Ban Smoking

I smoke a pipe. Well I did, I just burned up my good one somehow. Ah well, back to corn cobs for a bit. But I digress.

Second smoke is so last week dontcha know, these days we're being told that it is "third hand" smoke that is the killer, apparently evil smokers leave toxic odors in carpets, drapes, and on their clothes that then seeps out and kills....

Interesting. Esp when you think about how toxic lead is supposed to be.

In theory, one can try smoking dried tomato leaves. They have lots of nicotine in them.

Fire safe cigarettes, now mandated by law, taste nasty to me and gave me headaches. (Anyone in Mexico or some other second/third world country feel like bartering? I miss real cigarettes.) That's why I switched to a pipe. Thanks to the good folks at Walgreens, I can get big bags of eh, more or less tolerable, tobacco for 11 dollars. It works.

Were I to make laws, I'd make smoking mandatory. Tobacco is after all the taste of freedom. Grown in America by American farmers, and packaged and distributed by other Americans. (Been working on my sound bites don't you know...) Not only is smoking patriotic, but manly and virtuous as well. See those old WW2 movies? The GIs always had a Camel or a Lucky Strike handy. Today's generation of feminized video game players, nary a smoke to be seen, but many a twinkie or empty bag of Fritos. Think that's an improvement?
 
GatorFarmer said:
Were I to make laws, I'd make smoking mandatory.
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Why not just make mandatory suicide the law?

Faster, less painful, and does not incur a lot of medical costs and Cyanide is a lot cheaper to buy that cigarettes.

You want to commit slow suicide then it is your choice. I do not force you to eat twinkies (I don't eat them either) or other junk food, so do not force me to partake in your choice of death by my breathing in your smoke.

As for the littering of cigarette butts, I have called the police to report people as littering for throwing their butts out the window, including a policeman several years ago. The first time I saw him I went up to his window and very politely asked him to not litter by throwing his butt out the window. He drove away without picking it up. The second time I called the non-emergency number to report him. I then sent the chief a letter stating what I saw but never heard back. I did hear the chief told the officer to stop littering. If he did or not, I do not know as I moved to another city.
 
All sarcasm aside, you all do realize we're dealing with an insidious addiction here, don't you?
I smoked 1 to 1-1/2 packs of Marlboros a day from when I was 17 until I was 37. Twenty years. I quit for 5 years and in a weak moment, I had "just one."
I bought a carton on the way home.

Even though I knew it was a horrible mistake it took me another 13 years to gather the courage to quit again. I'm now "sober" for almost a year.
Gallup reported in 2007 that 21% of Americans smoke. 79% of that group consider themselves addicted.
Smokers don't need to be treated like lepers, they need treatment.

To those of you with your holier-than-thou attitude: I can only hope you have plenty of replacement panes for that glass house you live in.
 
I've never smoked - I remember when I was in the third grade (I'm 51 now) and an anti-smoking film strip (remember those? I loved film strips!) showed a nice pink healthy lung and a smoker's lung that looked like it was leaking 10W30. I don't know if it prevented anyone else from smoking, but it sure as hell worked on me.

I couldn't possibly care less if people smoke in their own car or house. I don't even care if you blow smoke in your own kid's faces. Just don't smoke in my house or blow smoke in my kid's faces.

I have an older sister who has been hospitalized for breathing problems. She's had the usual admonishments from her doctor. She smokes all day and is on oxygen all night. Her house stinks, and her otherwise nice Lincoln Navigator is filthy with smoke and butts.

I let her smoke on my porch. I probably shouldn't, but I do. She can't watch a whole movie without going outside to smoke. Immediately after she finishes a meal she has to smoke. She won't go visit our brother in Hawaii because she can't smoke on a plane, so she has never seen her niece or nephew. (I have - they're adorable, and Hawaii is gorgeous.) She has a 19 year old son who has been smoking since he was 14.

She insists she's not addicted. Once, when she was out of smokes, I found her on her hands and knees poking in my bushes for butts to smoke. (Like almost every smoker in my experience she and her kid must flip at least 10 percent of their butts in the bushes rather than use the ashtray.) I asked her if she was sure she wasn't addicted. She had been jonesing for a while - she looked up at me all red-faced and screeched "I SMOKE BECAUSE I LIKE IT!"

She won't last long at this rate. Then she can join my Mom (life-long secret smoker) and my brother (life-long smoker, dead at 56) in their urns on the mantle.

My dad, who quit smoking on the advice of his doc a few years after coming home from WWII, is still perking along at 86.
 
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why can you get pot seeds all day long but you cant get tobacco seeds?cause they cant tax the pot, i dont care if they stop selling cigarettes but i got to have my COPENHAGEN yea i know its not good for me but its good to me! if they outlaw everything thats bad for us what would be left?
 
Banning smoking in the workplace is the best thing employers ever did if for no other reason than housekeeping. Now that workplace smoking is done outside there are a few slob smokers that give all smokers a bad name by continuing to flip their butts all over their employers property. I wonder if they do that at home? My own take on the situation is that it is a spiteful tactic done in resentment over not being allowed to smoke wherever they like.
 
michael thornton said:
why can you get pot seeds all day long but you cant get tobacco seeds?cause they cant tax the pot, i dont care if they stop selling cigarettes but i got to have my COPENHAGEN yea i know its not good for me but its good to me! if they outlaw everything thats bad for us what would be left?
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I dipped Copenhagen for ten years, and quit about ten years ago. Biggest reason I quit was PRICE. I just put it down, and never picked it up again. But, God, I do miss it some days! Especially on road trips or at the good 'ole Birmingham Collectors show!
 
Got to side with OCD1 here - just once, I'd like to see someone smoking outside, or in a car, who when they were done, didn't just flip the butt onto the ground, or out the window ........... I've participated in multiple beach cleanups, and the item most collected is always cigarette butts. It's obvious that anyone who's dumb enough to buy tickets in the cancer/heart disease/emphysema lottery can't read the warning on the pack - just as they've never read a "NO LITTERING" sign.
How about it, smokers ? Maybe if you could pick up after yourselves, you'd generate a little more support for your legalized addiction .......
And in terms of addiction, did you know that the odds of quitting heroin (and staying off it) are ten times better than that of tobacco ?
 
loutent said:
That is a sad story.

When you say "research has shown...." could you provide a link to what research you are referring to? As I said earlier, I have done quite a bit of my own research on second hand smoke and most of the sensational conclusions are just that - repeated and quoted so often that everyone just accepts it - I see it repeated over and over on the "news".

Not to be argumentative here and of course we all agree that second hand smoke smells bad and the butts are worse, but most if not all of the studies that were done over many, many years to thousands and thousands of adults have shown no adverse medical effect. I would like to read a real research report that does.
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You didn't ask me, but... I am skeptical of government reports, statistics and such. Frankly, I wouldn't know how to read the detail on a ten year study to know what it meant anyway. However, I read people fairly well. I can say without any doubt in my mind whatsoever that those tobacco executives testifying to Congress about how their product had not been proved to cause cancer or addiction... THEY WERE FULL OF BALONEY!

I did my own ten second test with tobacco in high school. Burned my eyes, nose and throat. Immediately made me cough and gag, became light headed and felt like I was going to vomit. The notion that it might cause various forms of cancer or might be addictive just wasn't enough of a bonus to keep puffing. ;)
 
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The problem with smokers-and, perhaps, I am generalizing a bit, is that they seem to be very discourteous. They throw their butts on the ground and, if you have ever been to a Winn Dixie in the south, the parking lot resembles an ashtray.

At stop lights and stop signs, they throw their butts out the window and many do so as they drive down the road.

A few years ago, Florida banned most smoking in businesses. I was glad. In the past, secretaries would walk into my office with a cigarette (but not for long) or wander down the halls smoking.

Unfortunately, with the ban, came the smoking by the front door. My favorite restaurant gets less and less of my business since I have to pass through a wave of smoke to enter or leave.

And, smokers smell. I know they don't realize it, but they do.

My mother and grandfather both died of emphysema (take that off the list of ways YOU want to go) and still smoked till right before their deaths.

I don't like the idea of our government banning something like this, but if they did, I wouldn't lose a moment of sleep over it.

Bob
 
If you're 50 or over you're probably more tolerant of smoking/smokers. If your blue collar or work outdoors most of time, you're more tolerant of smoking/smokers. If your from the south you're likely more tolerant of smokers. If your a minority you're more tolerant of smoking/smokers. Lump all these categories together and one would think they would command the majority and be able to bring pressure to bear that would support some "smokers rights". That ain't happening since most people have sided on the anti smoking side. Don't "beat me up here" since I don't back either side. Since over twice the number of people live here in the U.S. as when I was born in '47, I believe the population explosion has a direct effect on the matter.
 
Is the right to smoke any less of a right than the right to own firearms or the right to drink alcohol? The trouble with rights is that we are all for them - except for the ones that we don't like. Then we are okay with restricting those. It doesn't work that way. If you take one away you erode them all. Most politicians want to take away your rights. It depends on if they are liberal or conservative as to which ones they are after.
 
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To quote M1Gunner (and I'm not picking on you personally)
" Don't smoke, but don't mind if someone else does. The "second hand smoke" issue is BS, IMHO. I have seen the good the Tobacco Industry has done for the states where it operated. Many families fed and clothed, schools, churches, and hospitals built, billions upon billions of taxes paid. And hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs (many with benefits)".
Unfortunately, those jobs and tax dollars are more than canceled out by the cost of tobacco-related health care and lost productivity from absentee workers. Health costs alone run from 50 to 70 BILLION per year, and the lost productivity from absentee workers runs over 40 BILLION a year. Since smoking is more prevalent in the lower-income population (read as no health care benefits), the goverment (that means you) has to pick up the costs. And whether you're a smoker or not, you are subsidizing smokers through increased health care costs.
By the way, ever notice how smokers seem to need more breaks during work ? Outlawing tobacco won't work - we don't need another failed war on drugs. But as self-destructive habits go, it's right up there at the top of the list...........
M1Gunner - again - don't take this personally - not trying to start a flame war here.
check out /www.tobacco-facts.info/cost_to_society.htm or just search "tobacco related health costs"
 
I used to smoke years ago, but quit the damn things, so I understand the addiction. I'm not against smokers at all, when they are smoking outside it doesn't bother me a bit. What does bother me, as others have said, is all the damn butts everywhere. At the factory where I work there are smoking areas outside, with receptacles, but people still toss their butts on the ground. It looks very trashy, these kind of smokers are not helping their cause at all. I'm not for banning smoking, just wish the smokers would clean up after themselves.
 
michael thornton said:
why can you get pot seeds all day long but you cant get tobacco seeds?cause they cant tax the pot, i dont care if they stop selling cigarettes but i got to have my COPENHAGEN yea i know its not good for me but its good to me! if they outlaw everything thats bad for us what would be left?
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It is sold as "Nicociana" a night blooming flower.
 
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