Paper Clip

Cigarette smoke can kill non-smokers.

Cell phone are annoying, but not deadly (yet - ask Carl Everett!)People have conversations in restaurants, anyway - but it is the ringing that is disturbing. My cell phone has a "Manners" mode - when it rings, it merely vibrates - all cell phones should have that feature.

grayman

This is the typical bullshit response I expect from a smoker. "I can do what ever I want, it's a free country." Unfortunately, you can't do whatever you want, specificly when it affects someone else. I don't care what you want to do in your own home, just don't do it around me. Did you read my entire post? I didn't make any claims about health problems, I simply said that I don't want to smoke and you have no right to make me smoke, which is what you do when you smoke around me. Does it matter what my reasons are? I have the right to be left alone more than you have the right to bother people, and make no mistake, smoking around non-smokers bothers them.

__________________
That's right - I'm a guy in a suit eating a Blizzard. F U.

TwistedFate

Yes, I don't live in LA so smokers are doing more damage to me.

People are at they beach because they want to be. They expect to see you in your bathing suit just as you expect to see them in theirs. If they don't want to see you in a bathing suit then they shouldn't go to the beach. I don't have that choice with smoking in public.

Then you and your fellow smokers need to stop forcing me to breath your smoke. When you stand in front of the door to a building smoking it infringes on my right to not have my breathing impaired as I have to walk through it to get into the building. Show me some respect as a non-smoker as I'll show you some as a smoker.

asaris

I've asked for a source on this before, and I'll do it again.

It's the same thing. People are at the bar because they want to be. They (should) expect it to be smoky there. If they don't want to breathe in smoke, they shouldn't go to the bar.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Derwood

As my Dad always says:

A smoking section in a restaurant is like a peeing section in a pool.

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

TwistedFate

Oh I don't disagree with that. Read my example. The problem I have is breathing it when I don't want to.

Donkeypuncher

Well, ok, ya militant, selfish a-hole.

Do you know who Philip Morris Inc. is? Yeah, that Philip Morris. The guys who make more cigarettes than anyone else in this country. A published statement from the Philip Morris company:

"We agree with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no "safe" cigarette.

These are and have been the messages of the U.S. Surgeon General and public health authorities worldwide. Smokers and potential smokers should rely on these messages in making all smoking-related decisions."

also from Philip Morris, specifically regarding second-hand smoke:

"Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In addition, public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke can exacerbate adult asthma and cause eye, throat and nasal irritation. Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS, is a combination of the smoke coming from the lit end of a cigarette plus the smoke exhaled by a person smoking.

Philip Morris USA believes that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places. We also believe that where smoking is permitted, the government should require the posting of warning notices"



a little light reading for you:

Center for Disease Control (2001):
Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General 2001

Surgeon General (1984):
The Health Consequences of Smoking - Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease

WHO-IARC (2002):
SECOND-HAND SMOKE CARCINOGENIC TO HUMANS

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1993):
Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer

California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assesment (1997):
Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke

U.S Dept. of Health and Human Services (2002):
10th Report on Carcinogens (revised Dec. 2002)
subsection on tobacco and environmental tobacco smoke:

Surgeon General (1986):
The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking
("examines the scientific evidence on the health effects resulting from nonsmoker exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.")

The original 1964 Surgeon General...
Report on Smoking and Health

The entire CDC database regarding smoking and health can be found here.

Surgeon General, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization, 1992:
Smoking and Health in the Americas
"The countries of North America --the United States and Canada--are in the midst of a major epidemic of smoking-related disease,
including cancer, heart disease, disease, chronic obstructive lung and adverse outcomes of pregnancy. The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean now show evidence of a rising prevalence of smoking, particularly among young people, and in the absence of efforts to decrease tobacco use, are likely to be swept by a similar epidemic."

UK Dept. of Health 1998:
Report of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health

"Am I really causing more health damage than, say, the smog in LA?"
from the WHO:
Report on Secondhand Smoke
"in the US secondhand smoke causes about 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year, compared to less than 100 lung cancer deaths per year from traditional forms of outdoor air pollution."


I don't have a problem with you choosing to shorten your life. I think everyone can make those choices for themselves and shouldn't have to worry about other people or governing bodies trying to take those choices from us. I think it's hypocritical for the goverment to deem suicide an illegal activity yet allow cigarette smoking. It's an addicitive habit that will certainly shorten your life.

I do have a problem with you making me join you in that pursuit without my consent. Which, in case anyone's counting, you don't have. Anyone's noise pollution while talking on a cel phone can be annoying and rude, but does not have to be. You, filling my closed environment (e.g. a restaurant) with smoke known to carry many carcinogens, are directly affecting the quality of my health. My contact lenses will absorb the smoke and cause my eyes to burn for far longer than the period of time when I am in contact with you. My breathing is noticeably affected to a far greater degree by being around smokers than it is just walking around (I, too, live in L.A.) on a normal day. And that goes far beyond annoying or rude.

Funny thing is, I'm not a militant non-smoker. I've just never cared for it. It just appalls me to see self-righteous smokers getting indignant with selfish denial.

__________________
"take me down, little *Susie*, take me down
I know you think you're the Queen of The Underground"

StinkyMnky1

Donkeypuncher Johnson is right!

Drider_it

you know my version goes like this...

smokeing.. outside yes.. inside maybe..

cadillac, mi .. mercy hospital banned all smokeing on the grounds and inside cars on the grounds.. lame..

my beef with it was this.. id rather get in an elevator with a smoker that just smoked.. than the damn idoit lady that took a bath in perfume that morning.. i went before the board and told them that some peps are allergic to perfumes more than those vs. smokers..

with cell phones its thus.. you drive with a cell phone.. you should be shot.. in town in louisiana and michigan it is illegal to talk on a cell phone while pumping gas.. why.. static charges.. you can start a fire faster with a cell phone than with smokes..

__________________
It means only one thing, and everything: Cut. Once committed to fight, Cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. The lines are a portrayal of the dance. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resoultely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don't allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depth of his spirit. It is the balance to life: death. It is the dance with death. It is the law a war wizard lives by, or he dies.