Please don't smoke... - by Strangeblue
SlyFoxx on 11/7/2006 at 04:21
Quote:
It's not like if you binge, you'll be dead in 5 years. It doesn't work like that.
But many in the anti-smoking camp would argue that second hand smoke kills thousands or more before they reach the age of 5. I know infants and adults are different but I just don't buy the level of danger. People can't smoke in 99% of all public places. I don't have a problem with that. It's the last 1% that anti-smokers are nazi-like about. I mean the pub for Christ's sake! If you bring your infant to the pub, then I would submit that your infant has a bigger problem than my smoke!:erm:
It was convict who set me off...funny...we agree on lots of other things IIRC.
:sly:
Nicker on 11/7/2006 at 04:50
Coming here to whine about the whiners is a bit of twat – kettle – black thingy, wouldn’t you say?
I thought your post contained enough self-evident twattery not to require a detailed response but if you insist;
If you made a hundred people wander city streets at rush hour, blindfolded, several would probably survive after an hour or two. Does this prove that crossing the street blindfolded is harmless? Of course not.
People who eat too much only directly harm themselves, not everyone sitting within fifty feet of them. Just because something else (anything else) might be, in any other way harmful, doesn’t make smoking in public harmless.
Many things are harmful when misused but tobacco is one of the few products which is more harmful when used as intended.
Smoking and smoking related materials (lighters and matches used specifically by smokers) are the number one cause of home fires and thus the leading cause of deaths and injuries from such fires. Smoking kills in many ways, and not just the smokers.
Smoking adversely affects the development of infants and fetuses. Does it have to kill them to be bad?
Smoking kills over three-hundred and fifty-thousand people a year in the USA. More than two 9/11’s a week. That’s got to be worth ‘whining’ about.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, try making a little bit of sense before you start labeling other people twats…
Agent Monkeysee on 11/7/2006 at 05:15
there were these kids on the street and they were smoking and they were bad they would smoke all day and they taught this dog to smoke and the dog would beg for cigarettes those bad kids sure did smoke
PigLick on 11/7/2006 at 07:31
this is some kind of allegory isnt it? YOU were the dog.
Rogue Keeper on 11/7/2006 at 08:33
Quote Posted by Convict
From what I hear there are a lot more ppl in Europe who smoke and it includes better educated and richer ppl so the argument about tobacco tax being a tax on the poor only may not apply to Europe.
What is clear that most European countries, North America and Australia are on about the same level in cigarettes consumption ((
http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/atlas8.pdf) WHO Stats), however smoking seems to take (
http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/atlas11.pdf) lesser death toll in Australia.
(Oh, and I like this cynical joke... or it was a serious statement? :
"With a general lenghtening of the expectation of life we really need something for people to die of..." - Report for Tobacco Advisory Council, 1978)
Regular cigarette smoking is prevailent in lower middle class and downclasses, who care less about social trends and "fashion" pushed by high society, have worse access to information and awareness of smoking risks because of worse education. Educated and well endowed people may just have different smoking habits, not everybody has to smoke regularly, some smoke just cigars, some smoke from pipes "recreationally". That's just my assumption, however even former UK Health Secretary John Reid believes that smoking is speciality of the poor:
Quote:
Let poor smoke, says health secretary
Patrick Wintour and Colin Blackstock
Wednesday June 9, 2004
The Guardian
(
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,11032,1234608,00.html)
The health secretary, John Reid, angered health campaigners and anti-smoking groups when he said yesterday that smoking is one of the few pleasures left for the poor on sink estates and in working men's clubs.
Mr Reid said that the middle classes were obsessed with giving instruction to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and that smoking was not one of the worst problems facing poorer people.
"I just do not think the worst problem on our sink estates by any means is smoking, but it is an obsession of the learned middle class," he said. "What enjoyment does a 21-year-old single mother of three living in a council sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they have is to have a cigarette."
(...)
His statement provoked an angry reaction from anti-smoking campaigners. A spokesman for the anti-smoking group Ash said: "It's incredibly patronising to talk about smoking in this way. The argument is that we should have smoke-free work environments. John Reid has got this hang-up about the middle class imposing itself on the lower class, when it's the least empowered, people like bar workers, who are having smoking imposed on them."
According to Ash, men in socio-economic groups AB are twice as likely to reach the age of 70 as those in groups DE, with smoking being the biggest contributing factor. Women in social class 5 are almost twice as likely to die from lung cancer as women from social class 1.
(...)
He argued these people really needed help by changing the fundamental social conditions which led them to smoke. "My argument is that empowerment is different from instruction. You have got to be very careful that you do not say to the 75-year-old that 'you are better off if you are not going to be able to go to a working men's club and smoke'."
The British Medical Association said that it was surprised by Mr Reid's remarks, but it would continue to lobby for a ban. "Quite apart from the individual damage to smokers, there's passive smoking to consider. It isn't just damage they do themselves, it's the damage they do to others."
Reid makes some good points, no matter how much it outrages these anti-smoking movements. But it usually is so when someone implies an inconvenient truth.
Quote Posted by Convict
I don't have a problem with taxpayers footing the bill for ppl's illnesses to a reasonable degree, however footing the bill for ppl who decide to smoke when they knew it would only damage their health (ok yes make them cooler apparently) seems unfair.
Many people do bad things to their health even though they know they are bad for their health and they don't have to be smokers. People voluntarily have unhealthy nutrition and after some time they have digestion tract problems and cancer. People also know the exhalations of their cars go into the air they breathe, fall on the vegetables they eat, get into the food chain and damage health of themselves and other people in the long run. Still, they don't have problem driving their cars and produce more exhalations every day.
Your position is logical, unfortunately somehow short-sighted.
Quote Posted by Keeper Mallinson
"Billions of"? Oh now really.
Sorry, few dozens of millions, I suspect.
Quote:
I mean, I don't have to sit right beside a tail pipe as it blows in my face.
No, you really don't have to. Toxic emissions will find you sooner or later. :cheeky:
Convict on 11/7/2006 at 13:06
BR is there any evidence that cars do more damage per capita than smoking?
Ghostly Apparition on 11/7/2006 at 13:40
(
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm)
There, here is a list of causes of death in the U.S. every year.
Yes, Smoking is number one, but surprise, poor diet and physical inactivity is a very close second. Someone obviously needs to make a law regarding secondhand inactivity. Or a law requiring excercise everyday.
Hier on 11/7/2006 at 13:47
Being a fat ass who lies on the couch all day only hurts your own health.
Smoking in public places hurts other peoples' health. Which is why banning it in public places is a good idea.
I don't care if someone wants to destroy themselves with some idiotic habit; I just don't want to have to smell them while they do it.
Convict on 11/7/2006 at 13:56
Maybe we do need that Fat Tax!*
*(UK joke I think).
Rogue Keeper on 11/7/2006 at 13:58
Ask the WHO, but I doubt even they can calculate it precisely.
My key point was that automobile exhalations from cars are toxic as well, yet nobody is limiting car owners from driving their cars. In fact, they aren't generally seen as pollutionists, threatening health of general population as much as smokers, if at all. Smokers are seen almost as a trash, while car drivers are "esteemed consumers".
Hier, if you drive a car, everybody on the sidewalk breathes it's exhalations. Not to mention if you manage to kill somebody with your car during an accident.
