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The War on Nicotine

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Songbird, Jan 6, 2020.

  1. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    I've lived in some really Red places politically, but I've never seen more smokers anywhere than I have living in Pittsburgh.
     
    BitterYoungMatador2 likes this.
  2. BitterYoungMatador2

    BitterYoungMatador2 Well-Known Member

    Central Pennsyltucky is worse.
     
    exmediahack likes this.
  3. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    That is bizarre.
    I grew up with both parents smoking cigarettes like people were paying them to smoke. I probably had the lungs of a 70-year old by the time I was 10.
    I hate cigarette smoke, and I have loved the last two decades where the country has been relatively smoke-free.

    Not sure why people think pot smoke is okay. The law about not smoking in public is a joke.
     
  4. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    Thing I don't understand about Pittsburgh is it's fairly progressive. Lots of tech yuppies. But every other person is lighting up like a chimney.

    The air quality around here is bad enough already; why are these people rushing so much faster into lung disease? And fuck are cigarettes expensive now.

    I haven't smoked in years, but they were like $3 a pack when I started. Now they're like $7-something.
     
  5. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    Let me know when pot is linked to about 10 kinds of cancer.
     
    Slacker likes this.
  6. jlee

    jlee Well-Known Member

    I don’t really have an opinion on smoking regulations, outside of there being a reasonable minimum age, designated areas where it is prohibited for public heath reasons, and robust enforcement of both.

    I do think an employer rejecting people who use nicotine at all is thoughtless. To my knowledge, casual nicotine use does not impair a person from performing a regular job. As for the insurance aspect, companies regularly single out the nicotine users with a mandatory physical and charge them higher rates. It makes more sense to ban smoking on premises or during work hours or to make clothes with noticeable odors a dress-code violation.

    In the spirit of oop’s point, if these are people who have been tricked into an addiction as kids, denying them a job based on that punishes the wrong people.
     
    Slacker and Batman like this.
  7. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    At my last newspaper job, you had to pay an extra $50 a paycheck for your insurance if you were a smoker.
     
  8. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Did they test? How often?
     
  9. CD Boogie

    CD Boogie Well-Known Member

    I was struck by how relatively inexpensive they were when I was in Pitt back in early November. Smokes in CT are $11 a pack. In NYC, they're like $15.
     
  10. BitterYoungMatador2

    BitterYoungMatador2 Well-Known Member

    And you get the added fun of having to go outside into Pittsburgh winters to light up from November through about May. Sometimes you get cold. Sometimes you get wind. Sometimes you get snow. Sometimes you get all three. And you always get gray.

    April will be 10 years since my last cigarette. I honestly don’t miss it and haven’t had the urge since I quit. I look at the money I wasted and what I could have done with it.
     
    Regan MacNeil likes this.
  11. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    I'm not quite sure how it worked, but my SE was one of the few smokers in the newsroom, and I know he paid it.
     
  12. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    This is being done at the corporate level, not government, so fairness isn't really something they care about.

    Anything that gives people more motivation to quit is good, even if it is unfair to some people. I try to be fair and reasonable with most topics. I don't always succeed, but I try. In this one area, my response to people asking me to be fair is fuck you. Ban the fucking things.
     
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