SmokingTarpan

Okay, so Fenix is addicted to smoking, thus will defend his addiction regardless of facts presented to him. What about me, then? I've never smoked, never will, but am still against the smoking ban. I have several non-smoking friends who are of the same opinion. How are you going to dismiss our argument out of hand?

Probably over a year ago, and I was not invited by a smoking friend. I don't go to bars often because I don't drink; I see no reason to go somewhere that caters only toward an activity that I don't do. However, when I do go to bars, I expect there to be smoking. The only part I don't like is coming home smelling like smoke, which is easily fixed with a shower and a load of laundry. I've also never been forced to go to a smoking bar, it's my choice. Several times I've told my friends that I flat out didn't feel like getting smokey that night, and we either did something else or I just plain didn't go with them. Problem solved, and without any kicking or screaming.

__________________

[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

El_Gringo_Grande

Just to be clear, you are addicted to nicotine. Smoking is just the delivery mechanism. Nobody is stopping anybody from getting the chemical they are addicted to, only telling them they cannot use smoking as the delivery mechanism.

I chew the nic gum all the time and nobody is trying to stop me. At least not at this point in time.

__________________
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

CingularDuality

And to be clear, nicotine is only part of the addiction. They say that the chemical addiction only lasts 72 hours after your last dose of nicotine. Well, I've gone much longer than that, and the urges didn't stop.

Not that this has anything to do with smoking bans, as the ban is a property owners' rights issue, not an addiction issue.

__________________

Become a supporting member!

Buy a Tactical Duck!
Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Dark Viper

Hmmmmm. So if you don't like somebody, you would just go shoot them with a gun since it won't matter? I don't want to force beliefs on anybody, but I feel that what I do here does affect me after I die. Fact is, smoking does kill people around you, it just takes a very very long time.

I can't really call foul on smokers though. I drive a vehicle with an internal combustion engine, which hurts people PLUS the enviroment even more than cigs.

I do agree that the ban is just the government wasting time on stupid issues. Cars kill more Americans every year (in one way or another) than smoking does, so maybe the government should ban driving first.

__________________
|TG-33rd|Dark_Viper

El_Gringo_Grande

I think it takes ~72 hours for the nicotine to totally leave the system, not for the addiction to be eliminated.

The addiction is much longer lasting. Of course it is not even the nicotine that a person is addicted too, it is how the bodies chemistry reacts to nicotine. And this varies by person. There are some people that can start and stop with very few side effects.

You can be addicted to nicotine and not have any urges to smoke at all. I started out with Copenhagen and never had an urge to smoke (until I started smoking). Today all I do is chew the gum and I have lost (almost) all urges for either snuff or cigarettes. I do have an urge to chew gum.

But you are right, there is also the pavlovian conditioning that is real and is very hard to eliminate entirely.

From what I understand smoking is no more addictive physically that any other nicotine delivery system. Psychologically it is because the rush hits you faster than other methods. Partly because cigarettes have other chemicals that increase the effect of nicotine (and for all I know some of those chemicals could be addictive as well.) And also because taking things in threw the lungs gets to the brain faster. I think only directly injecting it into the blood stream can be faster. The Rescorla-Wagner model of conditioning explains this aspect pretty well.

But it is an addiction issue. If it wasn't for the addiction how much of an issue would this be? If people where taking in a spray bottle of carcinogens and spraying them randomly into the air who would be apposed to banning that? In fact property owners would probably be held liable *edit if they did nothing to stop such actions*, no?

__________________
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

ScratchMonkey

This is the key point to me. Ownership is control. If you don't get to control what happens on your property, then you don't own it. Laws like this are just another form of emminent domain, taking property rights and giving them to a special interest group with no compensation.

And my dad died from heart failure and emphysema aggravated by excessive smoking and drinking. But I'm not Mrs. Brady, blaming the implement instead of the user.

__________________

Buck Fush

I blame the implement AND the user. You CAN'T blame anyone for your dad's death except him. He made his own choices. But if he never smoked but did work in the bar industry and died from heart failure and emphysema aggravated by second hand smoke that would be a different story. Then he would have died because some bar owned believed that he could turn a better profit by allowing an unsafe work environment.

Mining companies could save a lot of money if they didn't have to worry about all of these stupid safety regulations. They would have to pay a little higher salaries to attract the workers who aren't concerned about safety, but they would still save money. Is it eminent domain to require that these companies provide as safe of an environment as possible? Even if it does add some overhead?

TheFatKidDeath

It's not so much the second hand smoking as the cigarette butts that smokers are always throwing on the ground that I despise. Littering is somehow acceptable to the smoker.

CingularDuality

Yeah, I don't like that, either. And I've developed that bad habit lately. At work, there's a smoking area where people always throw their butts on the ground. Well, there's a janitor that sweeps 'em up several times a day. I used to be VERY good about not throwing butts on the ground, but have developed that nasty habit there at work, since there are no ashtrays nearby...

__________________

Become a supporting member!

Buy a Tactical Duck!
Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

ScratchMonkey

Good point. The lack of ashtrays is like the lack of freely-available clean needles for intravenous users, and its resulting spread of nasty blood-born diseases like AIDS. We need to provide ash trays in areas apart from non-smokers (but not uncomfortable places that drive the smokers to smoke where they shouldn't be) and we need to make clean needles available.

__________________

leejo

I wonder if I can make this work for me - getting other people to support my recreational habits. Um....I want a new television: Send me money or I'll throw my garbage on the ground.

CingularDuality

Asking for reasonable accommodations in public areas is nothing like asking for money. That's ridiculous...

If you went to a street fair and had a giant turkey leg and some funnel cake, would you not be upset if there were no trash receptacles to be found anywhere? I'm not saying that littering is then justified, but I think that it justifies a request for trashcans...

__________________

Become a supporting member!

Buy a Tactical Duck!
Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Santa

I dont have anything against smokers because they may die early or any of that. If it makes them happy while they are alive, more power to em. If they want to quit at some point, help em out. Its their choice whatever they do, and nobody else should have a say in it.

However, since smoking can harm other people either health related (if second hand smoke is actually real) or simply because non-smokers think its disgusting, the smoker should be courteous enough to smoke away from other people that dont like it.

Im for banning smoking in public places, but in privately owned businesses it should be up to the business owner to ban smoke, not ban it, or setup smoking only areas. Whatever he wants and whatever he think will help his business is up to him, so long as its all legal.

To go off on a tangent, i dont understand how the government decides what substances are legal and which are illegal. Why is smoking tobacco, a highly addictive cancer causing killer, legal when cannabis, which is also generally smoked is not addictive and therefore much less of a killer, illegal? Alcohol and tobacco cause approximately 500,000 deaths every year from health problems, while marajuana causes 0 deaths attributed to health problems. Sure, you might get high, drive and crash into somebody, but alcohol does the same thing and is legal. I know tons of people (and im admittely one of them) that smoke cannabis in moderation and dont have any side effects from it other than obviously when smoking it (But those side effects are not of the violent nature like alchohol, and you are aware of yourself at the time). Seems extremely arbitrary how the government chooses which substances are and are not legal.

Switchcraft

I'm curious as to what makes you think cannabis is non-addictive and causes "0 deaths attributed to health problems."

1) I know several people who have smoked marijuana regularly since high school in the 60s. They cough up black phlegm. One has lung cancer. The tar you find in your pipe doesn't magically avoid your lungs. Saying otherwise is silly.

2) You risk jail-time in order to smoke marijuana. If that's not a sign of addiction, I don't know what is.

Santa

1) Perhaps 0 was a far fetched number in terms of all deaths, but 0 have died from overdose. The number of deaths from anything other than overdose is staggeringly low and the chances of developing any health problems from smoking it 2-3 times a year (like i do) are miniscule at best. I wouldnt be surprised if those people you referenced also smoked something else.

2) Its not much of a risk if you know what you are doing and dont deal. Pot is about as addicting as chocolate chip cookies. If you really like chocolate chip cookies, you are going to eat a lot of them if you dont have self control. If you really like pot and dont have any self control, you'll smoke that a lot. But you are not physically addicted like tobacco would do to you.

Here is a list of interesting facts about marijuana smoking and tobacco smoking taken from this website:

* Marijuana smokers generally don't chain smoke, and so they smoke less. (Marijuana is not physically addictive like tobacco.) The more potent marijuana is, the less a smoker will use at a time.
* Tobacco contains nicotine, and marijuana doesn't. Nicotine may harden the arteries and may be responsible for much of the heart disease caused by tobacco. New research has found that it may also cause a lot of the cancer in tobacco smokers and people who live or work where tobacco is smoked. This is because it breaks down into a cancer causing chemical called `N Nitrosamine' when it is burned (and maybe even while it is inside the body as well.)
* Marijuana contains THC. THC is a bronchial dilator, which means it works like a cough drop and opens up your lungs, which aids clearance of smoke and dirt. Nicotine does just the opposite; it makes your lungs bunch up and makes it harder to cough anything up.
* There are benefits from marijuana (besides bronchial dilation) that you don't get from tobacco. Mainly, marijuana makes you relax, which improves your health and well-being.
* Scientists do not really know what it is that causes malignant lung cancer in tobacco. Many think it may be a substance known as Lead 210. Of course, there are many other theories as to what does cause cancer, but if this is true, it is easy to see why NO CASE OF LUNG CANCER RESULTING FROM MARIJUANA USE ALONE HAS EVER BEEN DOCUMENTED, because tobacco contains much more of this substance than marijuana.
* Marijuana laws make it harder to use marijuana without damaging your body. Water-pipes are illegal in many states. Filtered cigarettes, vaporizers, and inhalers have to be mass produced, which is hard to arrange `underground.' People don't eat marijuana often because you need more to get as high that way, and it isn't cheap or easy to get (which is the reason why some people will stoop to smoking leaves.) This may sound funny to you -- but the more legal marijuana gets, the safer it is.

The overall point im trying to make is that smoking cannabis is better for your health (relativly better. There isnt enough research to show that its "good" for your health) than smoking tobacco. Yet the one thats better for your health is the one that is illegal. This is probably getting a bit too off topic though.