I guess you’re right. Nothing about drinking kills a second party - except when the drinker imbibes too much and drives and wipes out bystanders and people in cars or starts slinging lead around from a gun because he got pissed off about something or beats someone to death in a bar fight. Not to mention the drunk who goes home and stabs his significant other because she did or said something to piss him off.
Not a few people in medicine have screwed up and wiped someone out having staggered in after a bunch of drinks and made a mistake.
I, personally, have been involved in several confrontations by drunks I did not know and had nothing to do with who decided to start something with me because I happened to be near by. In one I had to move real fast because he pulled a knife on me as I tried to walk away, in another the son of a bitch rammed my car with his. (This in the days before I got a permit and started carrying a gun.)
Currently there is no concrete proof – only educated speculation that second hand smoke causes as much trouble as it does.
We are in the era of politically correct fanaticism, when the public is swept up in a holy war on almost anything, ignoring the absence of facts, logic or rationality. Example: Negros = African Americans, Kwanzaa: Childrens rights = parents unable to forcibly touch their own children: child molestation = anyone touching a kid is Chester the molester = a way to get a divorce is to accuse the husband of molesting the child = lawsuits and reputation ruining due to the so-called practice of discovering ‘repressed memories’ = everyone’s afraid to have anything to do with kids. Save the environment = some people can’t develope their own land because they might have a supposedly endangered species on it = the great mink debacle in England where animal rights activists released a couple of hundred minks from a mink farm which now are devastating the local wild life and pets because minks are predators = the diminishing prairie dog colonies verses the raising and releasing of endangered ferrets which feed on Prairie Dogs.
Smoking has fallen into that fanaticism. You mouthy nonsmokers are like sheep, just following the party line.
No one has observed that for centuries, smokers had only a little higher than normal health risks until 2 things happened. The first was changing the paper from rice paper bought from Japan pre-WW2 to acid cured, pulp paper made in the States. Quite a few cigarette smokers quit then because the complained that the paper made the smokes too harsh. After WW2, the tobacco industry kept on using the cheaper paper. The second was the introduction of various chemicals to enable the cigarette to burn better – they used to go out if unattended – and to increase the flavor.
Shortly after this, the disease potential increased, but, in correspondence, so did the general atmospheric pollution. No one has done a study to determine if the disease rate among smokers is affected by the local pollution rates. I would think a smoker in a crowded, industrial cluttered, automobile packed city would face up to 100 times the risk of disease than one in a small town.
Even though there is much money in smoking and people want to smoke – no one has addressed the issues of going back to rice paper, removing some of the chemicals or even creating better filters. All they focus on is eliminating the product. It did not work with prohibition and it will not work with smoking. People like to be addicted to things which make them feel good.
Hell, they’ve been trying to stomp out pot for decades without much success. There was even some research done on pot to discover and promote the harmful effects of it, but the results have mainly been down played and ignored. AND pot is supposedly not addicting.
When it all settles down, all that’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a lot of pissed off smokers who will be paying higher prices for safer smokes as the tobacco companies recoup their losses from questionable lawsuits, farmers will still be growing the cash crop of tobacco, and there will be civil rights motions to remove all no smoking restrictions.
If the government manages to ban tobacco, then organized crime and every crooked scammer will be out there importing smokes from over seas, Cuba and any place else and the industry will still thrive.
Everyone jumped on the salt wagon for a few years, yelling about how harmful salt is – and now it’s not all that bad. Then they jumped on the preservative wagon and screamed about how our foods were rotting us from the inside out – and now that’s not so bad. People jumped on the no red meat wagon and all they got was an increase in beef prices and now red meat aint so bad (cause humans are OMNIVORES - designed to eat anything that doesn’t eat them first). They jumped on the natural and organic foods wagon - and discovered that crops got eaten up by bugs and the foods are now almost too expensive for anyone but the well off to buy.
Americans are suckers for a group with a series of big mouths and a good line. Politicians follow the group for votes. Besides, if they make laws over smoking, then that keeps the public from paying attention to the special interest groups who are busily bribing our leaders for legal ways to screw us.
It is just PC to bitch at smokers, but this smoker is bitching back. My brother is a mechanic and works on cars and trucks, the same things you all drive. There are thousands of people like him who keep your cars in good shape – at the risk of their health. It seems that brake fluid, some transmission fluids and several types of cleaning solutions needed to clean your grimy parts cause cancer.
I once knew a gas station attendant who pumped so much gas that the occassional spills and fumes eat up the skin on one hand and he needed medical treatment.
Funny. None of you are bitching about those things.
Don’t like my second hand smoke - well I don’t like your sulfur dioxide spewing car fogging up my city.
If you see me smoking and minding my own business and my second hand smoke drifts your way – step out of the way, shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
Next time, I might have a beer or 4 in me and NOT walk away from the loudly directed insults. (I know, I’ll be committing 2 sins - smoking AND drinking. At least I won’t be driving if drinking.)
At least when I worked in the medical field, I wore a surgical mask when sick to prevent those already ill from catching my cold. I even drew flack from that, as medical staff walked hacking and coughing into rooms with people recovering from surgery which stresses and lowers their immune system — and later the administrative staff wondered why so many patients were getting pneumonia or chest colds which delayed their recovery.
As my niece would say – DUH!