Surgeon General's report on secondhand smoke

Carmine Raguso,

The idea that drinking to excess only hurts the individual is ludicrous. But's that for another thread.

Anyway, I am annoyed by the cloud that sometimes hovers over me in a bar, and, yes, smoking is bad. But smokers have become too easy a target. And I think the path some would like us to go down is criminalizing it, so that you can only smoke "in your house." I have high blood pressure, skyrocketing cholesterol and heart disease runs in my family, and smoking isn't the cause of any of that. There's a lot of bad stuff out there, but the anti-smoking (which is often anti-smoker) zealotry is off the charts.

Finally, I was hoping that this argument could devlve to the point that your next sign would say, "Pallister sucks." Whaddaya think?

 

Wait a minute. Why are you comparing casual drinkers to heavy smokers? The 1-2 cigarette a day guy isn't causing health care costs to spiral either. Certainly people with poor diets are creating as much if not more of a strain on the health care industry than smokers, whose numbers have declined significantly in the past 20 years.

As far as someone's consumption of a fifth of Jack Daniels not destroying your liver too, you fail to mention that person could destroy your entire body if they run over you. You can't ignore that aspect of it.

 

Great, now we're gonna have to talk about the devastating effects of recreational knifing.

 

It's  not that muddled considering that drinking impairs judgement and people drive when intoxicated. Alcohol plays a role in nearly 40% (the last figure I remember seeing) of traffic fatalities. It's definitely an issue with regards to health care costs and alcohol.

Agreed that smoking can directly affect others but given that most public places and many businesses are smoke-free, I wonder how much of an effect secondhand smoke still has. Obviously, the worst effect is on kids and others who must put up with a family member's smoke inside the home. Short of outlawing smoking altogether, I don't see how you can completely eliminate that.

 

That's a tough one. I'd say smoke at home, but then you are endangering your family, if you have one.

Smoking has not redeeming qualities at all and lots and lots of negatives.

 

I always thought it went well with whisky.

 

Just thinking out loud.

Instead of a ban, what about a $50 "health crisis" tax per pack?

 

How about one for every quarter pounder with extra cheese and an angioplasty on the side?

 

Why don't we call smokers what they really are, then we could see how people would defend them. Drug addicts. No different than someone smoking crack or shooting smack, smokers are drug addicted losers. Either too stupid or too weak to stop their behavior that they all know will hasten their death.

Yes smoking tobacco is legal (it shouldn't be) but it is a monumentally stupid thing to do.

 

That's the kind of thinking that scares me; it's a way of criminalizing smoking (and smokers) without stepping up and saying that's what you want to do.

Just say you want smoking to be illegal and let's go from there.