Patricia has asthma, and when someone lights up around her, she sometimes has problems. So do not try to tell me that secoind hand smoke is not a problem.
Yeah I am sure that what ever little they pay covers all the meds and lung surgeries they have to have. The only thing good about smoking is that it is one of the few ignorant habits that the ignorance?s ends up killing you any ways. Darwin theory in motion? As a matter of fact I love smokers… What a better excuse to get rid of people who can not seem to take control of them selves anyways. I wish there were more legal addictions to thin out the herd of such people. So Mike smoke all you like. If I have to pay higher deductions to thin out the herd of such people than maybe it is not all the bad. I will stop calling it health insurance and just Darwin taxes. Thanks for the enlightenment
That’s not true! Not all bar and club owners and employees like smoking. My girlfriend works in a fine-dining restaurant that has a bar where smoking is allowed. She, and other employees, can’t stand the smell of smoke or having to work around people who are smoking. The reason most bars and clubs allow people to smoke is because smokers tend to light up when they are drinking. So it’s a double-edge sword. Drinking and smoking tend to go together. Two health problems in the making. As for insurance, you better believe that the bad habits of others are causing health insurance to climb. Sure, smokers may pay more for SOME of their insurance, but when you’re a part of a group, it has a cumulative effect on everyone employed! And when you work for a company that pays most or all of your insurance, this can be a problem after a while since insurance rates climb each year. Eventually, people (like myself) that are healthy end up having to pay more for insurance due to the unhealthy habits of others. And yes, we pay more taxes because of all these health problems related to smoking, obesity, diabetes and other diseases. Diseases that could all be prevented if people stopped eating so much sugar and white flour products. Problems that were not prevalent until after the “industrial revolution.”
The focus here is very simple. You want the things you don’t like banned and punished, but you want everybody to stay out of your buisness if it is something you like. Well I’d like to introduce you to the real world.Shit don’t work that way. Once you start banning something the barn door is open and everything will get banned. For instance, I bought a protien bar at Kroger for a quick snack, I was carded for it!
As for asthmatics, my sympathy is with them, but the fact is pollution of any kind will aggrivate the asthma. Just come to Georgia in the spring. Most Asthmatic would tolerate a room full of cigar smoke better than a walk out side when the pollen levels are 5000% above normal. The fact of the matter on second hand smoke is that while it may smell bad, there is not one single solitary shred of evidence that it is harmful, particularly in small doses. All the evidence is anecdotal.
If you want to live in a world free from polutants start yourselves. Stop driving anything with an internal combustion engine. An electric car is only an option if you local power plant is not a coal or oil burning plant 'case charing you car up will cause extra strain on the power plant resulting in more fuel burned. Don't burn wood in your fire place. And finally don't buy anything that is made in factory that require the use of fossil fuels to run the machinery. Do this, then bitch about smokers making your world smell bad. Otherwise, quit whining. There are bigger problems in the world other than getting anoyed by a brief encounter with second-hand smoke. Or hell get annoyed but don't go lobbying to get it banned. We in the sport of lifting have many sacred cows that we don't want touched and would be affected by a domino-effect where all the do-gooders of the world will try to make our lives better by taking away things we enjoy as well as things we don't. All in the name of good health!
Nate Dogg: Fair enough…although this could easily lead us into a discussion on how much involvement the state should have in individual affairs. If the state did not make itself so responsible for self-inflicted injuries (i.e., from smoking), then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about taxes being raised to pay for other people’s poor choices.
One thing, though, on that topic...why the hell are individual states suing tobacco companies? (OK, OK, I know why...Money) The federal government and most if not all states make more of a profit from taxation on each cigarette pack than the tobacco companies do, so where the hell is all that money going?
My primary interest in this debate is to counter the argument that the state should micromanage the lives of individuals. As others above have stated, sure there could be good reasons to ban one given substance, and since said substance might not affect most people on this board, people here would at best ignore the debate and at worst support such regulations. Yet the same people who support such regulations will often be the FIRST people to start moaning and groaning if the state turned its eyes towards something cherished by this particular community (*cough*ephedrine*cough*). And what a surprise...there won't be anyone around to help you fight your fight because everyone else is so factionalised towards passing laws that match their particular behavior patterns rather than examining the greater importance of liberty for all people. I'm not saying that the state has no purpose and should not consider public safety, but someone has to take a stand SOMEWHERE against the liberties removed from people every day across this and other countries. I may be wrong about one battle or another, but I still think the overall fight is a good one.
AMEN BROTHER…Thanks for saying what I have been trying to say, but completely unsuccessfully. My whole goal is the preservation of civil liberties. Civil liberties are by definition the right to do things other people may not like.
It seems to me that many people get on a band wagon to get things banned or made illegal because they are things that they themselve do not like, but when the spotlight gets turned on them, all the sudden their rights are being violated.
To protect your right to live as you wish, you must also protect the rights of people who do things, engage in activities you do not like. We all have to live together, we might as well put up with one another. You can see the effects of micromanaging the lives of individuals in the middle east. They live clean and are the most sober people on earth. They are also the most violent and hateful motherfuckers this wolrd has ever known. That is what intolence of other people gets you.
"..and the trees were all kept equal, by hatchet, axe and saw" - Rush, Hemispheres -1978
You both seem to be missing the point here. Your choice to smoke in public infringes on my right to a smoke free environment. Yes, there should be a ban on smoking in public places, including bars and clubs. I happen to think more people would go to bars and clubs if they were smoke free. 2nd hand smoke does affect health, gee, why are there so many flight attendants with lung cancer, I don’t know? Supplements and smoking are different. If I take andro or ephedrine in public, in a restaurant, what effects will be put on you? Ahh, that’s right, nothing. No toxins to you or anything. So there is the inherent difference. If you want to smoke, do it at your house. And if I want andro, steroids, or ephedrine, I’ll take them at my house. Personally, I don’t give a shit about ephedrine, take it away, put an age limit to 21, that seems logical to me. This would prevent bonehead teenagers from using it. I am 20, so I was one of those bonehead teenagers. So, have fun with your smoking at home, just don’t expect me to donate a fucking lung to you when yours fail to work.
Could we dispense with the childish responses that assume that anyone who could possibly take a stand against the regulation of a substance, such as cigarettes, must automatically be a cigarette smoker? That’s part of the whole BS soft-brain mentality I’m talking about.
Harmon – Sorry, but you just illustrated my point. YOU don’t care about ephedrine, so it’s ok for it to be regulated to the point that only a 21 year old can take it. Ah, yes, I’m sure the universe would be perfect if everything you had no personal interest in were banned…forgive me if I say piss off.
I think this is a great idea. I recently went to a concert with TOOL and I had to leave and go get some asthma medication from my car the fucking cigerette and pot smoke was so bad. And even then I really couldn’t enjoy the concert cause my eyes were watering and I had to concentrate on breathing. Pretty bad for a place that had “no smoking” signs posted everywhere, not only that, but I had problems breathing for the next 2 days as a result of trying to listen to a bad for less than 2 hours. Now if that isn’t an infringment on my rights I don’t know what is.
Where do you get that you have a right to a smoke free envronment? You do not own the air outside. Public is public, you do not entrisically have a right to determine what that environment will be or what it will contain. You can choose to be in the environment or to leave it. Don’t like bars that allow smoking, don’t go there. Don’t like restaurants that allow smoking, don’t go there. It’s simple.
Your assertion that smoking should be banned publically because it affects health is very narrow. By that logic you would want to remove all things that were detrimental to public health. That covers just about everything. The world is not an antiseptic place. It is a filthy disease ridden imediment to good health. Smoke from cigarretes, cigars, and pipes are but a tiny fraction of the problem. You simply cannot look at public smoking and ignore all other public health hazards if you are going to ban smoking in the interest of good health.
I think we have gotten way to cozy with our freedom in this country. Perhaps a little oppresion would teach us a lesson. You don't really see to many former-communist countries desperate to ban anything. They value their freedom because they know what it is like not to have it. We need to value our freedom a little more and worry a little less what our fellow americans are doing. If we were to out law everything that bothers somebody else we would not be able to do anything, because everybody bothers somebody, if you don't you must be dead.
Wow. I may be mistaken, but I think your last paragraph was the first thing you and I have ever agreed on. Very well said.
Thanks ~karma~…but I have always felt very close to you. I know more about your vagina than I know about my wife’s 
Besides, we aggree that hockey is a tougher sport than football, which makes to things we aggree on.
Many of my comments here tend to be smart-ass and an attemptto trivialize the question at hand because I think there are alot of people worried about to much trivial shit either about themselves or others...Questions like this: "Is my dick weird because it is 50 cm long with an a radius of 2 cm at the base and 4 cm and the head and a volume of about 4 liters...." - 'yes it is wierd, cut it off and spare the world of this horror'. "My girlfriend cheated on me with the entire football team, but she says she wants to get make it up to me what should I do?" - 'Dump the bitch'. In fact we'd probably aggree on more than you think...The sad thing is that I don't just talk like this on an anonymous board, I actually say shit like this in person too.
I can’t believe this. So no you people question second hand smoke being harmfull? Are you kidding with me? I feel insulted by this thread. Yesterday I went to a bar for about one hour. I had to leave due to the smoke. I had one more sleepless night, do you Pat, Elegua and the rest, have any ideia what is it like to be slowly suffocated and having to concentrate really hard just to be able to breathe? Do you know what is it like to have chest pain for a couple of days because of all the tension that you had to generate to be able to fucking breathe? Do you know what is it like to having to stop for air after GOING DOWN two flights of stairs like I had to today?
Your points are among the most idiotic I have ever heard on this forum. And believe me in the couple of years I have been here I heard plenty of dumb shit.
Comparing banning smoking to banning pro hormones doesn’t make any sense. And believe me if pro hormone users were forcing everyone else to ingest them, including children and sick people (like me), like smokers do I would be the first to demand banning. I guess you never heard of that sentence that goes “one man freedoom ends were the next man freedoom starts”. Does this ring a bell? Or not? Do you understand that people healths must be respected? Jesus, you got me furious…I’ll finish this thread before I start letting more of the anger I fell for smokers to come trough and end up insulting all you pro smokers.
On a side not I find what is modern Japan very interesting. In short they have some major fucking economic problems. They are in a deflationary collapse as in the Great Depression. Asset values (real estate, stock market)are falling. The governments fiscal (massive public works) and monetary policy (0%-1% interest rates) are not working. Pretty soon the Japanese will have more to worry about than cigarette butts and second hand smoke.
Gee Restless, It sounds like you should lose some weight and get in shape if you have that much trouble breathing.
If the bar that you were in gave you that much trouble, don't go there, problem solved.
Nobody ever said second hand smoke wasn't bad for you, only that there is no evidence that it is bad for you. Evidence on such a thing is nearly impossible to gather.
I have asthma and second hand smoke bothers me. So I try to avoid places with second hand smoke. Easy enough, right? I can’t find bars that are smoke free in my area so I either don’t go to bars, or I go to a bar with medication and suck it up (pardon the pun).
I presume you didn’t see my post were I typed I am an asthmatic. I think there’s no need to adress your post with any other comments.
You guys both seem to be missing the point about smoking. First, second-hand smoke does cause harm to others. I don’t have the references handy, but they exist. Furthermore, evidence that is “anecdotal” (like what ko said) isn’t necessarily untrue. Any asthmatic will tell you that smoking causes a reaction. So let’s lay that particular point to the side, shall we?
Second (and this is the real point), comparing a ban on smoking to a ban on ephedra is not logical, as ephedra doesn’t harm anyone else, while smoking within a certain proximity does. I think it’s pretty easy to draw a distinction between banning behaviors that are harmful to others and behaviors that are harmful to no one or only to oneself. Conflating these two categories doesn’t seem to serve any purpose at all other than to muddy the argumentative waters. If you really want to argue that anyone should have the legal right to do anything they want, then I guess you’d have to support random murder as well. (After all, if it makes someone feel good…) I kind of doubt that anyone is really prepared to take that position.
Third, yes, you’re right in that we should not only ban smoking in public but auto fumes and so on as well. Guess what? There is a long history now of legislation that is attempting to do exactly that - and it’s slowly but surely coming into being. So where’s the discrepancy? I don’t see it.
Fourth, I live in Japan, where there is less “freedom”, both legally and politically, as measured by pretty much any standard, than there is in the States. And you know what? It ain’t bad. There’s less crime, for one thing. Better academic performance for another. More social stability. And - anecdotally, from my own experience - people generally seem happier/more content. And all that stuff about Japanese people not being “creative”? Don’t believe it. Japan has its fair share of Nobel laureates, just like Britain and France and the US. So I don’t believe Pat’s middle eastern example holds much water. There are religious reasons for the violence there that have nothing at all to do with micromanagement by the government.
Any comments?
Char: ANY asthmatic or person who regularly get migraines. Which I am one! And I HATE, HATE, HATE, smoking. Anyone I care about that quits smoking, I make sure I’m there for them. For support. Anyone who just says “I’m thinking of quitting smoking” - I’m there for 'em.
AND, Japan's also produced some (if not THE), most beautiful woodblock prints. As well as some of the most beautiful pottery.
The title says it ALL!