Another ridiculous smoking ban, another nail in the coffin of civil liberties.

Denis Leary:

"It's always the yogurt-sprout-eating-muther-fucker who gets run over by a bus driven by a guy who smokes three packs a day."

Sorry officer, I didn't see him. I was too busy SMOKING!

 

I'm taking a separate car, remember?

 

Amazingly enough, as much as I rant about smoking, I love Denis Leary's stand-up. Maybe it's because I don't eat yogurt or sprouts.

 

Oh yeah.

OK, I'll take one for the team.

 

Hey, I'm not saying prescription drugs don't do any good. They do. For a brief period in my life, I needed them.

What I'm saying is they are given out like candy these days. Your boss chewed you out today, and you feel bad? Here, take some Zoloft.

And I don't care how good the drug makes you feel, if the side effect is heart attack or death, it's not good in the long run. Just like cigs, they make you feel good now, but later on they'll kill you.

 

Think of it this way -- She's very experienced.

 

That clarification helps, but the comparison still does not hold up.

Used properly, those drugs are necessary. You want to argue that some doctors overdo it with the prescriptions? No argument, but that is a case of a doctor not doing his job properly. But a lot of people really do need those drugs. Depression, chemical and otherwise, is very real. If you don't realize that, you have lost me completely.

Prescription drugs, when used properly, are beneficial. Cigarettes, when used properly, do nothing but damage.

And don't try to tell me they are relaxing. It's an illusion. When you smoke, that good feeling is the result of scratching an itch that wouldn't be there in the first place if you weren't already addicted to nicotine. Every moment a smoker isn't smoking, their stress level is higher than it would have been had they never smoked in the first place because of their body's craving for the nicotine.

This is why cigarettes seem unpleasant to many people the first time, or first few times, but they come to consider smoking a pleasurable experience later. The cigarette is just as disgusting, but the relief from the cravings overpowers that.

 

You haven't lost me at all. Like I said, for a while, I relied on a prescription drug, and it may have saved my life.

I guess like anything in life, too much of anything is a bad thing.

And you're right. The doctors aren't doing their job. They're pushing drugs they know little about because that's what's being fed to them by the powers that be.

Let's face it, insurance companies make more medical decisions for us than doctors.

 

And that is why the comparisons to smoking don't hold up. Prescription drugs have to be misused to be damaging. Smoking is damaging no matter what.