Smokers Vs. Anti-Smokers
Alright, I need everyone from every perspective on this situation about smoking here. It seems to be getting ridiculously out of hand as just about every post on this board is generally the same thing: A debate about smoking.
I'd like to start by saying that the smokers number one enemy in the smoking bans isn't the government, it's the anti-smokers (much different from non-smokers.)
An anti-smoker I've run into a couple times at my community college courtyard before the college decided to give in to the ridiculous "smoke-free environment" fiasco. These are the people that walk right by a huge smoker's circle and start fake coughing or shouting things like "you're ruining everyone else health!" but they never seem to have the time to talk about it reasonably for a minute.
Another thing that I'm pretty angry about is the "smoke-free zone" crap. Alright, you don't want me smoking in your building (mainly due to LAW), but when I'm out side, where my evil second hand smoke dissipates quicker than you have the chance of running into contact with it, I'm still told I can't even smoke out doors, or I have to walk half a mile to get to the sidewalk. And I can't walk too well because of a very bad knee injury.
One thing I want to point out as well is the amount of "quit smoking" commercials I see on T.V. all the time. It's getting ridiculous now. Too many of them. I can't speak for everyone, but I know full well the vast majority of smokers aren't stupid enough to say "smoking isn't bad for your health." I'm a smoker, and I know it's a risk. But that doesn't mean I have to be treated like an idiot and watch these commercials constantly telling me I have to quit, when I don't want to. If a smoker wants to quit, I'm sure they know the process to go through without having to be given 50 phone numbers on t.v.
I live in New York, upstate Rochester/Buffalo/Syracuse area. New York State passed a smoking ban law in the early 2000s. I hadn't even thought about smoking yet and I remember thinking "Oh great, another infringement on people's rights." And that's exactly what this is. Cigarettes are a legal, store bought product. The smoking ban here serves NO purpose. Before, people had the right to choose between smoking, and not smoking. But after the anti-smoking-nazis rolled in, they're constantly barraging everyone with the "evils" of smoking, which is exactly what the tobacco companies used to do to get people to start smoking. (Another quit smoking commercial just come on by the way. Just pointing it out.)
Banning smoking from bars is the dumbest thing a legal system can do. Every bar I pass by now usually has about half the patrons standing outside throughout the night at any given moment. Probably even more than half. This is completely unnecessary.
Restaurants? I think that's debatable. I never heard anybody complain about smoke until this whole anti-smoking fascism ramped up, then it seemed like everyone was a whiner. Michigan allows smoking in restaurants and nobody ever seems to complain.
This anti-smoking garbage has to stop. It's getting a little out of hand.
The biggest ignorant excuse I hear that makes me very angry is when I hear an anti-smoker claim that second hand smoke is so horrid for people's health (usually talking about their own.) OK, lets put this into some perspective here. Walking by a smoker and inhaling just a portion of unfiltered smoke from the tip of the cigarette is not going to give you cancer and kill you, so stop acting like it will. You have a greater risk of getting hit by a bus and killed than getting cancer from passing by a smoker.
If you work in or around people who smoke cigarettes all the time and are constantly surrounded by smoke, I can understand the much higher risk, and the complaining. BUT, what happens at that point should be up to the manager/owner of the business, not the legal system.
Bottom line for me is this: for one, the legal system has no constitutional right to regulate what private businesses customers do in their building. So the legal smoking ban has to be eliminated. For two, if anti-smokers want what they want, and smokers want to smoke a damn cigarette every once in a while in a restaurant, then how about letting there be a bar for choice, and a bar for non-smoking. Because all I've seen since the anti-smoking nazism has started has been the appeasement of all the anti-smokers, while the smokers have to freeze outside in the cold like animals.
I know this was a long post, but these feelings have been building with me for a few years and I thought this would be a good forum to start so we can talk about our views and the other posts can get on with talking about the movie itself.
I'd like this to be a place we can all speak openly and freely, as I did above.
I hope this ends up going somewhere.
"The rest of the world is involved."
"I don't care about the rest of the world."