only 1 in 10 people can break without medical intervention.
Personally, I think smokers are also more likely to be fat and to raise fat children, under their guiding philosophy that fitness is for losers.
Smokers reek, and 75% of the population don’t like to kiss someone who tastes like they lick ashtrays.
What about the millions of Americans who are asthmatic? I’m one of them, and cigarette smoke is by far the best and most reliable trigger for asthma attacks for me. I’ve never smoked anything in my life directly, and I’m certainly not alleging that cigarettes caused my asthma, but smoke sure as hell aggravates it and directly causes the vast majority of my attacks.
I’ve also had bronchitis several times in the past year, to which I am more susceptible than most other people because of my crummy lungs, and secondhand smoke aggravates that, too, sometimes causing flare-ups a week or two after I finished the latest course of medication and thought the symptoms were gone.
So even though I’m a non-smoker and always have been, smokers are directly causing me to need more medical care than I otherwise would. Secondhand smoke doesn’t cause me to “contract a smoking-related disease;” best medical evidence suggests that heredity did that. But let’s not kid ourselves about whether secondhand smoke impinges on the normal activities of non-smokers or creates increased usage of medical services. I’m damn lucky that so far I have yet to end up in the emergency room, or worse, from an asthma attack; plenty of others, including non-smokers, aren’t so lucky. I just thank my lucky stars that in this day and age, most workplaces are smoke-free, or I’d probably be screwed.
Link discussing the WHO study.
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/who.html
Ex-Smoker here. Personally, I don’t see why you can’t have smoking and non-smoking clubs. Happens all the time in the supposedly “free” market. Let the consumer make their own decisions.
When I did smoke, I never smoked indoors (except at the dive-y sort of bars that I frequented), and thought I was fairly curteous about my habit.
That being said… this thread seems to be full of ridiculous, off-the-cuff BS about “75% of the population doesn’t want to kiss a smoker” and “smokers are lazy”, which is just about as ignorant and unfounded as you can get on a board dedicated to “fighting ignorance”.
We’ve discussed this issue rather thoroughly in previous threads:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=192387&highlight=smoking+nightclubs
…or, in a slightly more civilized manner, here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=189164&highlight=smoking+bars
The problem, at least from the asthmatic, nonsmoking, social, music-lover point of view (and hey, I don’t even drink usually, which eliminates most of the reasons why people hang out in smoky public places), is that the market doesn’t solve all problems. Believe me, I wish my lungs would behave themselves around smoke, but they just don’t, no matter how many drugs I take. And where I live (a major city, mind you, not a small town with one corner pub), there are almost no public places dedicated to normal everyday adult pursuits, such as listening to music or having a beer, that are smoke-free. So should I be excluded from several major forms of normal adult human activity? Should the millions of other people who specifically need to avoid smoke for health reasons be excluded as well? Hell, if I had the capital, I’d open a place myself. If such a place could exist in Bloomington, IN, when I was in school there, it should be able to exist in Chicago, right?
((Poor OP; he specifically excluded the issue of public places, but I believe this thread has been hopelessly hijacked.)
I dunno, Dave. On the one hand, we’ve got the WHO claiming that the study shows a link, and on the other hand we’ve got an addict claiming that his habit really is harmless. Mr. Hitt’s professional training, keep in mind, seems to consist of “a couple of years working at one of the world’s largest research and development centers.”
Read what he says carefully, read the WHO’s press release carefully, and read the study’s abstract carefully, and you’ll come away with the impression that Dave Hitt is a big fat liar, or else just an ignorant, arrogant dummy.
Some quotes:
Dave Hitt says, "The study found no statistically significant risk existed for non-smokers who either lived or worked with smokers. "
The abstract says, “We did find weak evidence of a dose-response relationship between risk of lung cancer and exposure to spousal and workplace ETS.”
(Mr. Hitt backs up his claim with what looks to me like statistically spurious epidemiological obfuscation, but I’ll leave it to a certified epidemiologist to clarify why the abstract disagrees with the untrained addict).
Dave Hitt says, “The WHO quickly buried the report.”
The WHO press release says,
Note that Mr. Hitt links to this press release from the very page in which he says the WHO buried the report. Either he’s an idiot who doesn’t read his own source material, which I doubt; or else he’s outright lying about it in the hopes that his readers (primarily other addicts eager to defend their habit) won’t bother to look into the linked source material.
Totally unconvincing link. Sorry, Daves.
Daniel
One other thing, that may be peripheral, but cigarette butts should be considered.
I live in Manhattan. You can’t throw a cigarette butt on the ground without hitting three or four other cigarette butts. It isn’t a small population of smokers that just throw them on the ground. Y’all are pigs about the butts.
Looking around on Mr. Hitt’s site a little more, I’m even more inclined to consider him a feelthy lying peeg. I’ll give you one more example, and I’ll note that he makes this easy by providing links to the very websites he lies about.
On his links page, he links to the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, saying:
Hmm. Is this a Hitlerian propagandist organization?
Not quite. Follow his link, and you’ll find the sentence in context:
So what the Campaign is actually saying is that even a fake story is more compelling than a bunch of true but dry facts, and that their movement has got true stories to tell, which (they imply) are surely more convincing than fake stories.
Who’s the liar here?
What a repellent site you linked to, DaveX.
Daniel
PS I’m hoping that DaveX isn’t Dave Hitt, only because if he is, I’ve inadvertantly violated board rules. If they’re one and the same, I apologize for the accusations of idiocy, but I do not retract the accusations of lying. But I doubt they’re the same.
The one more example was not a lie. He quoted text that was actually there, which you graciously put in italics. I;m confused…how exactly is that a lie?
I’m not really looking to get to into this…the last “debate” I engaged in about smoking I completely lost it.
But the point that bugs me is that some people seem to feel it is fine to disallow the elderly the right to smoke in their own apartments because it is a fire hazard.
So, we should also be disallowing them candles, incense, fireplaces, matches, lighters, portable heaters, and gas stoves as well, right?
I believe the (curiously not mentioned) resale value argument may have some merit. But the danger to the public? Is that really a slope you want to start slipping down?
Here is the relevance:
1- I agree with the OP that smokers are continually harassed to stop smoking.
2- If I do not harm anyone by smoking outdoors, why am I being harassed to stop smoking when I still enjoy it at 61.
3- Considering that the US does not have a livable pension system, it makes sense to cut down the last few years of one’s life span. Smoking helps there.
4- Based on the above 3 arguments, the message to the harassers is: Why don’t you divert your efforts to creating a decent pension system in the US so that people have an incentive to want to live longer, rather than concentrating on harassment of the smokers who are willingly cutting down their own life span, thus not needing an unaffordable nursing home in the latter part of their lives.
5- And finally, my post was in response to hensel within his context of the US politicians and law makers’ role. Which one is easier for them? Harassing the smokers, or coming up with a decent pension system in this country.
So smoking is a positive factor because it kills you more quickly? And if the government gave you a pension to live for you’d stop?
Still seems a bit like you want to talk about pensions, not smoking…
Cheers.
It’s a lie because it’s a deliberate attempt to deceive: specifically, it’s a lie of omission. If you read the full quote, you see that they’re saying, “Even untrue stories are more convincing than dry facts, and our stories are true!” Mr. Hitt cuts the quote short so it sounds like they’re advocating telling untrue stories – a lie of omission.
But he also commits a lie of commission. His summary of the website is:
That is itself an absolute lie, unless he’s basing the statement on evidence other than what’s offered in the link.
So a lie of omission and a lie of commission. The fellow is thoroughly untrustworthy.
Daniel
Amazing. You still don’t get it, do you?
If you have a tunnel vision, like a bank teller, and compartmentalize issues, as if some aspects are not related to the other, that is your problem.
Look. Some smokers have a totally different philosophy of life than you do. To some of us, shortening our life under the circumstances is not such a bad idea. If smoking cigarettes, while I enjoy it, falls in line with my philosophy of life, that is my business.
Meanwhile, as the OP says, please quit hassling and harassing me because I smoke. If you think I have a problem, there are plenty other more important (and related) problems that you can spend your time addressing.
It is like the UN. They resolve the issue of 8 countries holding to their WMDs in 3 minutes, but spend 2 days discussing the quality of the coffee from the machine in the hallway.
Yeah, I’d say many smokers (at least the ones over 50) may stop smoking if the prospects of living longer into the retirement age were not so dire – which should bring your attention to the pension system in the US. Unless you could not care less, because you want to get rid of all smokers anyway. In that case, your best bet is to hassle and harass them, which is what the OP is all about.
Cheers.
You’re right, I don’t get the life-view that involves deliberately shortening your lifespan. Fair enough disregard the health risk if you want to smoke, but are you honestly suggesting that people smoke in a deliberate attempt to kill themsleves?
The anti-smoking thing isn’t a crusade against you, don’t take it personnally. Lots of people want smoking banned for purely selfish reasons. Other dismiss your opinion as the ravings of an addict. Still more seek to help you quit for your own good.
Do you have kids? Do you tell them you smoke to kill yourself? I’m actually quite concerned, all of a sudden. But, hey - If you want to hear that I don’t care if you live or die, if that will affirm you in your smoking, if it will help you feel victimised by anti-smoking fascists, fair enough. I don’t care. But it would be preferable if you lived as long as possible…
Cheers.
I have asthma. Smoking is a trigger. When I was pregnant the smell of smoke as well as the asthma attacks triggered by the smoke, made me vomit. Even smoke free restaurants were likely to cause problems because of the number of smokers that stopped right at the entrance or even inside the entranceway and had a last cigarette before going inside. Not only did they leave the exit polluted, they brought a cloud of smoke inside. Sometimes the smoking section is placed so you can’t go in or out without walking through it. Sometimes in a seemingly well set up restaurant where the owners do not allow smoking on the stoop, there are insane exhaust fans that carry the smoke filled air from the smoking section to the far end of the nonsmoking section. I lost a lot of lunches to smoking and have had to use inhalers to deal with the results of being near smoke. On numerous occasions, while I was wheezing and coughing as going through a smokefilled exit, a smoker saw fit to blow smoke in my face and make nasty comments. It doesn’t take much of that to make me want to ban smoking in restaurants and within 25 feet of an entrance.