Politics of Smoking - Page 2

Well that was certainly edifying, but it looks like this thread is going to end up simply being dull, uninformed nonsense as usual.

Well, here's my thing there. In Illinois, we get taxed on EVERYTHING we purchase. All food and clothing... everything. I think those taxes need to be removed, and I have no issue with taxes smokes, booze, strippers... whatever... fucking baseball tickets. Point is, those are non-essentials. Not necessarily "bad" things. Just non essential things. It bothers me that we get taxed on milk and underwear.

Also, I do have an issue with our statewide law about smoking in public places. I think people should have the right to have smoking establishments. If Bob wants to open up "Bob's Smoking House of Smoking Cigarettes" he should have that choice. People have the choice of not going to that place if they don't want to be exposed to smoke.

As far as courtesy? Yeah, when someone lights up next to my kid, it pisses me off. When I used to smoke I would NEVER do that type of thing.

I guess that you should also be making the argument about walking down a city street when a bus pulls up next to you and blows exhaust all around you causing much more damage to your body than ten people smoking around you.

Or those fuckers burning leaves or having bonfires.

Yeah, I understand what you are saying, but at the same time, you're gonna get exposed to a whole bunch of shit throughout your life, and I guarantee that you're not going to get sick from all the people you happened to walk behind having a cigarette throughout your life.

I think there's a level of reason that needs to be met here.

No doubt.

My point was more related to Anakin's Dad assertion that if smoking could be self contained, he would have no problem with people killing themselves with their habit. He further states that's not the case, and that's where it differs from alcohol. Alcohol isn't necessarily self-containted. Plenty of collateral deaths from alcohol.

Cigarettes being bad isn't a matter of the government happening to think it's true. Lung cancer isn't a matter of opinion.

No, I don't think there is. If someone blows their fucking cigarette smoke in my face, I'm not going to girlishly giggle and say, "Well, gee - I guess that's reasonable enough to expect." On the other hand, if a bus is as close to me as that other smoker is, if its close enough that I'm going to breathe in its exhaust, then it's probably close enough to run me over, in which case I'm going to have a far bigger problem on my hands than a lung full of smoke. I've gotten faces full of cigarette smoke full on from walking a reasonable distance behind another person. I've never gotten close enough to a bus to breathe in a good lungful of exhaust - and I do see the point you're making, just so you know. It's in the air. We breathe it even though it's invisible in some cases. But there's a huge difference, and I think everyone here knows it.

Wait, if you're talking about an asshole to make it a point to blow smoke in your face, then yeah... no shit. If we're talking about some guy standing outside a bar having a smoke as you walk by and you happen to breathe in the smoke... well... again, there's a certain amount of reason to be met.

Yeah, I'm sort of disappointed. With everyone, I mean.

I'm talking about the guy walking down the street, blowing his smoke out at face level - whether intentional or not - and having it hit my face. Whether or not you think that's reasonable, it isn't. One of us needs to leave the goddamn street, and it shouldn't have to be me.

Or, oh hey! How about this? Since I don't live in a non-smoking building, and my asshole neighbors are smokers, they sit out in the hallway and smoke - which drifts into mine and other people's apartments. Why? Because they don't want their apartments to smell like smoke, so please don't tell me that smokers don't know exactly how gross of a habit this is. And yes, the non-smokers have complained to the landlord, who does nothing about it. And no, in this current economy, I can't afford to move. And no, I shouldn't have to put a towel across the bottom of my door to block out the smoke. I do that, for the record, but it really doesn't help. And, I can't leave my apartment without the haze of smoke still hanging in the hallway. So really, I don't think I should expect to be "reasonable" that my apartment smells like smoke when I haven't put a cigarette in my mouth in nine years.

There's nothing reasonable about smoking. Nothing. Brad was right in his first post - there's absolutely no upside to smoking, so I don't think anybody needs to be "reasonable" about this.

Not when they crowd either side of the entrance and extend to the sidewalk, dousing you whether you're entering, exiting, or just walking past. I'd have to struggle to recall ever seeing ONE smoker outside a bar. They're out there five deep or more, being "social" and creating fun memories together.

Sounds like you've got a shitty landlord. Seriously.

I used to be in that group of five. We did it so we could give people cancer. It's true. Just don't tell them I told you this, they'll find me and blow smoke through the windows of my house.

I think you know my landlord's behavior is besides the point. Nice try at swaying the topic elsewhere, though.

This is the one thing cigarettes are good for: the prevention of workplace strangulations. When someone gets pissed off at their coworkers, the need to smoke kicks in and and they spend ten minutes outside reconsidering their desire to punch a guy or girl in the face. Cigarettes even stop yelling matches cold in their tracks.

So that's one thing cigarettes are good for as opposed to the thousand things they're terrible for.

PS: Although I will say that I miss the days when TV newscasters smoked during the broadcast, but I think that was due more to the stoic greatness that Cronkite emitted than the actual act of on-air smoking.

I quit (again), so now I just harm others instead of myself.

I didn't sway anything. I think you dumped the assholes you live with into an unfair blanket statement that all smokers are inconsiderate dicks.

I'm sorry it affects your life so much, and I'll agree, that sucks. I just think your level of venom against it doesn't or shouldn't apply to everyone. And, if you're landlord wasn't suck a fuck, you'd probably have a better smelling home. When I used to smoke, I never smoked inside. NEVER. I don't think anyone is arguing health benefits or smells here.

If you're not a joke poster, you're the biggest goddamn idiot in the world. Welcome to the land of Ignore.

Every time I see this thread in the "New Posts" list, I read the title to the tune of "The Politics of Dancing".

Smoking is vile. Austin's had a smoking ban in restaurants for more than a decade, and it's been wonderful. Going out to eat in other cities where they still have smoking and non-smoking sections is a bloody nightmare. You can ALWAYS smell the smoke.

This is one of those areas where the overall cost to society in both lives and dollars is so high that I'm absolutely comfortable with taxing, regulating, and legislating the habit into obscurity and eventual disappearance. At least until we all have nanotech-powered self-healing lungs.

My bona fides: Smoked for 6-7 years during and after college, quit ~10 years ago. For the last 5 years I've had a moonlighting freelance gig with the American Journal of Public Health. I have read stuff that could grow and curl toe hairs.

For one, erase all romantic notions of farmers drying tobacco leaves to be shredded and rolled for your smoking pleasure. You are not communing with the Native American. Tobacco companies since the 50s and 60s have not been trying to increase demand through the usual methods that businesses vie for market share and profitability (despite all the uproar over their advertising tactics, though those are usually deplorable as well). The vast majority of their operating budget has been for decades devoted to the science of chemical addiction and delivery methods by means of additives that affect and manipulate the body's natural mechanisms.

Some history as an example. Marlboro was just another brand fighting for attention. And then they came up with "Marlboro Lights" that had reduced nicotine. However, they also included significant amounts of arsenic -- RAT POISON -- which acts as a bronchodilator. Remember this word, it means what it sounds like. A bronchodilator dilates the lung's membranes, vastly increasing the amount of nicotine that's actually entering your bloodstream and traveling to the brain.

This was purely accidental; they were (irresponsibly and without oversight) testing arsenic as a preservative, like Viagra originally being tested for blood pressure treatment (or whatever it was). Suddenly, they had a cigarette on their hands that they can advertise "has less" nicotine -- but delivers more nicotine into the smoker's system.

They figured out how to, essentially, mainline nicotine.

Marlboro Lights soon took over the market, Marlboro shot up as a superstar, and the numbers of smokers increased -- Lights often being touted as an easier, "starter" cigarette. Needless to say, the additive race began in the tobacco industry. And cigarettes have became exponentially more addictive over the last half of the 20th century. You are not smoking what Bogart smoked.

Also to be found in your cigarette, lungs, blood, and brain (and air surrounding you): formaldehyde, acetone (nail polish remover), hexamine (BBQ lighter), cadmium (rechargeable batteries), toluene (industrial solvent), DDT (banned as an insecticide), methanol (rocket fuel), and lead (that lovely gasoline smell).

Enjoy.

Yeah, most of us have seen The Insider here, I'd imagine.

Here's the deal, shouldn't we be going after the companies like Phillip Morris and such instead of the actual smokers?

"But my American Spirit Lights are healthy!"

Well, that's a bit extreme for me saying that cigarettes have a thousand things wrong with them and then jokingly talking about "one thing right with them".

Like, currently? In the year 2009? FUCK, that's vile.

*reconsiders the stand breaks he takes so he can chat with his smoking coworkers*

Most of us have seen The Insider and remember it as a journalism/whistle-blower drama and less the whistle that was blown. Briefly, in a 60 Minutes segment, aired 5 years before the movie was shot and even at the time was made famous more from the corporate shenanigans and censorship issues involved than, again, the beans that were spilled (the horrifying beans of poison and addiction!).

The Insider shouldn't be anyone's only point of reference on the subject.

And why "instead"? I like "both."

Not me. I leave the smokers alone. The amount of second hand smoke I'm going to get from passerbys on the street and others will do absolute minimal damage to my body or life. No where near the amount of pain that they'll cause from the money I'll be paying into health care for them, but I'll be paying as much if not more from all the people sick and fat and diabetic from high fructose corn syrup, fast food and every other thing that's making america sicker and fatter. Second hand smoke bothers me when people get heavy and constant exposure to it. Like kids who's parents smoke in the car or at home. That's an issue. People walking down the street breathing in a little smoke isn't much of a concern to me. Small potatoes.

Prevention and education are great. It'd be nice if everyone chose to quit. I'm all on board, but I'm nowhere near banning, and I'm certainly nowhere near villifying the people that choose to smoke.

It's so funny cause all the pot threads that get started here don't get the venom that tobacco does. In fact, most of those threads get a lot of pro-legalization of it.

Wait, does someone really have to spell out why the thing that has been scientifically proven to kill you is treated less favorably than a thing that won't kill you as far as science knows?

Edit: Oh shit, this is an off-topic trap, isn't it? Fuck that, done with the thread.

Here we go.

Haha... I didn't even know that bag of monkeys was a bag that could be opened.

I'm outta here.

Tax the shit out of pot, too.

Seriously - thank you! I'm getting so tired of the argument that "Oh, but a bunch of other things will kill you, so just relax about smoking." It doesn't make it okay, it never will.

So, you've previously been for all the policies that have reduced heavy and constant exposure to secondhand smoke, such as in airplanes, office buildings, and restaurants, or you'd rather have left the smokers alone. Gotta pick.

Funny, the only worries I'd have about legalizing marijuana is what the pot coming from an industry with a billion-dollar biochemistry lab would contain. The relatively harmless homegrown smoked today would remain illegal, of course.

I think you're right that the "smoking is not cool" message is hard to sell to kids Kate, because it's in the nature of a lot of teenagers to go against authority and because when you're a teenager smoking does look pretty cool. It's only once you live a little bit of life and your brain finishes developing that you start to recognise it as the opposite of cool, as more of sign of weakness, but by then it's usually too late, the nicotine tentacles are already wrapped tight around your brainstem. The only way for a "smoking is not cool" message to register with the underdeveloped and anti-authority minds of kids is if it's delivered by other kids who are already seen as cool role models for some other reason (musicians, actors, sports stars etc).

But you're wrong if you think that smokers don't stink. It's not the worst smell in the world but that's not the point; it is bad, it is a stink, and it is a turn off. Also, as a smoker you don't get to tell other people what smells bad and what doesn't; for one thing that's an immature attitude, and for another your sense of smell (and taste for that matter) is shot to shit from smoking.


It's definitely a weird phenomenon Nicholas, it wasn't that I felt consciously rebellious, it was that even though I acknowledge that McDs is the pretty much shittiest of shit there was something about hearing Morgan Spurlock discuss the making of that film that stirred up a powerful lust in me for some of that shit. And there must be some kind of crack in those things because there are a dozen other burger joints in my town that make far superior food, yet I inexplicably felt the tractor beam pulling me towards the golden shower arches of hell.

So I get it when smokers say that a lot of the anti-smoking ads actually give them an urge to reach for the pack, it's an evil that works sub-consciously.

Poe knew what was wrong with you.

Yeah, I've been for most all the policies, and I actually like where we've gotten on the public smoking, though I think that private establishments like bars and such, should have the choice to be smoking or not. I don't mind mom and pop bars having smoking, but I agree that the bigger chains that allow kids in should be locked down.

If your biggest complaint is breathing some second hand smoke from the dude smoking in front of you while walking down the street, I really don't care to hear your complaint. I can whole heartily agree with your complaint if you have to sit on an airplane with someone smoking.

I'm expecting a day when I'm assaulted in the street for smoking.

LisaNY, you are hysterical. Smoking is bad, there's nothing to 'validate' it, humanity would be better off without it; but, Jesus Christ, have some reason. Walking past smoke occasionally isn't going to give you cancer. There is no evidence to support this.

Nobody is saying you HAVE TO like smoking, or well, SMOKERS I guess, but life involves bumping into people who do something you may find irritating, from time to time. I have no problem with only smoking outdoors until I quit, but it's important to note that no one is TRYING to piss you off with their smoke; it's rather a matter of ignorance, and well, hell, I don't know who is a smoker or not, or who cares about cigarette smoke, when I'm having a cigarette when walking down the street or outside the bar.

I must draw an analogy to this attitude you have, and others share, today; when you're on the bus, and somebody is locked in their own little world listening to music which is far too loud, and bugging other passengers, the other passengers will almost never tap the music listener on the shoulder and ask them to turn the music down; instead, you see everybody else on the bus try to look at their feet on the ground and slowly fester up rage and annoyance for being exposed to this noise. A cordial exchange between two individuals could have occurred, but nobody thought to even talk to the music listener; "I shouldn't have to deal with this shit! they're thinking. And they shouldn't, but they're in a public place, and this is a reality with people. I don't spit in the face of all the preachers I see trying to convert me to Christianity in the street, telling me I'm a sinner and bad person who requires salvation; or the beggars or whatever else annoyance there is. I say "No thanks" or "I don't have change" and look them in the eye.

You are right, that is faulty reasoning. Except occasional second-hand smoke, as is experienced outdoors, is not deadly, it's an irritant.

The leftover from my own habit is that, although I know I've smoked the last cig I'll ever want... I perversely (taking a cue from Poe's story) enjoy smelling secondhand smoke in bars and as you say walking behind a smoker on the street. It reminds me of when I enjoyed smoking -- ETA: because it is a chemical-pleasure delivery device -- though I know I'd most likely puke if I ever directly inhaled from a cigarette again. But near a smoker? I breathe deep and smile. It's so sick.

Yeah, I have to question the efficiency of any and all anti-smoking campaigns regardless of the source. I've watched someone smoke through a trach tube (this was before I quit, mind), and thought "God, I could go for one of those right now." I'm obviously incredibly stupid, but still.

Awesome... I do the same thing! Glad I'm not alone.

Oh thank you, dreary louse, for saving this thread. Here I was thinking it wasn't going to be completely fucking retarded, but then you came marching on in, like a one man parade of shit! Toot toot! Huzzah!

What the hell are you on about?

You just compared sitting in an enclosed space spewing out toxic chemicals with someone listening to their headphones too loud, or being a homeless person.

Never change.

Never fucking change.

I said I was done with the thread, but I gotta bring up an anecdote in regards to second-hand smoke.

When I worked in a gaming store that also did repairs, we could always tell which customers smoked indoors just by looking at their system. Nintendo systems turned from a white exterior to a nasty yellowish beige, the CD-based systems with a nasty film on their laser eyes and the omnipresent smell that followed the system into the repair shop.

I'm pretty sure these people weren't doing all their smoking while blowing clouds right on their systems, and the Nintendo systems didn't have fans sucking in the air around them, so all of the discoloration came from just passively being in the same room as the smoking.

It's not very scientific, but it doesn't make it any less nasty.

It's his specialty!

No, I specifically compared the irritating noise to running into somebody smoking in a non-enclosed space.