0
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Smoking Should Be Allowed In Public Places

posted August 19, 2007 - 1:02pm
Smoking Should Be Allowed In Public Places

This is a topic in which the world will never agree. Between health fanatics and the 75,284,986 smokers in America, no one will ever win the argument. The votes show that the majority of people say no. But think about it. In 1950, was it a big deal? Did anybody care about health problems related to smoking?
Just because you discover that cigarettes may or may not cause cancer, doesn't mean that you can tell the world how to live. If a smoker wants to smoke in a public place, it may seem rude to non-smokers that populate the area, but, is it not rude to tell someone that they can't smoke because it bothers you? What happens when a smoker starts saying that their rights are being infringed upon by non-smokers? If you are a legal age smoker, how would it make you feel if someone told you that you had to go to a designated place just because you are wanting to legally smoke a cigarette that you paid for with your hard earned money?
How long have people been using tobacco. Was cancer non-existent 100 years ago? Why is it that? If tobacco causes cancer, why didn't it back then? Could it be that a group of avid non-smokers decided to plot some sort of conspiracy? When the big tobacco companies started up, did they start adding in more powerful carcinogens? Would people be that corrupt? All of you non-smokers, that can't stand to even see a cigarette, what would you do to stop smoking all together. Fear is a powerful thing, and that's what drives people to include warnings on cigarette boxes, and to have anti-smoking commercials. To scare the American public out of smoking.
If someone told you that they had discovered that milk caused some kind of deadly disease, would you never consume dairy products again? If a new study supposedly proved that the Internet can cause cancer, would you be outraged if you saw commercials telling you the Internet was dangerous. There have been tons of studies linking cellphone use to brain cancer. Are you going to stop using your cellphone. What if some health fanatic, wanted to impose a new bill stating that cellphones can't be used in public areas. It's a ludicrous concept, I know. How different is it from banning smoking in public areas?
America, land of the free. Slaves to the ideas and opinions of others. This article isn't meant to negate reasons for banning smoking in public areas. This article is aimed towards the fact that if you want to smoke, you should be able to, without persecution. Until tobacco is illegal, it should be able to be used whenever, and wherever the legal age smoker deems appropriate. If you are in a public area where there is a smoker present, and you are an chronic asthmatic, carry around a little mask, and put it on if it bothers you so much. Don't tell the person that they don't have the right to smoke the cigarette that they paid for, or even have the audacity to tell them that they have to go elsewhere just because you don't like it. The world doesn't work like that. Sorry but no one said life is fair.

Author: dudeinwrens
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Comments

It becomes a matter of defining "public"

jdubhub - Thu, 2007-30-8 4:45 am
It seems like you are pretty conscientous about where you smoke, so that is good. Being a civil libertarian, I don't take an issue with someone smoking, as I've said. If it's 3am and you are walking back to your car from the bar and no one else is around, I wouldn't take issue with it. But, if it were 10pm and the bar was crowded and you fired up inside the bar without considering whether the other bar patrons would want to breathe your smoke, that becomes an issue for me because you are then affecting others by YOUR actions. The information I posted above here from the CDC regarding secondhand smoke also pertains to your argument. The article said that there is no safe exposure to tobacco smoke. Even if someone was exposed to your cigarette smoke for those "two minutes", their health was adversely affected. If you were smoking in a restaurant, your server and all of the wait staff get exposed to your smoke because smoke doesn't magically disappear once it leaves your cigarette or after you exhale. It lingers in the room, which makes it a threat to health. Multiply that times the number of smokers over the course of a given day and you just raised the health stakes for everyone that works in that restaurant. You could argue that they don't have to work in that particular restaurant if they are so concerned for their health, but working for a living is also a right and so is the right to a safe work environment. What it all comes down to, from a civil libertarian point-of-view, is that smoking is an elective activity, like watching televesion, because your human organism can exist without it; this means that it is not a core necessity, like eating or breathing or any other tenet of life for our human organism. To say that other people should have to stay home or severely curtail their very basic core necessities to accomodate your elective activity is an infringement on their rights, not the other way around. Like I said, from strictly a "rights" point-of-view, public smoking (as defined by smoking around other people) cannot be defended as a "right". _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

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Interesting...

dudeinwrens - Thu, 2007-30-8 4:06 am
And YOU sir are quite the intellectual aren't you? I find you to be intriguing. I do not wish to argue to the point that we find a disliking for one another. But for the sake of entertainment, I must throw in my rebuttal. Please, do not take offense to anything that I may or may not say. Argument Continued: Wouldn't you say, that if someone is smoking in an area that you would like to be in, and you don't want to damage your lungs, that you should avoid that area? Don't we as humans avoid danger to a certain extent. I mean, you wouldn't place your hand on a hot stove on purpose would you? Also, on that note, you wouldn't enter a bank with someone robbing the place, would you? If there were a man standing, wielding sword, telling you that he'll cut you, on the sidewalk, right in the path of where you are planning on walking, would you keep going? Or change direction? If you have answered no, I wouldn't do that, to any of the aforementioned questions, then you sir, would also agree that if someone is smoking, you should avoid them, not the other way around. If a smoker happens to be in a lowly populated public area, should he have to put out his cigarette just because an avid non-smoker such as yourself decides to walk his way? I'm sure that if you think about this you would find it ludicrous as well. Now, on the other hand, I do not agree with A-holes who find pleasure in finding non-smokers and blowing smoke in their faces. If I'm standing in line at the movie theater, I don't light up a cigarette. I stand back. Because I understand that not everyone appreciates what it is that I am doing. But I'll be damned if someone is going to decide to put up a sign telling me that I have to go else where to smoke. If I stand back 10 feet from the crowd, am I hindering anyone? No. If anti-smoking fanatic decides to ban smoking in public areas such as a movie theater or sidewalk, or anywhere else for that matter, are they hindering me? Yes. It all has to do with common respect, as you mentioned before. Just imagine being a smoker for a minute. You're sitting away from the crowd of people, minding your own business, getting your nic on, and then all of a sudden somebody walks up to you and tells you that you can't smoke there. You look around, cigarette still burning, you don't see anyone within a 15 ft radius of you except this prick, and you continue smoking, because he invaded your smoke space. If it bothers him so much, he can just go back to the area that you're not smoking in. That's how I feel about it. It all depends on who was there first. Now that's not saying that I would find it funny to go by this philosophy and just stand at the front of the line before the theater opens and light a cigarette as the crowd walks up to me. If you smoke, you do it politely. If you don't smoke, you don't enter a smoke zone. Unless of course you want to get cancer from breathing in that minute amount of smoke that you would be exposed to. Seeing as how I have yet to meet someone who has cancer and has not smoked or been around smoke for less than 2 minutes. Thank you.

Not really.

jdubhub - Tue, 2007-28-8 4:17 am
His point was there are lots of other things that cause cancer or are potentially harmful, but they are not the subject of this article: Smoking Should Be Allowed in Public; thus they are really a red herring to take the focus off the actions of the public smoker impacting the health of innocent bystanders. Further, arguing that I am somehow victimizing the public smoker when I should be going after the manufacturer or distributor of the product is tangential; their actions, unless they are firing up a cigarette in public, are not what directly lead to degraded health of surrounding non-smokers. Denying another human being the right to good health because you are too lazy to find a smoking area is the underlying theme of your rant, which is what I addressed. YOU are taking the action that is harmful to others, therefore YOU are the one that should be correcting your behavior. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

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Cough...

dudeinwrens - Mon, 2007-27-8 9:11 pm
Well sir, you seem to have completely missed the point of that other fellows whole argument. But hey, if it bothers you so much, If ever I do see you in a public area, I will be sure not to smoke around you. Wouldn't want to be linked to the cause of your lung cancer.

I know...life causes death, etc.

jdubhub - Sun, 2007-26-8 2:15 pm
My argument isn't that he shouldn't smoke. He can smoke a carton of cigarettes in his own home or vehicle for all I care. My argument is when his actions infringe upon the rights of nonsmokers, smoking in public, i.e. forcing nonsmokers to breathe in known carcinogens, is taken out of the category of *right*. Yes, there are many things in this life that can kill us or at least severely diminsh our quality of life. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't stop trying to limit those risk factors. If I recognize the inherent health risks of tobacco smoke and choose to abstain from smoking, I shouldn't be penalized for it because someone decides that the entire world should be his own personal ashtray and to hell with everyone else. This is an argument that a smoker can never win, when discussing "rights". _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

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Let's not get Smoked (carried) away

taprial - Sun, 2007-26-8 1:44 pm
At the outset i should say i smoke and trying to quit so you know where this is headed. The facts are great. There are some loopholes though I had an uncle who was a teetotaller. He didn't smoke, no drinks, no onion, no garlic, no fried stuff, no oil, butter or the like, nothing. At that time i used to wonder what the hell is he living for. That was in 1984. In 1991, my father rang me up to tell me to go and visit this uncle who was in the oncology ward in a hospital very close to where i was. did go there and saw this man who was just about 45 years at that time lying on the bed in a totally helpless state. He couldn't even talk and used a paper and a pen to talk to me. They had made a hole in his trachea for breathing. I felt like crying. What had he done? He had observed every myth, thought and 'facts' about food and living and despite all that he was there. Did he really enjoy his life restricting himself from the small pleasures of life. I don't know. Jdubhub, you were in the Navy so i guess you know how they function. There was a traffic accident while i was training, a man died. The next day they banned all kinds of vehicles for the undertrainees, as if the staff had a clearance from the divinity itself that they would not be killed ina traffic accident. We were actually hoping like hell that no one dies while having a bath. For information i would like to know how many people died in the US in 1994 for reasons other than smoking. Going by this logic the nature should be taken away from the people since many people die of natural causes. My point is If one is really concerned take it out from the root like you do the resulting cancer. Why are you after the smoker, why not after the people who are producing the tobacco or the cigarettes or are you also too well aware of the fact that the economy of the country is in a way hinged on tobacco. Stop the government and the corporates. Your adversaries will have no choice but to quit smoking. The end result is death. You can't cheat it for long. So it is not about beating death but about the quality of life. You can die anyday and for a number of reasons other than smoking. You can't stop it. All these facts are contorted and twisted by the powers that may be, let us not believe all that we hear and read. Their are selfish interests involved. May be not yours but definitely someone else's. If you read and follow things which they claim to have proven, one will actually stop eating everything and maybe doing anything. What about the carbon emmissions, RF, VLF, ELF, traffic, drinking etc. No one talks about it, not right now because the government is not ready to start talking about it. When they feel it is safe enough to talk about it, without risking the ceonomy they will probably start a campaign against it so that they can benefit from it, both ways , mind you. Ho many people know that the CRT screen they are sitting in front of right now is emmitting VLF waves. How many people know that the ELF waves are extremely dangerous to health. Still HAARP goes on and experimentation at sub KHz frequencies go on. It's all a sham. Let the poor chap smoke. It is god's will ultimately. In any case don't run away from a smoker in a hurry, some vehicle might run over you.

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My Facts Trump Your Opinion

jdubhub - Sun, 2007-26-8 12:00 pm
I'm not sure what you're using to support your OPINION if anything, but my position is well-grounded in science. To whit: Fact Sheet Cigarette Smoking-Related Mortality (updated September 2006) Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women.1
  • Between 1960 and 1990, deaths from lung cancer among women have increased by more than 400%—exceeding breast cancer deaths in the mid-1980s.2 The American Cancer Society estimated that in 1994, 64,300 women died from lung cancer and 44,300 died from breast cancer.3
  • Men who smoke increase their risk of death from lung cancer by more than 22 times and from bronchitis and emphysema by nearly 10 times. Women who smoke increase their risk of dying from lung cancer by nearly 12 times and the risk of dying from bronchitis and emphysema by more than 10 times. Smoking triples the risk of dying from heart disease among middle-aged men and women.1
  • Every year in the United States, premature deaths from smoking rob more than five million years from the potential lifespan of those who have died.1
  • Annually, exposure to secondhand smoke (or environmental tobacco smoke) causes an estimated 3,000 deaths from lung cancer among American adults.4 Scientific studies also link secondhand smoke with heart disease. Fact Sheet Secondhand Smoke (updated September 2006) Health Effects of Secondhand Smoke Exposure
    • Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.2
    • Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25–30% and their lung cancer risk by 20–30%.2
    • Breathing secondhand smoke has immediate harmful effects on the cardiovascular system that can increase the risk of heart attack. People who already have heart disease are at especially high risk.2
    • Secondhand smoke exposure causes respiratory symptoms in children and slows their lung growth.2
    • Secondhand smoke causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more frequent and severe asthma attacks in children.2
    • There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure. Even brief exposure can be dangerous.2
    • I'm not quite sure you were prepared to argue facts, but your position is not suppported and basically untenable. I don't care if you smoke in your house or private automobile, but you damn sure don't have a RIGHT to inflict bodily harm on another person. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

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Infringing

dudeinwrens - Sun, 2007-26-8 11:21 am
Sir, are you then telling me that, according to what you've said, that I don't have the right to smoke where I want? Just because non-smokers are around. How exactly am I infringing on somebodies rights? Would it not be an infringement to sit around and bitch about me smoking? And the little story about shooting guns in public amuses me. A bullet is a lot different than a cigarette. You're not going to get lung cancer and die from being in the same room as someone that is smoking, but, on the other hand, if you were in the same room as someone shooting a gun...That's just a tad bit different. My point is, that it takes years and years of smoking to cause any serious health problems. If a non-smoker is in public, and there is someone smoking, they're not going to die, or suffer any illness from that one incident. Now, I'm not sure what your experiences with public smoking are, but I highly doubt that you just go sit around people that smoke and try to suck in some of that smoke just so that you can tell people how you got cancer from standing around people that smoke. Simply put, If you don't like smoke, go elsewhere, perhaps a nice quiet place, such as your home. Just because you happen to smell a cigarette burning doesn't mean that you have to stop breathing and run for clean air. You're just over reacting.

There is no *right* to smoke in public, so kwitcherbitchin

jdubhub - Tue, 2007-21-8 6:51 pm
English Common Law, which USED to be the basis for all laws in the United States, including the Constitution, said that you have the right to do anything as long as it doesn't infringe on my rights. My rights are *life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness* among others. If you want to smoke in a public place and I am in the general vicinity, it infringes on my right to life since tobacco products are a KNOWN cause of cancer, emphysema, etc. Therefore, smoking in public is decidely not a right. Period. It doesn't matter if you feel it is rude or not to be asked to extinguish your cigarette. Rights always trump feelings. EDIT: I will also add that the whole idea of common law is R-E-S-P-E-C-T, which is clearly lacking in your rant cum Xombyte. The idea that pregnant women, children, our elders, and non-smoking servers/bartenders in restaurants and bars, should be placed at risk for diseases they would otherwise avoid by not smoking themselves, just to satisfy what amounts to your ego-driven actions is wrong. Would it be okay if I were to take a handgun and fire off a few rounds randomly in public, if I felt like it? How about me deciding to kill a case of beer and act out my favorite chase scenes from Bullitt down neighborhood streets and around schools where children are playing, if I felt like it? Do I have the right to fire a handgun, drink, and/or drive on my own property by myself? Absolutely. Do I have the right to endanger others by my own actions? No. That is the difference. _______________________________________________________ "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason." -Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

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