hagatha

It seems, no its definite, that in North America smokers are the new pariahs.
I find it difficult to accept that this is the worse addiction on the go when obesity rates have sky rocketed and so many social problems come with alcohol abuse and gambling. Yet these addictions do not inspire as much vitriol as smoking.
Why is that?
When was the last time someone was in an accident while "smoking and driving"?
When did someone beat their spouse after a night of smoking?
When did a smoker steal their family's life savings to buy a carton of cigarettes?

I am not saying smoking is good. Its bad. Real bad. But why is it the target for so much disgust and finger pointing? Are the other addictions somehow more acceptable? Are they any less destructive?

I think we need some real perspective on addictions.

__________________
Thats the last time I trust the strangest people I ever met....H. Simpson

NCB

Why do smokers have the right to blow their regurgitated smoke into my food and or drink in a public restaurant?

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snowy

Smoking is disgusting to most people because it isn't a habit you keep to yourself. Smoking affects the environment around you, and all of the people in that environment.

And yes, people do get in car accidents while smoking and driving. People also burn their houses down after falling asleep with cigarettes.

Furthermore, the public health cost of smoking is enormous. We are spending millions of dollars every year through Medicare and Medicaid in the United States for smoking-related illnesses, and the money from the settlement with Big Tobacco will never cover all of the costs incurred by former smokers, especially when we take into the account the amount of uninsured people who need treatment for smoking-related illness. Additionally, thousands of young children in the United States suffer from environmental asthma because they live with smokers.

Smoking is gross, and I sure as heck don't want anyone doing it around me.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

ngdawg

We've been pariahs for years. The difference now is the feeling that everyone else has the right to tell us what pariahs we are. I find this in many areas-virtual strangers forcing their POV, their morals on others with the intent of changing that which they don't like.
We know cigs, pipes, cigars, etc., don't smell like Chanel.
We're well aware that our walls, our upper lips, our car interiors will, in time, acquire a yellow tinge and, unless we're complete slobs, we take care of it.
We know smoking is bad for our own health-it's a crap shoot. Some smokers live well into their 80's, some might keel over before 50.
We know it's addictive; nicotine is harder to kick than heroin-that's been 'proven' over and over. We weren't worldly 30 year olds when we started, we were, more than likely, invincible, ignorant 15 year olds.
I don't know any smoker that hasn't tried to quit, wished to quit or doesn't need to quit. I've quit twice and have been trying for 10 months to quit again. My voice is changing, my sinuses, shot.
Smoking is a form of adult thumbsucking. It's a crutch, a security blanket. It's calming, it's something that takes a few minutes in which we relax, an ironic 'breather' from stress or thinking.
I do steal from my family to support smoking-it costs the two of us over $100 a week, money that could cover our credit cards. Anyone who smokes steals from themselves or their family because the fridge might go empty, the Visa bill might be late, but bet there's a few butts sitting in the ashtray.....

__________________
Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

Uncle Pony

You have the right to choose another resturant. There are plenty of them out there with no smoking policies. Let business owners decide who they want to cater to, not the government.

And the smokers are paying for it with the increased taxes they pay.


I quit two weeks ago after 17 years of smoking. If you're serious about quitting go to http://whyquit.com/ and read up. There is a whole science behind the hows and whys of smoking, moreso than I ever imagined. Once I armed myself with the knowledge found there I quit pretty easily. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

All lies, and lies that I've told myself 1,000 times. Check out that site.

billege

That is the such a bullshit troll response to an honest question.

I expect so many more of those in this thread. Please, work on it.

All posters like that: If you can't do better, you need to re-check what the TFP aims for.

I am so SICK of this place turning into a run-of-the-mill shitass forum. Posts like this belong on Fark. Not here.

She asked a legit question about why smoking is such a targeted and socially beat-up addiction. Instead of such a "no thought required" one liner that doesn't even address the question, why don't you try asking yourself:

"Why do I hate smokers so much, that I transcend all normal levels of self righteousness when people even bring this subject up?"

Why don't you do that, and then maybe answer the lady's question in an intelligent manner. Or, hit the back button. Your call.

/takes deep breath.

Snowy, I don't know why people target smoking so much. It's easy to get on two particular bandwagons in today's age. Anti-smoking is one of them. Hating fat people is the other.

All the “fun” categories to hate have been taken away. It’s not cool to be racially bigoted. Most American whites have actually got themselves to the point where they honestly think they harbor no racist tendencies, so it’s not even a subject we can talk about. That level of honesty usually requires admitting some pretty ugly things may live in our heart of hearts. Not happening in today’s culture. We don’t like to scratch the surface. Shit under the first layer of bullshit gets ugly fast, and we’d rather not deal with all that mess. So, no racism.

Religious bigotry is a touchy one. If you make fun of the right religions, you’ll be okay. Making fun of “overly” conservative Christians is cool; Wiccans are easy targets; Catholics are pretty fair game (hey, their priests opened the door on that one – I was raised Catholic); Scientologists (freaks – In this case, I believe they are freaks, so I’m saying what I believe and accepting the consequences of how that causes others to view me.) are okay to make fun of; Muslims - especially you’re one of their extremist’s bomb targets you can make fun of…SO no religious bigotry (with a few exceptions).

You can hop on the "I am disgusted by fatties" wagon pretty easy. More Americans seem to be fat than not, but the common opinion is still that it's okay to look down on the chubbies. Sure, if you're blatant about it someone will say "Hey, save the whales, be nice." Eventually someone will defend outright abuse of chubby people. However, for most purposes bigotry about fat people is socially acceptable. Fat jokes abound, and no one says “enough.” (Ok, a few people do. They’re the good few that actually speak up for their beliefs. Honestly: 3 in 10 Americans. Tops.) Fat kids are bullied to tears on a daily basis, but ask a parent if they think “their kid” would do that. You’ll never ever find a bully’s parent saying “yeah, my kid is a DICK to other kids…especially those fat ones.” No one says shit about fat kids until they bring a gun to school…then it’s all about what video games they played. Fat people are abused every day and it’s cool.

But, like I say, unless you’re really rude about it no one will call you on your fat hate. You’ll be especially safe if you adopt the “it’s soooo unhealthy” tone early. No one can touch what you say if you’re concerned about the lardasses’ health. In that case it’s extra acceptable for you to be disgusted by fat people…after all it’s about HEALTHLY LIVING. Moving on to smokers…

Beating up on smokers is a populist, easy to jump on, bandwagon.

I was a 5 year half pack a day smoker. I stopped. 2 years ago. It. Was. A. Total. Bitch.

Nonsmokers don’t get this, nor do most of them care. In their minds, smoking is just something you can stop doing whenever you want. LOL on that. To add to their pile of smoker-hating-righteousness justification they’re on the “right side” of this debate by simply not smoking. It takes no effort!! “Join now and you too can look down on someone else’s personal choice – BECAUSE IT PERIPHERALLY AFFECTS YOU!!! – instant justification.” And yes, it peripherally affects you. You have to be in the same area as smokers to get secondhand. They’re not invading your homes and lighting up. I promise.

That’s right, go off on your anti-smoker “But bars STINK etc etc etc yammer” nonsense rants. I give a shit. I still have ONE question for all the passive aggressive anti-smokers who vote from behind a curtain to curtail someone else’s rights: If non smoking is SO popular, and EVERYONE agrees that bars, eateries, etc. should be non smoking, how come this change had to come from law?

Why didn’t bar owners have the economic incentive applied to them by their non-smoking clients to ban smoking in their establishments? No law prohibited any bar owner from making his/her place non smoking only.

Why didn’t bar owner say: “Hey, you know what? A majority of my clientele wish this place were non-smoking, and I’m going to cater to their business by making that change? WHY IS THAT????

It’s because the non-smokers are by and far (god knows, a few of you have strength of conviction and I salute you!) passive aggressive motherfarkers who won’t tell an establishment owner they’d like the place better if it were non-smoking. They can’t fill out suggestion slips and make it happen. They can’t avoid their favorite place BECEUASE IT DIDN’T MATTER ENOUGH TO THEM!

If secondhand REALLY bothered so many people so much, they’d have voted with their wallets. They’d have stayed out of bars that allowed smoking, and they’d have some sort of button/bumper sticker movement to make it publicly known that’s why they were doing it.

Instead, the most extreme of them formed a lobby to legislate morality and personal choice. To join that you only have to vote, and to be honest, that’s pretty easy. You register and you push a button. That takes a lot less balls than actually GIVING UP DINNER at a place you like, and going out of your way to tell the owner that’s why you’re doing it.

Very few people cared enough about secondhand to do anything like that. They went to the bars with all the smokers, and they bitched about it to each other. Somehow, they lacked the energy to find a way to use their economic power to affect change, so they lobbied for it.

That’s how change comes to Americans now: Don’t actually do anything, just sign your name to a cause and let a few fanatics do the actual work for you. Let them take time to get petitions signed, let them get something on a ballot, let them convince people, all you have to do is get on the bandwagon. American’s love bandwagons.

It’s a joiner thing. For years people got along with smokers. In fact, most people were smokers. Then we figured out it’ll kill you. Then people stopped smoking so much. However, we didn’t have this social phenomenon of smoker hating until recently. That’s new, maybe only going back to the late 90’s or early 2000’s? What would you say on that? When did it become not only “okay” but actually encouraged to actively hate smokers from afar? It used to be a country of “live and let live.” We used to put up with a few things we didn’t like. Now we’re an over-privileged, over-indulged, over-spoiled, bunch of WHINERS who legislate anything we don’t like. And that’s the best part…the hypocrisy

If I choose to go outside and light up, few of my friends or co workers would say more than “hey dummy, that’s bad for you, and we don’t want you to die.”

However, in a forum or group of fellow smoker haters, the vitriol comes out in spades. Now it’s a campaign to raise the bar on who hates second-hand the most. A game to see how evil and disrespectful one can paint smokers as being. A challenge to get the most self-righteous by virtue of NOT DOING SOMETHING.

People really think that HMO costs are through the roof because of smoking? Of all the possible causes that healthcare is nigh-unaffordable, they think SMOKING is doing enough damage that it’s the one personal choice they’re willing to legislate? It can’t possibly be the incredible complexity involved in the treatments our huge population of aged Americans is receiving. There’s no way it’s insane profiteering by drug companies. Lawyers and HMOs adding parasitical costs to the system, that can’t be part of it. God knows that America’s collective Obesity problem has nothing to do with it. Diabetes is rising at unheard of rates, that can’t have ANYTHING to do with rising costs, nor could the cause of all the Diabetes be out of control caloric intake.

It’s got to be, it HAS to be, the smokers. THOSE BASTARDS!!!


/yeah I understand it’s a huge angry post. At least it’s honest. There’s got to be one or two members left who will appreciate that.

Pre-posting, post-reviewing thought:

I jumped on what’s-his-face fairly hard for the one liner he posted. I feel bad about that. But, not bad enough to apologize for calling a one-line, zero-effort post what it was.

/pre-response comment:

There’s no f’ing way I’ll debate any one of you on that line-for-line rebuttal bullshit that’s incomprehensively still so popular. No one in real life has conversations that way. There’s no way I’ll do it here. I learned that lesson years ago.

You make a comprehensive point with your statement, I’ll respond to that if it’s any good.

__________________
I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

JumpinJesus

Allow me to join you on this, billege. I'm growing increasingly tired of the adolescent semi-trolling we seem to be seeing lately in responses to many posts, regardless of their location. It's as if we're seeing people respond inbetween bites of their cheeseburgers and are therefore incapable of thinking through a response without resorting to said adolescent responses and chuckling to themselves as if they've somehow just posted the funniest thing they've ever seen.

/end threadjack response.

Smokers are pariahs because we've been conditioned to think that way over the course of the past few decades. Changing someone's way of thinking doesn't often happen instantaneously. It takes time to drive a society from "I'd like to eat somewhere smoke-free" to a rabid, "Get your motherfuckin' cigarette smoke away from my SUV!!"

It's like water over a stone. A little bit at a time over a long period of time produces some drastic results.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

xepherys

Alright, so you'd prefer a well thought out sampling of why? Frankly, I thought the one line was just as legitimate a question as the OP posed, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

1) Because smoking is dangerous for the smoker as well as those around the smoker. If I eat 4000 calories a day, it doesn't affect you because you sit at the next table.

2) Because some of us are non-smokers that have seen family members die (let me reiterate this... DIE, dead, gone, no more, deceased) due to medical complications directly related to smoking.

3) As a semi-aside to the above, smoking is not a job. It is not a dangerous task one takes on in an attempt to provide for others as say, coal mining (which I've also lost families to due to Pneumoconiosis). While I don't support coal mining, the effect is ONLY to those performing the task, and usually under conditions of employment for earnings.

Let me mention now that I do not believe the smoking of tobacco should be illegal... in your own home or on private property. I don't believe marijuana smoking should be either, but... oh well. I made this comment to my mother-in-law today while discussing an Arizona proposition on the current ballot. She said, "why make criminals out of smokers?" which I replied, "Pooping doesn't make you a criminal, but pooping in the park does."

It's true. You can (and do, I imagine) poop daily. But doing so in public places (other than designated restrooms) is a health hazard to those around you and is thusly unlawful. Why is smoking different?

Smokers are the modern pariah in many ways because of the ultra-assertive defensive mechanisms they mostly display. The more defensive you are about a habit others don't like, the more likely you are to spur equal negative reactions. It costs me tax dollars in health care to support your dying ass on a gurney when you go to the hospital. You have health insurance you say? Great, but all those extra dollars spent that aren't profit for the insurance companies are what drive up premiums for everyone else. You DON'T have insurance? I foot the whole goddamned bill, cigarette taxes be damned.

Now, here comes my hypocrit hat. I OCCASIONALLY smoke hookah as a social event. This meaning roughly once per month. Do I still run the risk of bad lung death due to this? Yes. But I also only do it in my home, with my family not around (unless my wife wants to join me) and it's rare (often, months will go by entirely without a lighting of the hookah, so I do consider it significantly different than a pack-a-day habit, sorry).

In the end, the more you fight and bitch about it, the more people are going to be up in arms against you. *shrug* If you can't understand that, I don't know what else to say.

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-- Emmanuel Pinol, Governor of Cotobato

My Homepage

ngdawg

I'll check it out, but that IS what smoking is...thumbsucking. It's not a justification or excusing it, since there really IS no justification for smoking at all. But that's what it is....gotta stick that 'thumb' in there. We light up when stressed, we light up while sitting at a computer, we light up after a meal. Then we get stressed because we don't want to smoke....so we light up again. Mention chocolate to a dieter and you'll see what I mean.
I don't consider them helpful, I don't consider them 'my friend' and sometimes I don't like how they taste(specially after a few in a row), I hate how my car smells....
Ironically, we smoke as a sort of security blanket saying it calms us, but every cig actually raises blood pressure, heart rate and decreases air intake, all of which rob the brain. But it's a drug and just like other drugs, it's that change in metabolism we 'need', thus calling it 'calming'.
Quitting from a half pack a day is commendable, but try quitting from a 2pack a day habit or more...I'm down from 3 to about 1.5(two on an off day).
Smokers mantra: I will quit smoking or die trying!!! We all try to....

__________________
Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

Uncle Pony

The 'thumb sucking' is an excuse. I never sucked my thumb before I smoked and I don't suck it now.

Stress causes our bodies to create acid. Nicotine is an alkaline. The more you get stressed the more your nicotine levels drop, thereby creating the need for a 'calming' cigarette. The calm you experience is the dopomine rush your brain gets from nicotine and the return of a 'normal' nicotine level in your blood stream. 'At the computer' is simply because your blood nicotine levels have dropped. Nothing more. After a meal; same thing.

Smokers crave sweets because each cigarette releases sugar and fats into the blood stream (which also causes appetite supression), and that's where weight gain comes from when you quit. You're no longer getting that little shot of sugar every 20 minutes so you eat a Hershey's bar instead. Most likely this is where the craving for chocolate by a dieter comes from; the lowered amount of sugar in the blood due to dieting. I'm no expert, that's just a theory. Feel free to refute it.

Everything I've posted (with the exception of the chocolate thing) can be found on the site I linked above. Smokers have come up with every excuse under the sun to explain their addiction and that site covers them all.

I smoked 2 packs a day.

I don't want to come off like I'm busting your balls though. I don't support banning smoking in bars or resturants. My money is easily spent elsewhere if I should choose to not be around smokers. Hell, I figure with the $200 a month I'm saving on cigarettes I can get an even bigger SUV (than the one I already have) this spring.

thingstodo

I quit 18 years ago after practicing quitting many times, once for over a year. My decision after finally understanding all the reasons behind my need to smoke. Here's are a few of the ways other smokers still impact me:

- when I'm at a traffic light and I have to change my AC to recirculate because the smoke coming from the car next to me is coming inside my vehicle
- when a butt flicked from the car in front of me bounces off the road and explodes on my windshield
- when I walk pretty much everywhere and the biggest form of littering is butts
- when my health insurance rates go up because I have to insure smokers, and yes, all the other people engaged in non-healthy behaviors. Thank goodness the company I work for now charges a $60 per month surcharge on health insurance if you are a smoker. Perhaps they'll add these charges for overweight and other people that drive up the cost of healthcare
- I can't go into a bar and actually sit at the bar without having smoke in my face - which makes trips to SF nice (and now Marriott Hotels) since they are smoke-free inside
- in order to walk inside a mall I have to walk through a smoke cloud to get through the front door
- when someone comes in from a smoke break at work I have to smell them for at least 30 minutes
- I have seen wrecks caused by smokers that drop their cigs, are trying to light them or bump a lit butt and send ashes flying. I nearly had a wreck years ago doing the same thing

I guess I think there's a time and a place for everything. Everyone has a right to do what they want as long as it doesn't have a negative impact on others. Trashing our parks and roads with litter, making me subsidize your health care costs and making me walk through a gauntlet of smoke just to shop are just a few of the ways I feel my right are being disreagarded by smokers.

Not sure if this goes to the heart of the original question but for what it's worth, those are my thoughts on the subject.

__________________
If you're wringing your hands you can't roll up your shirt sleeves.

Stangers have the best candy.

Sultana

I always try to be gracious to my smoking friends, and you know what? Every Single One of my smoking friends returns the favor.

To answer the question, I think it's simply because the smoke affects everyone in the surrounding area. Now whether those people choose to be self-righteously rude about it, that's a reflection of that individual, and current social conditioning, I think.

I do agree, there are many other problems that could be addressed as well, however, people don't have to buy heinously expensive daily medications to help control the side effects generated by someone at the next table eating 80% more fat then they require for the day--but I do to deal with my asthma, which is certainly affected by second-hand smoke. And before I managed to get a rx for that medication, being around cigarette smoke could make it so that I couldn't breath. Could leave me gasping, fighting to fill my oxygen-starved lungs, and failing. Unable to perform regular daily tasks, much less the dancing I love with all my heart. Because of someone's careless, non-maliciciously intended second hand smoke I had to be exposed to in public places until these laws came about.

I repeat, it's not just cigarette smoke that can hit me like that. But it's one of the more preventable, voluntary things. By the way, now that I have the meds, I can deal with it much better now. But it's great to not have to. I pray the medication works for the rest of my life.

So when someone else's bad habit/addiction makes others ill, makes their hair/clothes/whatever reek, yes. It makes them an easy target. Although I still don't feel AT ALL that it's a carte-blanch for boorish self-righteousness.

__________________
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.
At night, the ice weasels come." -

Matt Groening

My goal? To fulfill my potential.

The_Jazz

Smoke stinks. Period. There's no disagreement about it. If it's bad manners for you to fart at the table next to me, why is it acceptable for you to light up? Before Chicago passed the smoking ban, I made it a point not to go to restaurants or bars that didn't have the ventalation system to handle the smoking. Why is it so hard for you to go outside for your fix? As far as I'm concerned, smoking in a restaurant, bar or other public venue makes you selfish and lazy - there's no reason that you can't go outside considering that's where you came from. Putting aside the health hazards, your choice to smoke indoors in a public venue is tatamount to farting in public. They both stink and its difficult to get away from either one.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

shakran

Hell I thought he was being nice. He could have said something more along the lines of "what gives you the right to injure me with your habits?" since your second hand smoke wafts into MY lungs and as we learned in kindergarten from the firefighters, smoke is bad for you.

What? Mindless acceptance of everyone's views, even if they're obviously wrong?


Yes, and then used the asinine example of obesity. I can get as fat as I want and it still won't hurt you. You smoke ONE cigarette next to me and it hurts me, not only healthwise, but because now I have to go around for the rest of the day smelling like an ash tray.

Sorry, but you've lost me there. Anti-smoking is not a bandwagon, it's members of society finally trying to take what should be theirs by right - - clean air in public places.

I don't know one single person that gives a damn if you smoke in your own house or in your car unless they know you and don't want to watch you give yourself cancer. You can smoke like a chimney in your own house if you want. Hell have 3 at a time. I really don't care.

But when you light up in a public place that I might not have a choice to be in or not (What if I'm the waiter in that restaurant? I have to be there, inhaling your smoke), then I get pissed.

I've often said that the drug laws in this country are insane. I don't care if you shoot heroin in that restaurant - it's not gonna hurt me, so go for it. I don't understand why drugs that only hurt the user are illegal while drugs that hurt everyone around the user are subsidized by the government. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me.



You've lost me here. A person with darker skin than mine is not going to harm me just by being in the room with me. A smoker will. Let's compare apples to apples eh?



What exactly is your point here? Obesity is unhealthy. I don't know where you live but in my town people don't go up to random fat guys on the street and start lecturing about diet. And criticizing fat people is stupid anyway. If you're fat it will not make me fat if I get too close to you. If you smell like an ashtray, I'll smell like one too if I'm anywhere near you. Big difference.

Thanks for speaking for all of us. Too bad you're dead wrong. We know it's hard to quit. Frankly we don't give a damn if you quit or not. Smoke yourself into oblivion for all we care - - just don't do it around US. Stop smoking in public. If you can't make it through a half hour meal without lighting up, then go outside to do it. Keep your unhealthy habits away from my body.


That's right. We didn't succumb to peer pressure or Marlboro's marketing and decide it would be a good idea to stick burning leaves in our mouths. Your argument is crazy - it's like saying gee, we shouldn't think murder is wrong because all we have to do to be on the right side of the argument is NOT MURDER! That's so easy! We don't have to do anything!

My point exactly. It'd be nice to enjoy a nice dinner/show evening without having to walk through a cloud of smoke.


And with attitudes like that abounding, you wonder why we don't like public smokers?

Yeah, like economic incentive always works. There was an economic incentive to allow black people to eat at lunch counters - you'd have that many more people buying food. But that didn't happen until laws were passed either.

Because if only ONE does it then he'll lose business. if EVERYONE does it then they'll gain business as the non smokers who won't go to a smoky bar start coming. This isn't hard.




So you don't want a debate, you just want to yell for awhile and then run away. Got it.

ratbastid

You should watch Thank You For Smoking. I saw it just the other day--totally hysterical movie, but it puts the whole smoking thing in a totally different context.

According to the film, smoking kills vastly more people than alcohol or firearms. Like orders of magnitude more. I think the number he used was 1300 people a day die from smoking-related illnesses. And that's just the deaths, not the people sick and in treatment.

If you think of all the people in hospitals and undergoing treatment for smoking-related illnesses, and then think of the, what, maybe $1.00/pack tax on cigarettes, it's absurd to think that those taxes cover those medical bills.

You know, it smells bad, and second-hand smoke probably isn't good for those around you. Personally, as an ex-smoker, I'm not too worried about second-hand smoke I might pick up walking down the street or in a bar--I did way worse to myself for many years. I actually like and miss the smell of it.

I smoked a pack a day for ten years. I quit March 1, 2001. I have all kinds of compassion for the nicotine addicts in the world. The thing I noticed immediately when I quit was just how automatic, how robotic I was about it. That first couple days, I was literally having a conversation with myself: "Okay! Time for a smoke! No, dammit, we're not doing that any more. Right, right, fine.... Well, time for a smoke! Damn! No! Stop that! Okay, okay... Whew, sure could go for a smoke right now! Dammit!" So, you know, I've been clean for more than five years now, and I still get waves of cravings.

flstf

I think if a bar or restaurant wants to implement a fart free or smoke free environment that should be their choice. Farters and smokers do not have to go there. People can vote with their feet if they do not like the establishment's policies and the government should stay out of it.

pig

Personally, I'd like to have most public places free of cigarette smoke. I think that's pretty close to the case for libraries, other public buildings, schools, etc. When it comes to bars and restaurants, I'd like to have a tobacco license similar to a liquor license. Not really too expensive, but providing a natural way to separate bars and restaurants where one can smoke, from those places one can't.

Unless we are actually going to make cigarettes and other tobacco products illegal, based on their negative health affects, I have a problem with making the use of a legal product illegal in public. One can argue a similarity to public decency laws, or I guess shitting in public, but I'm not sure I see that as a direct analogy. I'm not a regular smoker - mostly an occasional pipe or cigar - but there are some places I would actually miss the cigarette smoke. However, I can understand the situation of people like Sultana, who have asthma which might/will prevent them from going to the shows. I'd be willing to lose the smoke in most places - but I'd like to retain some places where I can have a bourbon and smoke a cigar, maybe shoot a little pool.

In the end, I think certain compromises can be reached other than a complete blanket prohibition of smoking, or having all public places, bars, and restaurants open to smokers. Which I think is linked to the reason that people are so adament in their opposition of cigarettes - it has a substantial affect on what they can do. If someone is allergic or strongly offended by the smell of cigarette smoke, then they simply can't go to bars at night. That would piss me off too - as has been stated, smokers can argue that other people should be more tolerant of their smoke, but in the end a non-smoker can't avoid the second-hand smoke in certain situations. It really isn't up to the smoker to decide what the non-smoker should have to put up with. I think tobacco zones would drastically alleviate the problem for both sides.

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FoolThemAll

I don't understand the point of the license. Aren't the bar/restaurant/ect owners perfectly capable of deciding on and implementing a smoking or non-smoking policy without the assistance of a licensing program? I don't care how small the costs are, why should commercial property owners have to spend time and money in order to allow smoking on their property?

I'm fine with smoking bans in government buildings, though. Or rather, I'm fine with whatever the voters decide.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

pig

Same argument could be made for liquor licenses, gambling machine licenses, etc. In the end, I probably agree with you. However, it seems that licensing / special zoning is a way we've come up with to regulate activities that are legal, but not desireable to everyone in the population. I can understand people not wanting to be around cigarette smoke, and I can see how its difficult to get people who run the bars to change. If nothing else, change is frequently inherently difficult. I think it would have the affect that many business which do not explicitly cater to the alchohol / late night crowd would drop smoking at their side bars (places like Ruby Tuesday, for example) and that some bars would adopt no-smoking policies (probably newer establishments trying to cut $$$), and some bars well-known as places to get shitty and so forth will pay a little $$$ to keep their clientele that smokes. Furthermore, places that are explicitly cigar bars will pay the extra $$$, as its the only reason their clientele comes. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

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FoolThemAll

Same argument? Maybe. At any rate, I'd prefer that we get rid of the other pointless licensing practices or even that we keep the inconsistency, as opposed to adopting a consistent and unnecessarily stringent licensing standard.

I don't see a compromise as being reasonable in this case. It should be up to the business owner, period.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

pig

I'd like to believe the same thing, but it just doesn't seem to work. I've been of the same opinion of you for a long time, in fact - and made the exact same arguments time and again. I guess what does it for me is having many friends who can't go out for a drink or a cup of coffee, because they have allergies or the like. I don't think that left to a majority decision via the wallet vote, most of these businesses will change to a smoke free environment. Some of them may have areas that are "smoke-free", but that little sign doesn't seem to keep the smoke out.

Out of curiousity, are you a general Libertarian / end regulation guy across the board, or is it only in speciic areas?

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

analog

If you want to use the obesity complaint, the issue is plain as day.

...because if we're sitting in a restaurant and you have a cheeseburger, I don't inhale cholesterol and clog my arteries. I can, however, inhale your smoke and fuck up my lungs and get cancer. I then also smell of your smoke (which is yet another reason not to smoke, is smelling like that all the time).

Having to sit around and breathe the exhaled cancer potion of those around me is not what I call a comfortable or safe environment for my health. This is, of course, not to mention the terrible smell, and how it makes things you eat taste terrible.

Your "right" to pollute your own lungs and do what you want to your body (the "it's my body, i'll do what I want" argument) ends where it infringes on my right to NOT have my lungs polluted by others, plain and simple. Your right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" finds its end where your enjoyment prevents mine; if you want to smell and get cancer, go right ahead... but you have no right to subject me to the same.

And the "restaurants should cater to the smoker if they want, you can eat someplace else that caters to the non-smoker" argument is weak nonsense and you all know it. A business owners' right to run their business how they want ends at the line of preserving public health.

I suppose you'd have preferred that all business owners took it upon themselves to replace their asbestos insulation at their own pace, rather than being mandated by the government to do it right away? Because after all, it's their business, they should decide to run it how they want, right? Nonsense. Public health is more important.

snowy

A lot of you have talked about smoking bans in restaurants and bars. Well, I live in a community that has one, and it's been in effect for several years now. While people were initially fearful that business would decline after the institution of the ban, restaurant and bar business here actually INCREASED after the ban because more non-smokers started going out to eat or drink and enjoy themselves. Furthermore, the smokers didn't stop going out--no, they just smoke outside now.

As my SO's uncle told me--and he's a former smoker, and was at the time of the ban--he didn't think it was a good idea when it happened, but after enjoying our smoke-free restaurants so often, he finds it hard to go to other towns to eat or drink. And I have to agree with him--it's hard to go to other cities in Oregon who don't have the ban. Quite frankly, when I smell cigarette smoke while I'm eating, it makes me want to vomit. I had to leave a concert early last year because there was so much cigarette smoke. I paid the $15 for my ticket too, why am I less important than people with a bad habit?

Anyways, I would fully support a total ban on public smoking in Oregon, with similar restrictions to Washington state's ban on public smoking.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

pig

Chalk up another reason I need a pool table in my house. snowy, i think that's pretty consistent with everywhere that a complete or partial ban has been imposed on public smoking. the smoke doesn't really bother me personally, but i prefer to err on the side that doesn't limit other people's comfortability unnecessarily. i would like some establishments for the specific pursuit of a smoke-friendly environment.

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

oberon

There's already a total ban on smoking in public restaurants/bars/etc. in Colorado; it took effect 1 July 2006. CO is the 13th U.S. state to pass such a ban. Personally, I would hope that economic incentive is sufficient to keep it out of most decent restaurants/bars I might actually go to. But being a nonsmoker myself, I don't especially care if it is banned; I certainly like not having to smell/inhale smoke. But as the years have passed, I've only had to deal with it occasionally.. and the only time I can remember recently having an unpleasant encounter with smoke clouds is occasionally when I exit/enter public buildings. I'm not sure why they seem to like smoking around doorways. My suspicion is because it's usually the only shelter close enough to where they want to be.

That being said, I get made fun of for being fat and deaf frequently. Both of which are certainly true & both are difficult problems for me that I work on resolving every day. Most of the time it's because people are too immature to be polite about how others are different from themselves. If someone smokes around me, I ask them politely to stop. If they refuse, I go somewhere else or deal with it. Same approach to dealing with jerks or mean drunks etc.

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"There are finer fish in the sea than have ever been caught." -- Irish proverb

The_Jazz

Good call. While we're at it, why don't we make it optional for employees to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom and optional hairnets. Hey, some people don't mind eating off of dirty dishes, so we can make dishwashing optional too!

While we're at it, maybe we can do away with those pesky building codes too.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

roachboy

i smoke.
i dont care about smoking bans: they are fine by me.
smoking bans seem most coherently about worker health.
the public health arguments i find infinitely less compelling, simply because the fact is that you are not going to die from passing through clouds of second hand smoke--you are not trapped in them, they do not follow you around--there are no little demons in clouds of smoke that will poke at you until something Horrible happens.

but protecting worker health (folk who work in a pub and are exposed all the time)--that makes sense.

so i am fine with the bans.

in places where there are no bans, i respect what an actual human being who i was interacting with request---and certainly would not smoke around anyone with asthma if i knew about it.
when i go to a pub, i go to pubs with belgian beer and people who smoke . just my preference.
i hate bad beer.

if i am in a public space and feel like having a smoke and there are folk around me who aren't smoking, i generally ask if it would bother them.

and i roll my smokes, so they dont sit in the ashtray burning away while i am not paying attention.
and they dont smell *as* bad.

none of this seems to be rocket science.

if i am going to be polite or considerate of others concering when and where i smoke, i expect that to be reciprocated.

i am not moved by the righteous lather.
if anything, i am far more inclined than i otherwise would be to tell very righteous people to go fuck themselves.
preferably through a cloud of smoke.
that you do to like cigarettes does not mean you get to be an asshole.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Xera

I smoke and I have for 16 years, off and on. I managed to quit once for two years. Nonsmokers almost universally ask me why I would go back after two years off. Not one day got easier. NEVER. It was like the first day without a smoke every single day for 2 years. In order to fail all that ever had to happen was one day when my craving was stronger than my disgust at the habit.

I try to respect other people. I really do. I don't smoke indoors, even when it's not banned. I don't smoke around nonsmokers without first asking if it's all right with them. When businesses put up signs that I can't smoke inside my vehicle on their parking lot I take that personally. Thats just discrimination. That is not protecting innocent people from my bad habits, that protecting innocent people from SEEING my bad habits. You will not get cancer because you saw me with a smoke in my own damn car.

There are three businesses in my very small town that have rules like this. I will now repeat the original question: why is smoking the target of so much finger pointing?

I would also like to know why there can't be a "smokers haven" bar or restaraunt that was specifically designed just for smokers? If the majority of restraunts and bars were smoke free, and there were only certain places that bought a license like piglet suggested, then wouldn't that give smokers and non smokers alike the benifit of being comfortable where they are at? I'm all about compromise, and this seems like a compromise to me. I dislike being told that I have to do all the giving, so I imagine nonsmokers do too.

flstf

So it's all or nothing?

If a business has a smoking policy they should at least have a sign to warn people so those offended by smoking know not to go there. I guess one could say the same for the other restrictions you mention (except for building code violations) but I doubt if anyone would ever go there once they put the signs up.

ShaniFaye

When the state wide smoking ban was passed here in GA they gave bars etc the option to still have smoking if the establishment only allowed 18+ as patrons

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

blahblah454

Holy shit, I went to that site and its pretty freaky. I am not a smoker and I will be showing that to my future kids when they are 12 or so (old enough to understand it and may want to start smoking). I sent that link to my girlfriend who is currently trying to quit smoking

ASU2003

Don't you need to be 18 to buy cigarettes? And don't most bars and nightclubs already require their patrons to be 18 or 21? I don't really see what that would accomplish.

ShaniFaye

there are a lot of "bars" around here that allow any age, you just have to be 21 to drink

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Carno

Personally I find smoking distasteful, but I really don't care if people smoke. I do appreciate that smoking has been banned in restaurants in Florida though, since I didn't like having to change my clothes after going to certain restaurants. It doesn't bother me to be around people who smoke though, and I hardly think I'm going to die from inhaling the small amount of smoke that comes my way, so I don't really care that much about smoking.

Some people just feel the need to get fanatical about anything though. If it wasn't smoke, it would be something else.

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http://how-to-spell-ridiculous.com/

pig

In addition to what Shani's saying, the bars in Atlanta used to allow under 18 for daytime hours, and would become 18+ or 21+ after dinner time. I had friends at the Vortex when all this hit, and it affected some of them that would bring their kids to have lunch and whatnot.

/end threadjack

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

ShaniFaye

*sigh* I LOVE the Vortex

They were very vocal in the media when the smoking ban was going into effect. They very publically stated they would go to 18+ only to keep allowing smokers

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

pig

yep, the Vortex is a great bar. Grab a few decent brews (and they a nice little selection of decent brews at that) then head over to the Star Bar and catch some tunes. Highlander up the street, man...good times. When in Atlanta, that's where I usually hang my hat - but that's more a function of my friends down there than anything else. I'm always the guy that none of the locals can figure out, because I don't have a plethora of obvious tattoos and piercings. It's just that all my friends in the area do. I need a good Yule Log show, but I guess that's out of season right now

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

Glory's Sun

Without me going on and on, I'll just focus on this one little tidbit

I'm a little confused by this statement. If we reverse this.. I could say that your right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" finds its end where you decide I shouldn't be smoking. If I don't smoke, it increases your "enjoyment" yet decreases mine. Sounds like a stalemate to me.

Which is why for the most part I am a polite smoker. If I know you don't like smoke I go to the smoking section or outside. I try to keep it out of your face. Now if I'm in a bar, (which is most of the time) I don't care because most people there are smoking and unless for some reason you are dying because of *my* cig, you can go outside to drink.

FoolThemAll

Most issues, I think... notable exception being stuff like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, certain birth control methods... undecided on euthanasia.

Agreed. But I don't see anyone subjecting anyone who didn't implicitly agree to the possibility of being subjected.

What should be mandated is full disclosure of all health risks associated with any particular building. But as long as the building poses no health risks to those outside of it, NO, public health is NOT more important. Or rather, public health and respecting the right to property are not mutually exclusive - the public can go elsewhere. The public doesn't have a right to entrance. If the owner offers entrance, the public doesn't have a right to demand that the invitation conform to their expectations - they can either take it or leave it.

Weak nonsense is pretending that bar patrons are being forced against their will to inhale cigarette smoke - they aren't and never were.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

The_Jazz

I think that the old adage is that the right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo