Smokers (Soon To Be Second-Class Citizens) Apply Here... by deepgirl187

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Smokers (Soon To Be Second-Class Citizens) Apply Here...

POSTED BY: DEEPGIRL187
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 20:11
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 4:41 AM

Ola, all. Long time no see.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/us/27belmont.html?ref=us

In the sunny city of Belmont, California, it would appear they've banned smoking all most everywhere, including privately-owned apartment buildings. Naturally this has caused an uproar. And while I'm not a smoker personally, this has set off a flags for me.

1. Laws like this turn smokers into second-class citizens.

Yes, I know some people will say "well, they chose to smoke, so they deserve it right?" But if they're not going to ban all potentially hazardous materials, things that have just as much a chance of harming people as cigarette smoke does, then this ban should be overturned. Which leads me to my next point.

2. If the government isn't going to make smoking illegal, then laws like this shouldn't be allowed.

In the past few years, restrictive laws like this have done everything but outlaw smoking. If they're going make a law that says smoking's illegal fine; it's not like they haven't done it to many other drugs (which I don't really support, but that's another story). But either criminalize the stuff or actually try to be reasonable about legislation regarding it.

Yes, I'm sure this will open up a huge can of worms, but every time I see something like this, it makes my skin crawl. The government's already hypocritical enough, no reason to add to it.

*************************************************

"This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow."

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:00 AM

DREAMTROVE

Um, quit?
Save you a lot of money, and you can always do without the accelerated decrepitude. The secret is ginseng for the shakes, passion flower when you need a cigarette, as a substitute, up to four times daily. Reduce your number of cigarettes each day, keep a record, and count the time in between cigs, try to make each one longer than the last.

I've known a lot of people who quit. Lifelong, smokers age 20% faster, and hit old age 14 years earlier. Two packs a day is 60/month, or 6 cartons, about $350 a month, which will get you an apt, a car, or move from apt. to house, or just cover all your bills. Or, you can replace with a $4200 a year vacation extravaganza.

But the best part is how much better you feel, and how much more energy you have, when you don't smoke.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:41 AM

CHRISISALL

No, the real way to quit is to associate the bad with smoking. EX: Every time the desire comes to you, drop & do twenty push-ups (or simply punch yourself in the stomach, if you're a fitness nut)...after a few thousand push-ups the desire to smoke will not trump your need to have the push-up monkey off your back. Plus, you'll get in shape too.

But the real point of this thread is the Nanny State regulating what's good for you, even though it can't regulate our financial institutions properly.
As a non-smoker I get less problem from smokers than I EVER get from big diesel trucks, old diesel Mercedes, or school buses. Cigarette smoke is the least of a non-smokers worries at this point IMO.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 6:05 AM

WASHNWEAR

Quote:
Originally posted by deepgirl187:
Ola, all. Long time no see.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/us/27belmont.html?ref=us

In the sunny city of Belmont, California, it would appear they've banned smoking all most everywhere, including privately-owned apartment buildings. Naturally this has caused an uproar. And while I'm not a smoker personally, this has set off a flags for me.

1. Laws like this turn smokers into second-class citizens.

Yes, I know some people will say "well, they chose to smoke, so they deserve it right?" But if they're not going to ban all potentially hazardous materials, things that have just as much a chance of harming people as cigarette smoke does, then this ban should be overturned. Which leads me to my next point.

2. If the government isn't going to make smoking illegal, then laws like this shouldn't be allowed.

In the past few years, restrictive laws like this have done everything but outlaw smoking. If they're going make a law that says smoking's illegal fine; it's not like they haven't done it to many other drugs (which I don't really support, but that's another story). But either criminalize the stuff or actually try to be reasonable about legislation regarding it.

Yes, I'm sure this will open up a huge can of worms, but every time I see something like this, it makes my skin crawl. The government's already hypocritical enough, no reason to add to it.

Thank you, DeepGirl187. Thank you from a smoking Browncoat who ain't exactly proud of the habit and hopes to give it up sometime in the next year. I've felt the 2nd-class-ification of smokers coming on for 5-10 years now, slowly but surely. No smoking in public places, housing for rent to non-smokers only, increasingly unabashed dirty looks from the never-smoked-never-will-just-put-the-filthy-things-down-why-doncha set...and of course the exciting approach of prohibition-through-taxation. So it's nice to see somebody - a nonsmoking somebody, at that - taking a more...fair-minded outlook. I understand peeps objections - hell, I share some of them: Back in the days when restaurants had smoking sections, I could never honestly see how that restaurant wasn't one big smoking section (same x10 for airplanes). Cigarette smoke stains the walls, etc. of rental properties. And sometimes I, a smoker (did I mention that?), will catch a whiff of someone else's 2nd-hand smoke and it ain't exactly a treat.

But as a stand-up comedian I saw once put it (may have been Rosanne), you'd think folks would be nicer to people who are dying.

So thanks for the attitude - I promise not to let you enable me too much...

DreamTrove: The first sentence or 2 of your post had me wanting to go into flame-mode (not that that's anything to get excited about), but you offered some tips, and it sounds like maybe you're a former butt-sucker yourself. I'm gonna check out the passion flower thing - hadn't heard about that before. And thanks for going through the math again that I've done myself I don't know how many times - helps reinforce the obvious conclusion (I'm spending HOW MUCH on this slow death...?! Whddaya mean, I smoked my iPhone?)

ChrisIsAll: Thanks for the perspective. I mean, having some!

It was like that when we got here!

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 6:11 AM

AGENTROUKA

The only place that makes me take notice here are the privately owned apartment buildings. And I see the logic there, too.

The reason for this is the damage that smoke does to a room. The wallpaper, the carpets, the floors.. smoke there long enough and they REEK and show doscoloration. I would prefer that they give smokers the choice to pay for the repairs, of course. Bans should only be possible in places with perhaps antique floors or such. A home, even rented, should still be a home.

But that one I wouldn't apply to the nanny state but rather a law that doesn't favor the rights of renters vs their landlords.

I also don't know how ventilation systems in a modern apartment system might be connected to this.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 7:23 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by WASHnwear:

ChrisIsAll: Thanks for the perspective. I mean, having some!

What? LOL, like I usually don't?

DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!!!

The laughing Chrisisall

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 8:14 AM

FREMDFIRMA

That's an issue with me, especially concerning restaurants which have damn good cause *other* than smoking to have adequate ventilation systems, which they mostly don't.

On an airplane ? completely understandable, but being ripped for smoking by security for University of MD Medical center was over the top given that I was 50 yards from ANY building and across the street besides, and happened to be visiting the LEGAL school at the time...

As for apartments, heck yes, offer the choice to pay extra for the necessary post-occupancy renovations just like a pet deposit and everyones happy.

Me, I got NO intention to quit, if smoking is what kills me I'll laugh all the way to Valhalla since my other health problems and lifestyle are quite sufficient to do me in without any help - and it's MY goddamn choice to do it, one which I take pains to not inflict on anyone else, despite those 'anyone elses' having no problem inflicting their bad habits and the aftereffects thereof upon me.

I put some berk on his ass in the parking lot of six flags over such - he comes up to me, thirty some odd yards away from anyone, and more than ninety from anyone BUT him, and starts giving me shit about how smoking is a bad habit, yadda yadda and won't mind his own damn business...

So I freakin decked him, and I don't feel a bit bad about it - my life and how I live it are MY damn business if it's got no impact on you, and your IDOCY of driving with that cellphone jammed in your ear, or ogling your GPS instead of the road is far more likely to kill me, not to mention your suicidal stupidity in ingesting neurotoxic substances like Aspartame or MSG is far more likely to kill you.

I get the same snark and attitude from holier than thou people about what I eat, as they sit there drinking a diet soda laced with a neurotoxin and nibbling a diet bar loaded with MSG and have the fucking nerve to complain about me eating properly cooked red meat - or from vegans with anemia and poor vision snarking at me for my 'unnatural' diet as they chug the massive dietary supplements required to keep them alive on what THEY choose to eat.

Or my recently-fired Doctor who bitched at me while patching a sprain caused by my bike sliding out from under me in a parking lot, he sits there and tells me I should quit riding 50cc bikes cause it's dangerous...

And I am like, look doc, frankly and statistically, seeing YOU and following YOUR advice is more likely to do me injury in the longterm than riding my puny little bikes, it's proven statistical fact, so how bout we limit my risk another way, shall we ?

And don't EEEeeeven get me started on folks bad habit of pushing their religions at you, which historically has been far more inimical and lethal to humanity as a whole than smoking tobacco ever was.

In the end, it's MY life, and MY business, and until it impacts you in a significant negative way, you can just shut the fuck up or suffer exponential aggression against your own bad habits, not the least of which is...
not. minding. your. own. fucking. business.

And that's just the personal aspect, worse than that is trying to have the freakin Government enforce YOUR morality on others at the next best thing to gunpoint, which is how prohbition and the war on (some)drugs came around in the first place, and the end results are never pretty, are they ?

There's a merit to leaving the hell alone, and some folks damn well need to learn it, I say.

Sorry for the rant, but this is a berserk button for me, not smoking per se, so much as other people trying to interfere with or run my life the way THEY see fit, against my will, and all "for my own good", yeah, right...

I feel anyone who feels the need to forcibly control others lives should be the first to be locked up in a nice safe place with rubber walls, no shoes or belt and nice soft crayons and paper to play with - cause that's where this shit ends, locked in neat little cells like that save for when they let us out to slave away for the profit and benefit of the folks running the place, who I guarantee you will never submit themSELVES to such an indignity.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 8:37 AM

WASHNWEAR

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:
Originally posted by WASHnwear:

ChrisIsAll: Thanks for the perspective. I mean, having some!

What? LOL, like I usually don't?

DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!!!

Twenty what? Cigarettes? That's like a whole pack, man!

But seriously - no, you've got tons of perspective. If perspective was horses, you'd be riding morning, noon, and night. I meant on this particular issue.

It was like my health was endangered by second-hand perspective when we got here!

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 9:20 AM

DREAMTROVE

Chris,

Exactly. Not fair in frem's case, but it does no one's health any good. Still, I'm not a preacher man, just delivering the information: The above method works. I know, because I knew a lot of smokers who gave me the same reaction of it's my damned right. Sure, but it's gonna help make life suck. The main problem with smoking is the one that never gets mentioned: It reduces blood oxygen flow. This is like purposefully giving yourself a mild case of leukemia every day. And paying some big greedy corporation and an extra fatty tax for the right to do so. I don't try to talk heroin addicts out of their choice, odds are, they're already dead, there's no use. But I do show them the door, if they're interested, is all.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:01 AM

DEEPGIRL187

Thanks everyone for their responses. It's been ages since I've actually had a political discussion online that didn't devolve into flaming within a few posts (course, I may be shooting myself in the foot by saying that

).

I'm not trying to debate the health issues of smoking (it's pretty clear that it's not the healthiest thing in the world); I'm more concerned about how it's handled from a legal standpoint. To me it's a violation of a person's civil rights. And every time I see another article about smoking bans, I start to wonder what they're going to come down on next. Because if you really think about it, there are tons of habits (chemical-related and otherwise) that could easily be legislated against, if you found enough people with an axe to grind. Some might say that it's highly improbable for laws to be enacted against something like say, yodeling, but the last few years especially have taught me that the things we take for granted can easily be taken away, often before we realize they're gone.

*************************************************

"This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow."

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:12 AM

KIRKULES

I was going to read a few more threads, but all this talk of smoking has given me the urge to smoke a Punch Double Corona with a few Sam Adams for refreshment. If I die while doing so, I'll die a happy man.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:21 AM

STORYMARK

On the one hand, I'm all for personal freedom, on the other, I don't think anyone should have to breath someone else's bad habit.

Now, the fact is, right now I do smoke, but I try to be considerate about it, go away from non-smokers and such. Hell, I don't even smoke in my own home, most of the time.

I do this because, when I'm not smoking (I go through cycles) I HATE the smell.

Banning it from private homes, or businesses is taking it too far. I don't mind if a resturant says no smoking, but I think they should be allowed to allow it if they want. Same for homes. Outdoors... well, the Frem solution wouldn't be the first place I'd go, but it would be on the table.

Of course, they're about to raise the cigarette tax in my state by another dollar (it's already at 90 cents), so I should probably quit (again) anyway.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:33 PM

DREAMTROVE

Personally, no real objection to second hand smoke. Yes, it's toxic, but you'll find it in places where there are cars, probably a deep fat fryer too... You catch my drift

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:44 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The main problem with smoking is the one that never gets mentioned: It reduces blood oxygen flow. This is like purposefully giving yourself a mild case of leukemia every day.

I'd never heard it put quite so perfectly before.

The impressed Chrisisall

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 1:08 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Smokers are already the Biggest Losers.

1 pack/day = $100,000 lifetime tobacco expense USA
2 pack/day = $200,000 kifetime tobacco expense USA
$350,000 lifetime tobacco expense Europe

Even this is cheaper than some prescription drug addicts (non-narcotic non-addictive), with lifetime drug costs over $500,000/year in USA.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 3:10 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Well those cost estimates are presuming you're fool enough to buy them premade and prepackaged via corporate sources and then pay the gov their cut, and sales tax on the entire price which amounts to being taxed on a tax, isn't that neat ?

Hell if I am that kinda fool - I get bulk lots from various sources and make my own from actual tobacco without various respray or chemhancements, not just cause of the above reasons, but in my experience I have learned that the longer and more convoluted the chain is from raw material to packaged product, the less safe and/or trustworthy it is.

Tobacco ain't "safe" in the first place, mind you - but you get my drift, and having outlived ALL of my fellow classmates who preferred either more illicit substances, or prettymuch the same substances from "officially approved" sources, I think tobacco was a better bet.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 3:33 PM

DEADLOCKVICTIM

Smoking KILLS..... end of story, end of life....

yes, i smoked - way back there in my starving construction worker days between semesters - Rum soaked Crooks... a tasty cigar.

One day, late for work, I stubbed one out in the ashtray of my car...
yep, sure enough a little later we saw smoke in the parking lot. That cigar KILLED my prized '63 VW..... killed it dead. I quit that day.

.....but I have to admit that a couple tokes before bedtime is a very effective sleep aid....

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:39 PM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by deadlockvictim:

.....but I have to admit that a couple tokes before bedtime is a very effective sleep aid....

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 8:11 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Well those cost estimates are presuming you're fool enough to buy them premade and prepackaged via corporate sources and then pay the gov their cut, and sales tax on the entire price which amounts to being taxed on a tax, isn't that neat ?

[snark]Ya, well, I was starting with people who smoked, so they had already made one lapse in judgment :)[/snark]

Actually, the additives are the most toxic thing in them. But the smoke inhalation does a number on your blood oxygen. Can cut you down to the low 90s, that never good.

[edit] Mourning the loss of a 63 VW.

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