Smoking

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Doing something about smoking wont only fail to 'totally' eliminate the problem. I fail to see how it makes a difference at all.

I dont take serious a society which, day in, day out, willingly exposes itself to all sorts of unhealthy substances and effects, in so many ways - but grows concerned that passing by a pair of smokers for two seconds has an adverse impact on their life-expectancy, imagined or otherwise.

 

I didn't read the rest of the post, I stopped there... destroy your lungs? The effects of passive smoking (especially so in outside or well ventilated areas) are so minute to be laughable, and completely blown out of proportion by the anti-smoking crew.

Even so, I'm the kind of person to respect non-smokers wishes. I'm not a big smoker, but I never smoke in anyone elses house. I dispose of butts properly, and if I'm smoking in a pub with a few mates who are non smokers, I make an effort to make sure I blow the smoke away from them. Passive smoking doesn't have that big an effect, it's just annoying to non-smokers. To say your lungs are 'destroyed' by walking past a few guys smoking is sensationalism at it's best.

 

BZ Taluntain. Very well said.

 

Tal, it is my turn to wonder where you live that people have to stagger through vast expanses of thick, billowing smoke.

'What's left of my brain' tells me it is exaggeration, and I will shrug it off as such. (what has been lost of my mental faculties would surely have exposed this as the addict in me speaking out, dont you agree with me?)

But I hope you enjoy 'raping' those around you via the radiation your cellphone is responsible for. Unlike smoke those are inescapable and not dispersed by wind currents to negligible quantities.

 

Well...I said it, already - stridency and militancy tend to alienate those people you try to persuade.

Since it's coming out on both sides of this debate, I'm writing the whole thing off and going elsewhere.

Have fun without me; I got a few Beta cloth suits from my USENET days that y'all can wear.

 

And here I thought I was sitting in front of a computer, suffering from whatever nasty things my screen throws out at me.

Call me stupid, but when has someone ever felt at least discomfort from someone else using a cellphone (radiation wise)?

I strongly dislike people smoking near me when there isn't somewhere alternative for me to go to do what I'm doing there. If you can't smoke alone (or at least with other smokers) then don't smoke at all, thank you. Or would you rather I stand in front of you and belch after a rather large garlic smothered meal? I assure you it's just as enjoyable.

 

Abomination, cellphone radiation - even more so that of cellphone stations - isnt about immediate discomfort but about physical harm, which can result in discomfort (to put it mildly) all right.

Now, I am not saying anyone, not even smokers, should have to put up with smoking in closed spaces. I certainly dont want someone stinking up a restaurant I am in. It is a matter of decency, if nothing else. Same with not getting into anyone's face with ones smoking.

But finding myself accosted of harming... of raping a passersby outdoors with a single cigarette? After that virtual person had a meal rich in pestizides and acrylamide, hormones, antibiotics and other medical substances in his food and water each and every day? That person can walk up to me on a plaza, having made a way through streets breathing air full of dusts, radiations and emissions, to speak to me of how my cigarette is causing him discomfort, harming his well-being? Of how I'm killing myself?

That person obviously is ignorant of his own circumstance and better does not attempt to lecture me.

 

Prohibition never works...the people who want to do it will still do it. Instead, I say tax it. A lot. 500% or maybe even 1000%. If a pack of smokes costs $ 20, make it $ 200 or even $ 500...people will stop automatically. Oh yeah, and make cultivation of tobacoo illegal.

 

In my view people like yourself are *far* to acceptant of every-day perils to their health to raise such a stink about a room wherein someone smoked tobacco.

To me your consideration of health is nothing but a question of convenience and a highly selective matter, enough so to come off as tyrannical. "We have no choice - no say - in what we breath and eat, yet that is still our choice." "...somehow."

Being so pliant in regard to the overwhelming presence of toxins and chemicals on the one hand, yet so determined to protect yourself from the occasional smoker incursion... wont win you anything with me, suggestive questions asked notwithstanding. "I guess your solution to this problem would be to pollute the regular air so much that my throat would hurt from breathing that as well."

So, yes, it is a waste of time. You put up with far too many things. The odd smoker doesnt have to suffer being your redeeming act.

P.S.: No, I do not use marihuana anymore.

 

Taxing cigarettes too heavily just results in people buying smuggled cigarettes. Back in the 90s it got so bad around Toronto that I would estimate that at least 80% of the cigarettes people smoked were smuggled. The government cut the tax down to a more reasonable level and a lot of the smuggling went away.

Banning cultivation of tobacco or banning the sale of tobacco would just result in more smuggling too.

Pretty much the only method of trying to get people to stop smoking that seems to work is educating people about the health risks.

 

In bars here it is not uncommon for smoke to sting my eyes so much I have to leave.

 

Tal, I do see your point. In a way I agree with you. But I cannot help noting the hypocrisy of this affair. It isnt your fault, or mine, that general circumstance totally undermines an otherwise legitimate effort. However, that doesnt change my feeling of being singled out and persecuted by standards that are not at all applied in many other instances... do not seem to go, in truth, against sensitivites that much after all. I react accordingly.

Which does, of course, not mean I may freely impact the lifes of others with my decision. Thusly, I try not to... not to rape, yes?

That's all I can say for this smoker.

 

same here, eyes start to water and my nose closes down in some bars do to smoke, back when it was legal to smoke in my towns mall, i had a hard time going there in the afternoons do to the amount of smoke packed in there.

 

But there isn't any hypocrisy. Most non-smokers who don't want to be around second hand smoke also don't want industrial runoff in their water and pesticide in their foods...and would support legislation which limits those levels. In other words, they don't want to breath second hand smoke and they don't want arsenic in their drinking water. Smokers aren't being singled out. Polluters of all kinds are being singled out.

 

Smoking is anti-social and an enjoyment for the underclasses.

Labelling him who tries to improve a detail of his environment without tackling all environmental issues at once "hypocrite" is pathetic.

 

haha the queen of Denmark who smokes around 60 cigarettes a day, belonges to the underclasses