Haliwali:

Exterminatus:
A little on topic, a little off.

I was smoking a fag down at my local bus stop the other day

First off, I think I'm becoming a little dyslexic because at first I read that as "I was a smoking fag..." very different meaning.

Second when people pull crap like that, I usually start doing it just to piss them off. Maybe I'm just a douche like that.

There is always the bill hicks way of responding.....
"Wow thats a really bad cough youve got there, your lucky you dont smoke, I smoke loads and I dont cough half as much as that."

Haliwali:

Spleeni:
Seeing how I have severe Asthma; I feel that I have a special right to be pissy at smokers. Ya' know, punch them if I'm stuck in a line in front of them (if they won't put the damn thing out). But this is a SPECIAL privilege. Bitches don't be getting my privilege. Especially bitches who act like bitches.

Heck just asking politely works well enough. Mentioning you have asthma will probably get the worst chainsmoker to stub it out.
Me, I don't really mind smoke to much.

The problem is that smokers who light up in crowded places have decided that anyone within a 10 foot radius of them is also a smoker, they're taking away my choice not to be a smoker. They should be forced to move, not me, I didn't make the choice to smoke, nether did, for example, my girlfriend standing next to me.

Basically, you wanna destroy your lungs, fine. I already have asthma, don't destroy mine anymore, I shouldn't have to ask, you shouldn't be making my choice for me, go smoke away from people if you must, then it's just between you and your cigarette. Similarly, if you smoke near your children, you've made their choice for them as well, taking away their right to make the decision themselves.

It's a multifacited issue.

I don't smoke, but my closest friends do, and they're actually proud that I don't. I even have my own lighter for when they inevitably lose theirs (I have a fondness for irony). And I just wanna say that these Truth people deserve a punch in their manginas. It's just about the worst kind of self-righteous douchebaggery I can think of these days, up there with vegetarians who look down on you and your ribeye steak. You'd think that "Smoking wrecks your health" would be a strong enough message, but no, they feel the need to scrutinize old quotes from tobacco companies, turn a blind eye to context, and warp Big Tobacco into some kind of Legion of Doom. Who the hell do they think they are?

Freakin' solipsists.

Eiseman:
I don't smoke, but my closest friends do, and they're actually proud that I don't. I even have my own lighter for when they inevitably lose theirs (I have a fondness for irony). And I just wanna say that these Truth people deserve a punch in their manginas. It's just about the worst kind of self-righteous douchebaggery I can think of these days, up there with vegetarians who look down on you and your ribeye steak. You'd think that "Smoking wrecks your health" would be a strong enough message, but no, they feel the need to scrutinize old quotes from tobacco companies, turn a blind eye to context, and warp Big Tobacco into some kind of Legion of Doom. Who the hell do they think they are?

Freakin' solipsists.

Well, uhm, their sole purpose is to sell and making profit from an addictive and harmful product ... i know personal choice and so forth, all fine and dandy, but i side with the maîtres du soupçon on this one, free will has its boundaries (or there is no true free will at all, could be) and i think that chemical substances in your bloodstream that makes your body dependant on these chemicals to function properly is one of them.

Oh, i stopped smoking five weeks ago, my packets of Gauloises said "Liberté Toujours" :p, the irony...

Smoking should not be outlawed. If a person wants to smoke and cut their lives short so be it. As long as their by themselves and harm no one else and I mean NO one else, not their kids, their parents or the stranger on the street and not the insurance company. Huh? The insurance company? What do you mean?

What I mean is that smoking is a self-destructive habit. You're making the decision to fill your body with 3000+ chemicals everyday. We don't even the full sideffects of them all are yet. So if your willingly doing this why should the insurance companies and by extension everybody else be forced to front the bill for all the bullshit that smoking does to your body? The only way I support smoking is that they do alone or in an establishment that caters to them and they don't seek medical insurance for any illnesses that come from it.

wgreer25:

HuCast:
Its not just the people-its the media, the politics and the whole society. Nobody is responsible for anything anymore, its always "the others" fault. Who benefits from this? Insure companies, lawyers and corrupt politicians.

Hit the nail on the head. And you know, it is someone's right to throw thier health away and smoke, because I'm pretty sure that everyone one with half a brain knows that smoking is very bad for you. However, your bad health and second hand smoke does effect me. If you lived a healthier life (no smokeing) insurance rates wouldn't be so damn high and our heal care system wouldn't be bogged down with idots intentionally poisoning themselves.

What he said. This is especially true in countries with universal health care. Smokers who've gotten sick because of it put a strain on a fixed budget, stretching the funds thinner for everyone who needs it.

The_Heretic:
Im a smoker and i know damn well when im in the hospital with lung cancer i'll have no one to blame but myself

That's admirable, but keep in mind that the hospital bed you're lying in could have been occupied by someone with a non-preventable disease.

I have no problem with people who want to smoke or people who don't. What I have a problem with is people who think that they are better than everyone else because they don't. The people behind The Truth strike me as those types of people and their commercials are extremely insulting. It's like they think everyone else is so stupid, that the only way they can get their message across is through brightly colored cartoons and musical numbers.

so when someone makes fun of something u like they are bad? Have a sense of humor? The commercials are stupid, they had alot better ones, basically without the singing. But they can do what they want, if it's bad then it doesn't work and that's what u want right? No reason for u to care too much

MrMisfit:
I have no problem with people who want to smoke or people who don't. What I have a problem with is people who think that they are better than everyone else because they don't. The people behind The Truth strike me as those types of people and their commercials are extremely insulting. It's like they think everyone else is so stupid, that the only way they can get their message across is through brightly colored cartoons and musical numbers.

BTW usually it's people who smoke that think they are better than people who don't, just ask everyone in my highschool.

Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?

vdgmprgrmr:
Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?

I smell logical fallacy!

i know the school system quite well and i must say it's ludacris the boundaiers they push in order to make you think your the most evil person in the world for smoking in stead of a fair unbiased education so the people can make the right choice for themselves.

Also who decided your doing the wrong thing by staying to your self if you drink, smoke, or do other such activities. as long as no one is harmed other than who chooses to be nobody should care.(note i don't mean meth, coke, or crack, i mean pot and it's a kitten compared to the other drugs)

Was it the use of "a bunch of" instead of numbers, the non-proportional statistics, or the second sentence. I wasn't really trying very hard.

If people want to smoke in their own home, that's fine and dandy.

However, speaking as a pub-worker, I applaud the decision to ban smoking in pubs and other public places. It's made the pub where I work a much nicer place for families to come and have a meal. It's made it a heck of a lot better for those of us who work there. And if the smokers really can't wait until they get home to have a fag, they can go outside and light up. I don't see why my health as a pub-worker should be jeopardised by those who want to smoke inside. If you want to have a cigarette, there's plenty of fresh air outside to have one in.

Haliwali:
I work in a store that sells tobacco. We don't sell to minors. The only way a kid could get something is through an adult, who would be knowingly breaking the law. Also, throughout my childhood I have rarely seen a tobacco product or ad aimed, marketed, or suggested in any place a kid would see it.

Where do YOU live? I would pay rent to live there when I have kids to raise.

McDonald's isn't a nicotine delivery system. You can't exercise to negate the effects of substance addiction. Comparing obesity accusations at McDonald's isn't a valid comparison to the tobacco industry.

Thank you for saying it. Big Tobbacco must be paying for these ads, because they are not making me want to stop smoking.

Their greed has corrupted them, and they don't care about people, they care about green paper. They should have heavily regulated on the marketing they can do.

TheNix:
BTW usually it's people who smoke that think they are better than people who don't, just ask everyone in my highschool.

I think you'll find that the opposite is true just about anywhere else, because high school is, and has always been, a poor example of social structure. If there's any smugness coming from high school smokers, it mostly comes from defying the established "authority," who says "follow the rules or else." The thing is, though, when high school's over and said authority is removed, that smugness suddenly loses its edge, and dies out (hopefully, that is; if kids still try to use smoking to look cool post-graduation, that's really pathetic). Besides, all this falls under the dynamic of underage smoking, which is a totally different issue altogether.

It's very different in the adult world; smoking is more about personal gratification. Taking a quick break from a stressful job, enjoying a party, simmering down after some real steamy sex, and of course, satisfying a physiological dependence. No delusional superiority there. That's what I've experienced in my short time in the adult world, though, so somebody else may know better.

vdgmprgrmr:
Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?

Holy shit, is this guy serious?

Darth Mobius:

panthrjd:
I think it all comes down to the lawsuits -- it all started going downhill (to my memory) when that woman sued McDonalds for spilling coffee on herself "because it was hot" and didn't say so, that essentially due to asinine lawsuits, we have to be treated like children now. But more generally, you can thank good ol' Political Correctness for the public's inability to take any responsibility for their own actions anymore.

If you elect Darth Mobius for Escapist President, I promise that asinine lawsuits like that will be punishable by DEATH! VOTE DARTH MOBIUS FOR A MORE INTELLIGENT FUTURE!

If you are going to knock lawsuits, make sure you know the full story. As mentioned earlier, the issue wasn't that she spilled the coffee on herself, but that the coffee was way too hot, hotter than it should have been. The full story.

I live in the state of WA, and a couple years ago there was an initiative to ban smoking in all public locations, as well as within 25 feet of any entrance. To me, these felt like two completely different issues. I don't care if businesses allow smoking - I can avoid them. Keeping smokers away from entrances, however, was enough to make me vote yes by itself. I was attending a technical college at the time, and it was impossible to enter the building without walking through clouds bad enough to obscure vision. In summary, I don't care if you want to kill yourself, as long as you keep it away from me.

And on topic, those TRUTH ads have gotten bad enough that I'll frequently change the channel or simply turn off the tv if they come on.

TheNecroswanson:

Dan-o-mite:

The_Heretic:
Im a smoker and i know damn well when im in the hospital with lung cancer i'll have no one to blame but myself

That's admirable, but keep in mind that the hospital bed you're lying in could have been occupied by someone with a non-preventable disease.

Yes, but I paid my insurance, thus I got the bed. The bed I'll be laying in was paid for by me, unlike the other person who would have been here for free. :P

My point was about universal health care. That said, I wasn't saying that smoker's don't have a right to medical care. Of course if you're paying your medical insurance, you should get your bills paid when you need it. But not being in the hospital helps everyone else seeking help, whether they paid their insurance or not.

Not to mention the point that was already brought up, that people drawing on their insurance means higher insurance rates, which is worse for everybody, especially those that could no longer afford it.

wgreer25:

However, your bad health and second hand smoke does effect me. If you lived a healthier life (no smokeing) insurance rates wouldn't be so damn high and our heal care system wouldn't be bogged down with idots intentionally poisoning themselves.

Dan-o-mite:

Not to mention the point that was already brought up, that people drawing on their insurance means higher insurance rates, which is worse for everybody, especially those that could no longer afford it.

That's not as rock solid a fact as you two might think:

Health care costs for smokers at a given age are as much as 40 percent higher than those for nonsmokers, but in a population in which no one smoked the costs would be 7 percent higher among men and 4 percent higher among women than the costs in the current mixed population of smokers and nonsmokers. If all smokers quit, health care costs would be lower at first, but after 15 years they would become higher than at present. In the long term, complete smoking cessation would produce a net increase in health care costs, but it could still be seen as economically favorable under reasonable assumptions of discount rate and evaluation period.

A similar effect might be true of fat people, that they actually keep the health care system running while it's fit people who drain it of resources above and beyond what they have contributed:

If we somehow figured out a way to "cure" obesity-with a pill, an injection, or a law like the one they're proposing in Mississippi-we'd increase the burden on taxpayers. More people would make it to old age, hastening the Social Security crisis and pushing up the costs of Medicaid. Indeed, the analysis in PLoS Medicine revealed that lifetime health expenditures were highest for healthy-living people of optimum weight.

Like I continue to maintain, the obesity debate (and the smoking debate to a lesser extent) is really just the AIDS debate all over again, which is itself an old story: "the tendency to view...disease as both a punishment for...misconduct and an index of social decay"

[/quote]Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?[/quote]

Well I don't know exactly what's in my pop but pretty sure its not this stuff:
Benzene (petrol additive)
A colourless cyclic hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and in chemical manufacture - and contained in cigarette smoke. It is a known carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia.

Formaldehyde (embalming fluid)
A colourless liquid, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies - also found in cigarette smoke. Known to cause cancer, respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal problems.

Ammonia (toilet cleaner)
Used as a flavouring, frees nicotine from tobacco turning it into a gas, found in dry cleaning fluids.

Acetone (nail polish remover)
Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent, for example, nail polish remover - found in cigarette smoke.

Tar
Particulate matter drawn into lungs when you inhale on a lighted cigarette. Once inhaled, smoke condenses and about 70 per cent of the tar in the smoke is deposited in the smoker's lungs.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) (car exhaust fumes)
An odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas, rapidly fatal in large amounts - it's the same gas that comes out of car exhausts and is the main gas in cigarette smoke, formed when the cigarette is lit.

Arsenic (rat poison), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison)

And as to your arguments that because my food and air may have chemicals in them: people have to eat to survive. We have to breathe air to live. How you ended up at the conclusion that the harm that may come to you from using a luxary product like cigarettes and the possible dangers in performing the tasks needed to survive are equal I don't know.

And while driving is not nessasary to survive it is nessasary to work and perform just about everything needed to function in America's soceity.

First of I whould like to say Hi and that I whouldent have anything against smoking if it was only harmfull to the person smoking, but thats not the case.

vdgmprgrmr:
Yeah, emperordude, smoking fills your lungs with a bunch of chemicals. How many different chemicals do you think are in the soda you drink, the food you eat, or even the air you breathe?

And to all the people complaining that smoke kills you and others, shut up. There is no proof at all that second-hand smoke is harmful. Yeah, smoking can cut your life short by a few years. Look at how short a car can cut your life. How many teens die every year in car-wrecks on average? I wonder how many people were hit by those cars. Cars can kill you and others pretty damn easily, should we stop driving?

1) The chemicals in the smoke is hell of alot more dangerous then the ones in most sodas and the air(as long as it isnt filld with other toxic materials).

2)It is proved that its the smoke thats dengerous and not ciggaret it self, so I whould not say its that ilogical to say that second-hand smoking is dangerous.

3)If you copmare anything with cars in that way you can easily say that its safe for everyone to own a nuke, becuase how many more dosent die from cars then from nukes? What I mean is that cars have a valuable perpous in the world today and when people die in cars its usually)remember that I said usualy and not always) when they do somthing ilegal like driving drunk and if everyone is driving legaly the deathrates should(atlest I thinks so and I got no proof at all for this) be lower then the ones of smoking related deaths while smoking on the other hand dosent provide a very usefull perpous while killing people leagally...

4) somthing I forgot during typing so, F**k it...

EDIT: Oh yhea, sorry for grammar and spelling but english isnt my nativ language...