10:03 – Barbara is due back sometime tomorrow, so I need to spend some time today getting the place cleaned up.
Here’s an argument I made 25 years ago, just when the federal government started to get serious about attacking tobacco companies and smokers. The truth about smoking – it saves the public purse a lot of money Logically, the government didn’t have a leg to stand on. If they were wrong about tobacco use adversely affecting the health of smokers, there were obviously no grounds to attack tobacco companies and smokers. If they were right, there were again no grounds to attack tobacco companies and smokers. If smokers indeed suffered early mortality, that meant they paid into Social Security much more than they could expect to receive, so non-smokers and the Social Security trust fund were the beneficiaries of those smokers’ actions. Back when insurance companies were still run by actuaries, which is to say rationally, people who smoked a pack a day or more of cigarettes paid slightly more for life insurance, just enough to take their expected earlier mortality into account. But smokers paid no more for health insurance than non-smokers (and should have paid less) because insurance companies understood that heavy smokers tended to die not only sooner but more suddenly than non-smokers, of illnesses that killed quickly and (from the health insurance company perspective) cheaply. If the US government acted rationally, they’d be encouraging everyone to smoke as much as they wanted to.
People can smoke cigarettes in their own home as much as they like, or on private property with permission of the owner.
People who inflict their cigarette smoke on unwilling people in a public area should be outlaws.
If the US government acted rationally
There you go again, spreading fairy tales.
Nope, sorry. Offense does not equal injury. And there is absolutely no evidence that casual exposure to environmental tobacco smoke causes actual injury. Certainly there are some people who are extremely sensitive to tobacco smoke, but that is their problem, not society’s in general, in the same way that some people’s extreme sensitivity to peanuts doesn’t mean that everyone else should be forbidden to consume peanuts in public.
Now, I have no problem with a private business that decides to enforce a no-smoking policy. That’s their right, and presumably if there’s really a demand for smoke-free facilities those businesses will be successful. But another business has an equal right to allow smoking (or even require it), as long as people are free to patronize or not patronize that business. And, absent conclusive evidence of harm or severe danger (as in, for example, smoking near gasoline pumps), the government has absolutely no right to forbid smoking in public places.
Like most smokers, I am considerate of non-smokers’ sensitivities. For example, Paul and Mary are non-smokers, and Mary is particularly sensitive to tobacco smoke. So when we do a Costco run and dinner, I don’t smoke from the time we pick them up until we return to their house, unless I can do so outdoors and away from Mary.
Just because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to prohibit others from doing it. If you don’t like it, stay away from smokers.
Just because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to prohibit others from doing it. If you don’t like it, stay away from smokers.
So by your logic it would be OK if I had a severe cold and was coughing and sneezing all the time. I don’t want to cover my mouth as that would be infringing on my right to cough and sneeze as I please. No problem if you have to inhale some of my discharge as that is the same as your smoke. You could always stay away but that is not always possible. You have no right to inflict your discharge upon anyone else. If you can figure out how to keep all your smoke to yourself then by all means smoke where you want.
Your right to discharge offensive material does not trump my right to not want to inhale such material.
Like most smokers, I am considerate of non-smokers’ sensitivities.
Good for you, I applaud such behavior. However, you are in the minority. At least as far as people in TN.
Well, again, is there any harm in the actions you describe? Again, offense does not equal injury. If someone with the flu coughs and sneezes all over you, they are in fact causing harm. Someone walking down the street smoking a cigarette is not causing harm.
Actually, it does. Again, offense does not equal injury. The idea that it does is the essence of political correctness. Are you PC?
I didn’t know Costco was such a rough place…
“A man who claims he was pushing his shopping cart out of a Portland Costco Wholesale warehouse when he was detained because he wouldn’t stop and show his receipt is suing the store for $670,000.
Timothy Walls emerged from the Jan. 28, 2013, encounter with a leg broken in multiple places, according to his lawsuit, filed last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court. According to one of Walls’ attorneys, Walls didn’t believe the store had a right to detain him based upon their practice of checking receipts at the door….”
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/09/man_wont_show_costco_wholesale.html#incart_m-rpt-1
“Someone walking down the street smoking a cigarette is not causing harm.”
It causes harm if it makes me feel sick, or vomit up my dinner in a cafe, as happened to me when the scumbag at the next table lit up.
Fortunately it’s no longer legal here to smoke in bars and eateries, and people who smoke cigarettes in public are being treated more and more like the pariahs they are.
What it does to you is immaterial, just as it’s immaterial that some small fraction of the population is deathly allergic to peanuts. I have in course of my 61 years seen tens to hundreds of thousands of people in the presence of cigarette smoke, and not a one of them vomited. It sounds to me as though you have severe allergies and should probably spend all your time indoors under a plastic bubble with HEPA filtration.
Actually, it does. Again, offense does not equal injury.
Would you feel better if I was sitting next to you on an airline and proceeded to expel the the gas discharge of the latest visit to Taco Bell. Multiple times. You know, the kind that would make a dumpster smell good. It may not physically harm you (not 100% sure on that), but it would certainly be most unpleasant.
Second hand smoke has proven to be harmful, second hand Taco Bell not yet.
Which reminds me of the incident 40 years or so ago when my friend Fred was in a bar, peacefully smoking his cigarette. The asshole sitting on the stool next to him, without saying a word, pulled out a squirt pistol and sprayed Fred’s face and cigarette. Which was a moronic thing to do to begin with, because Fred was about 350 pounds of muscle and looked like a biker from Sons of Anarchy.
But Fred is a reasonable guy, and didn’t lose his cool. Instead, he pulled out his .45 Auto, pointed it at the guy’s face, and said, “My turn.”
Actually, it hasn’t. There has never been a scientifically-rigorous study that established any statistically-significant effects of so-called second-hand smoke. The so-called “evidence” that second-hand tobacco smoke is harmful is of similar quality to the “evidence” touted by AGW nutters. Which is not surprising, considering that the people who compile these so-called data both have political agenda rather than scientific ones.
“Effect of secondhand smoke on occupancy of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in brain.
Brody AL1, Mandelkern MA, London ED, Khan A, Kozman D, Costello MR, Vellios EE, Archie MM, Bascom R, Mukhin AG.
Author information
Abstract
CONTEXT:
Despite progress in tobacco control, secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure remains prevalent worldwide and is implicated in the initiation and maintenance of cigarette smoking.
OBJECTIVE:
To determine whether moderate SHS exposure results in brain α(4)β(2)* nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) occupancy.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:
Positron emission tomography scanning and the radiotracer 2-[18F]fluoro-3-(2(S)azetidinylmethoxy) pyridine (also known as 2-[(18)F]fluoro-A-85380, or 2-FA) were used to determine α(4)β(2)* nAChR occupancy from SHS exposure in 24 young adult participants (11 moderately dependent cigarette smokers and 13 nonsmokers). Participants underwent two bolus-plus-continuous-infusion 2-FA positron emission tomography scanning sessions during which they sat in the passenger’s seat of a car for 1 hour and either were exposed to moderate SHS or had no SHS exposure. The study took place at an academic positron emission tomography center. Main Outcome Measure Changes induced by SHS in 2-FA specific binding volume of distribution as a measure of α(4)β(2)* nAChR occupancy.
RESULTS:
An overall multivariate analysis of variance using specific binding volume of distribution values revealed a significant main effect of condition (SHS vs control) (F(1,22) = 42.5, P < .001) but no between-group (smoker vs nonsmoker) effect. Exposure to SHS led to a mean 19% occupancy of brain α(4)β(2)* nAChRs (1-sample t test, 2-tailed, P < .001). Smokers had both a mean 23% increase in craving with SHS exposure and a correlation between thalamic α(4)β(2)* nAChR occupancy and craving alleviation with subsequent cigarette smoking (Spearman ρ = -0.74, P = .01).
CONCLUSIONS:
Nicotine from SHS exposure results in substantial brain α(4)β(2)* nAChR occupancy in smokers and nonsmokers. Study findings suggest that such exposure delivers a priming dose of nicotine to the brain that contributes to continued cigarette use in smokers. This study has implications for both biological research into the link between SHS exposure and cigarette use and public policy regarding the need to limit SHS exposure in cars and other enclosed spaces."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21536968
Okay, but where is the evidence of harm (increased morbidity and/or mortality)?
Also, the reference is to “cars and other enclosed spaces”, where the concentration of smoke is hundreds to thousands of times higher than in the open or in, for example, a restaurant.
IMHO this man is correct in his observations, but I certainly don’t have the answers to the questions he asks or the names of the champions he seeks.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116.html#.VCLvvhbYFq0
Well, the answer that is staring him in the face is pretty obvious: all of these countries have exactly one thing in common.
Regarding Costco. I once applied for their membership, paid the fee, submitted myself for photo ID, and then cancelled the whole thing because I don’t think they should be stopping and checking people’s purchases at the door. I was told it wasn’t because they thought I was stealing, but to check that I was charged for all the items. In other words, they were hiring people they thought were inept at their jobs. I didn’t believe them, I was convinced that they thought I was a thief and would willingly steal from them. I’ve never been back.
I’ve never been accosted by anyone to check my purchases at any other store. Costco has some great deals (but not all the time) but I would rather pay more and be treated well, than herded through their price checkers like a diamond miner leaving work. My local grocery store allows me to self-check and never has taken an issue with me upon leaving their premises.
Yeah, that bothered me about Costco, too. The story I got at the time was that the checker’s job was to make sure that customers got everything they’d paid for. If so, the checker on our last trip really failed big-time at his job. We didn’t notice until we got to the restaurant with Mary and Paul that they’d charged us for 45 four-packs of 2-liter Cokes rather than the four we’d actually bought. You’d think the checker would have noticed that 41 four-packs, a total of 164 2-liter bottles, were missing from our cart, but he didn’t.
But, legally, that guy in the link doesn’t have a leg to stand on (so to speak). When he joined Costco, he waived any rights he might otherwise have to stop Costco employees from checking his receipt against his cart. Then, to top it off, he physically assaulted a Costco employee. He’s fortunate that Costco didn’t have him arrested on felony assault and battery.
Sam’s Club does the same thing at the door, and once again they’re entitled to do it by the terms of the membership agreement. Given the demographics of Sam’s Club’s membership, they’re more justified than Costco, whose middle- and upper-middle class customers aren’t very likely to shoplift. Even so, Sam’s doing it makes me even less happy than Costco doing it. Costco is at least a top-notch employer, which pays excellent salaries and benefits. Sam’s Club, like Wal*Mart is awful in that respect, and it’s obvious even on casual experience with the two companies’ employees that Costco is hiring a much better class of people. So I’ll tolerate that little oddity because otherwise Costco is absolutely first-rate.
Yes, that sort of failure is what I mean by Costco hiring inept workers, and then harassing the customer. If I was the boss at that store one checkout clerk and one checker would be crapping through a new hole. Chances are nothing happened.
If and when I join a club (and that’s a big IF) they better treat me like a king, not a criminal.
RE: Smoking
If a business wants to be, or doesn’t want to be, a smoking establishment then that should be up to the business owner. If their employees want, or don’t want, to work in the presence of secondhand tobacco smoke, then that should be up to the employees to choose to work there or work elsewhere. If the customers don’t want to patronize a business that allows smoking then they can choose not to and the market will decide if business like that will exist.
Why is ANY of that a problem? Why did they have to ban smoking in private businesses in many metro areas and states? Why are the anti-smoking zealots so short-sighted that they willing give up freedoms for something they could have easily just chose to avoid.
Now, if you want to ban smoking in the name of public health in certain public places, then I can understand that. If you need to ban smoking for safety reasons in certain circumstances (e.g. gas stations), then I can understand that. If you want to protect children (whose parents are too stupid to do it themselves) and say no person under X years of age is permitted inside a venue that allows smoking, then I can understand that. If you’re anti-smoking, then you can do all of that and still allow smokers to smoke inside the private businesses that choose to cater to them and you can avoid those very same businesses. You can deal with the secondhand smoke outside the same way you deal with it when an old diesel truck drives by (i.e. wrinkle your nose and carry on).
This anti-smoking zealotry had gotten ridiculous. It’s become fashionable, downright vogue, to hate smokers.
Disclaimer: I was a heavy smoker for years. I used to smoke about three packs of cigarettes per day. I quit in 2009. I do have the occasional pipe or cigar (and by occasional I mean like 2 or 3 times per month).
I don’t believe as I do because I smoke, because I believed the same back when I was a non-smoker. I didn’t start smoking cigarettes until I was 20.
Cigarette smoke did not used to bother me very much except for long term exposure. I have never smoked which according to cardiologist #2, kept me alive to now. I have a congenital heart condition, a short right coronary artery, which was undiagnosed until my first heart attack at age 49.
I lived with my grandparents in 1969 for a year and my grandfather’s three pack a day habit did not bother me at all. I shared an office with a three pack a day guy in 1980 and developed a nasty cough after a couple of weeks. The cough went away after I moved on.
However, since my first heart attack in 2009, I now start coughing immediately with cigarette smoke. And coughing badly, I have to move somewhere else at least 10 to 20 feet away with fresh air. I lost the back side muscle of my heart (about 15% of total muscle) that day so I am compromised now and have all kinds of little problems related to it. The phrase, congestive heart failure, has meaning to me now.
But, cigar smoke does not bother me if we are outside (my middle brother smokes cigars all the time). No idea about pipe smoke but suspect the same as cigar smoke.
BTW, my grandfather quit smoking in 1975 after smoking three packs a day since he was 14 and passed away in 1979. My grandmother, never a smoker, developed lung cancer in 2007 and passed in 2008. I have no idea if her lung cancer was secondary but it sure could have been, even after 30+ years of no primary smoking.
I have no expertise in the topic, but I could have sworn I’ve read that all of the tissue in your lungs replaces itself every 7 to 10 years. So, after 7-10 years there shouldn’t be any cells in your lungs that were there when you smoked (or were exposed to smoke).
The theory I like as regards secondhand smoke causing atherosclerosis is that it’s not really the smoke that does it: it’s being around smokers. Smokers tend to have (and communicate) the germ that causes atherosclerosis, Chlamydia pneumoniae.
But smokers paid no more for health insurance than non-smokers (and should have paid less) because insurance companies understood that heavy smokers tended to die not only sooner but more suddenly than non-smokers, of illnesses that killed quickly and (from the health insurance company perspective) cheaply.
Hi Bob, I’ve got to disagree with your statement here. The medical folks have really gotten good at detecting cancer. Really good. Once detected early, most, but not all, cancers can be removed and the surrounding area irradiated or the entire body chemo’d to catch any missed cancerous stem cells. The key is early detection though.
My 81 year old father in law was a one to two pack a day smoker for almost 40 years. He quit smoking around age 55 when the per pack price hit 50 cents. He had a lung node removed about five years ago that they watched for five years and then told him to report for surgery. No chemo, no radiation and his five year survival was 100%. He is now living with a multitude of problems in a nursing home and they have been watching another lung mass for a year or two. I doubt that they will remove it due to his other problems.
I’ve have had three acquaintances die in the last ten years of lung cancer though. None was detected early though. The first lady I knew was 50 when detected and took three years to die. The guy I knew was 65 and took two years to die. The other lady was 40 and lived for eight years. None of them dropped dead quickly though. All lingered through painful treatments and times.
Given the demographics of Sam’s Club’s membership, they’re more justified than Costco, whose middle- and upper-middle class customers aren’t very likely to shoplift.
Shoplifting cuts across all demographics. For many, it’s not about the money, it’s about the thrill. (Also, Sam’s has similar demographics to Costco, in my observation, with one exception. Sam’s has a lot more immigrants that run convenience stores as customers.) Given the thin margins that Sam’s and Costco have, loss prevention has to be more important than in most stores.
Besides Sam’s, Best Buy tries to search your bags on exit, but they don’t have the right to detain you unless they suspect you of shoplifting. At Costco and Sam’s, they do.
Why are the anti-smoking zealots so short-sighted
I am not shortsighted.
If a business wants to be, or doesn’t want to be, a smoking establishment then that should be up to the business owner.
Exactly. It should be the business owner choice. If I don’t like the smoking establishment my option is to simply not use the place.
I am not so about work place with the exception of bars and eateries. In my case if my organization decided to allow smoking I would have to quit. But the chances of finding a new job are probably worse than what OFD went through.
Where I object to smoking are public places such as airports (airplanes), stadiums and other such places where there is really not another option. I started traveling when smoking was allowed on airplanes. It was truly a miserable experience. After exiting the plane my clothes reeked of stale smoke.
Same problem in the military when smoking was allowed in the offices. Coming home my wife would almost make me take off my clothes outside because of the stench.
Flying through Spain and changing planes in Madrid. Smoking was allowed (not anymore) in the airport. It was very noticeable the brown stains on the, what used to be white, ceiling tiles. The entire place reeked and my time in that airport could not be short enough. To impose such gunk on others should not be allowed as there was no alternative to avoid the foul smelling place.
I flew to Miami from Belize in 737 in 1980 sitting next to a man smoking a Churchill during the flight. The lady in front of me had a chicken in a crate. I do not remember which was weirder.
We used to smoke on the aircraft when I was in the USAF. Smoking had long since been banned on military aircraft, but, on a C-5, if you went down to the cargo compartment and stood next to a door (troop door, crew door, cargo doors) you could smoke and most of your smoke would be blown out of the plane. Military cargo planes have notoriously poor door seals. You can usually see daylight around them. Some aircraft were so bad that at high altitudes we’d have to wet blankets and wedge them around the doors to keep a cabin altitude below 10,000 ft. We also used to smoke in the latrine in the troop compartment when we weren’t carrying any passengers/troops.
I do not agree that your right to do any thing you damn well please, trumps my right to be free of things that a significant number of people find obnoxious. Some people actually like the smell of cigarette smoke, but I do not, and if put to a vote, I am quite sure that current smoking prohibitions would win.
It is strictly anecdotal, but I have known too many spouses of smokers who died of lung cancer from living with smokers, to believe that second hand smoke is not dangerous. There are a half-dozen that I can think of off the top of my head. One was a nurse, who worked in a hospital where the doctors smoked and patients were allowed to smoke, while her husband did not smoke at all. She got lung cancer and died; he did not.
One of the great pluses of returning to live in the US, has been getting away from the all-pervasive smoke in Germany. Although they were instituting smoking bans while we were there, living in Berlin was like stepping back into 1950’s US, where every place reeked of cigarette smoke. Even books I took home from the library as a kid made the house smell like a smoker’s haven, when neither of my parents smoked.
I agree with Chuck, smokers can smoke to their heart’s content on their own private property, on private property where they have the permission of the owner, and probably in public where there’s no one within a hundred metres or so.
Otherwise they can FROAD.
Cigarette smoke makes me want to vomit, I’ll make detours around smokers to avoid the smoke. These arseholes congregate around choke points like building entrances where they are theoretically allowed to smoke, at the expense of those of us who don’t like it. I know asthmatics, for example, who are greatly affected by cigarette smoke. But, of course, 90% of smokers don’t give a rats about anyone but themselves.
Well, as I just mentioned on the current post, I just bought some additional weapons, and I do have a Constitutional right to smoke…
I quit my pack a day habit in 1978 after smoking ciggies for only six years anyway; cold turkey; also quit heroin and booze cold turkey. Butt smoke doesn’t really bother me too much and I don’t care if someone smokes, inside or out, within reason. It has bothered me a bit, though, to see them treated like subhuman scum when I see them huddled in bitter freezing cold outside their work sites puffing away for a few minutes on a break, and now many organizations ban them from even smoking anywhere on the property at all. The Gestapo types who’ve rushed to cover themselves in glory by stomping on these terrible people must get quite a thrill out of it, as it’s been de rigeur for decades now.
I don’t get down to our local Costco very often, or the local Wall-Mutt, but I have never been detained, even for a second, at the exit doors with purchases. Of course I’m sort of a fearsome sight some days. Like lately, after my days at the IT salt mine; and my latest renewed “enhanced” driver’s license picture makes me look like an escaped serial killer on a post office wall back in the old days. They make us take off our glasses now, bifocals in my case, so they can do their nifty high-tech facial recognition thang.
Light ’em up if ya got ’em!