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by seabooty
on Sat May 23, 2009 10:50 am |
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If smoke in the air could kill you, we wouldn't be here today. Electric stoves and heaters were invented in the last century. Even so, coal power plants are still producing electricity.
You'd have to be a total idiot to fall for the SHS theory. |
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seabooty
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by garhkal
on Sat May 23, 2009 1:55 pm |
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seabooty wrote: The government anti-smoker do-gooders have overstepped their bounds. With outdoor smoking bans they are saying the lives lost for our freedom don't mean a thing to them. They don't care that someone loses their rights, as long as they get what they want.
Being US Navy, i fully agree. Our freedoms are being chewed away one bit at a time under the cover of knowing what is best for us.
Quote: Just a quick correction, that was libertarian's quote so credit should be given to him, not me.
Rats. Thanks for the correction.
Quote: However, I think the outdoor bans are going too far. I can think of few situations outdoors where non-smokers can't get away from tobacco smoke.
Agreed. Back when i was stationed in St mawgan, England (near the town of Newquay) we had 3 gazebos outside the barracks. 2 for Barbequing and one for smoking. The smoking one was clearly labled, but cause some non smokers wanted to get away from the BBQs they forced us smokers who were in the designated smoking area to stop. Then 2 months later, they removed the smoking from that area... COME the frak on.
Quote: Non-smokers don't have a clue what a drastic change it is for someone to give up smoking. They think it's the same as giving up candy or cokes. I found that, in order to succeed, I had to totally dismantle my previous self-concept and build a new self-concept with an entirely different value system.
Plus in a number of cases, you have to restructure your lifestyle AND friends/family. I know plenty of people that tried to quit but due to the stresses of work, or the number of their family/friends who smoked got right back on the band wagon.
Quote: Would that be too severe, or?
Nope. I personally think that anyone done for DUI should lose their licence for a period of at least 5 yrs... then they have to retest and prove they have been clean of alcohol. A second conviction means their car/truck is impounded and sold off in auction. Remove their capacity to drive. no car no chance for DUI. |
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garhkal
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by Asmoker2
on Sat May 23, 2009 2:50 pm |
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Josh, perhaps you can post and highlight "protected class" as mentioned in the Uniformity Tax Clause; I can't seem to find it. Perhaps we're reading two different Clauses.
You mentioned in one of your posts that "the residue from exhaled smoke is a health hazard;" however, reports from OSHA and ORNL have proven that SHS dissipates immediately into the air and is unlikely to have any effect on others. |
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Asmoker2
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by libertarian99
on Sat May 23, 2009 5:31 pm |
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ladyteal wrote: SHS never hurt anyone, let alone killed them. There are NO documented cases of death by SHS. There are no diseases or illnesses that smokers contract, that non-smokers do NOT contract. NONE, ZILCH, ZERO, NADA! |
Last edited by libertarian99 on Sun May 24, 2009 1:53 am; edited 2 times in total |
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libertarian99
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by libertarian99
on Sat May 23, 2009 5:42 pm |
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Slearwig wrote: Something occurs to me. The States claim that their smoking-related costs are not covered by the tobacco taxes and are very high, in the billions of dollars annually, so they want to increase the tobacco taxes to discourage tobacco use. But... they've already raised the taxes years ago to discourage tobacco use and currently claim success in the reported declining smoking rates as incentive to again increase the tobacco taxes. For instance, in California, smoking is alleged to have declined from 20% to 13% since the last wave of tax and price increases 12 years ago. At the same time, the States also want a tax increase to cover unrelated expenses and deficits.
Ummm...if smoking has declined, then surely so has the smoking-related costs to the States, so why aren't they using the money that they are saving?
The problem of smoking-related health expenses is never solved because the cig tax money isn't applied directly to it. I don't think the government really wants to solve it because then they couldn't use it as an excuse to keep raising the taxes.
Slearwig wrote: Instead of the breathalizer, what do you think about requiring slotting the driver's license and having your thumbprint read by a scanner in order to buy gasoline at the pump? If you have a DUI suspension, then the purchase is limited to one or two pints/litres for lawnmowers or generators, but if the database identifies a DUI-suspended license, then the system puts a call out to the local police. If the DUI tries to buy a couple pints here and there, the system detect it and notifies the police to the current location. If a friend buys gas for the DUI's car and the DUI has an accident, then both are busted.
Would that be too severe, or? |
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libertarian99
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by seabooty
on Sat May 23, 2009 6:39 pm |
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The California numbers are flawed, so are New York's. Places with ultra high cigarette taxes are plagued by smuggling. Smuggling cigarettes is more profitable than drugs. In NY it is mostly run by the mob, but every Tom, Dick and Harry on the street sell smuggled cigs too. A box truck full is worth over a million dollars. Which means, NY doesn't get a true count of sales or the taxes from them. Why would you buy them in NY for $8 to $10 a pack, N.C. isn't that far away. Cal. has the Mexican border on their doorstep. Marlboro sells to Mexico, Mexico sells to anyone, you're only allowed to bring in 2 cartons per person, but those laws haven't meant much to smugglers. Smuggling cigs is big business. NY has spent millions trying to catch the smugglers for a long time without much success. The cops can't bust somebody with a cigarette like they can with a joint, so it's hard to get to the smugglers. Taxes will be the cause of much more smuggling, then tons of money used up trying to catch the smugglers, and leading to loss of tax revenue from people buying smuggled cigs by the millions.
Makes a hell of a lot of sense doesn't it? |
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seabooty
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by Pete Gatti
on Sun May 24, 2009 12:34 am |
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libertarian99 wrote:
Yes, people can quit smoking if they exercise a supreme act of will, but it's no one's place to force anyone else to do that. Now all I want is just to be left alone to live life on my own terms. I totally sympathize with your wish to just live out your retirement years in peace.
Thanks for your concern but I'm not depressed, I'm pissed off. Of course I've had brief bouts of depression throughout my life but who hasn't? Life is full of ups and downs.
I quit smoking cold turkey for a year back in '86 for the same band wagon reason you did and I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like to be a non-smoker. The first three days seem more like an annoyance than the extreme discomfort some complain about. When the urge hit, I just reaffirmed to myself that I'm now a non-smoker and then change my mental focus to something else. Then for about a week I'd get a kick every time I subconsciously reached for my breast pocket. That was it and it really wasn't bad at all.
That year, I liked not worrying about having enough smokes but I didn't like the 20 lb weight gain. Strangely I never fully settled into being a non-smoker. Hard to explain but it just didn't fit my persona. It didn't feel like the me I had always been. |
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Pete Gatti
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by seabooty
on Sun May 24, 2009 1:31 am |
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Just a thought;
My father-in-law will be 80 his next birthday, smokes like a steam engine, gardens every day, mows 2 1/2 acres of yard, takes his wife shopping every other day, and does all the household laundry and floors. His wife of 50 years has never smoked, and is just as healthy, in fact she can run me down shopping. Funny how she hasn't got lung cancer from SHS. The same senario can be said for my parents except they are a few years younger. My dad smoked Camel unfiltered for 40 years (now he has changed to cigars), my non-smoking mother never got lung cancer.
I smoked throughout my pregnancies and all the time I was raising my kids, they were healthy, (of course that was before the terror of cigarettes was in the news), back when smoking was good for you. Today neither of my sons have health problems, neither smoke, one is in the Army the other is a fireman. Even being a fireman and being around smoke from buildings hasn't given him any disease. You have to be very healthy to be a fireman or to be a soldier. My smoking didn't influence my kids to smoke. However, now that there are so many anti's, it compels kids to smoke to revolt against their nonsmoking parents. It's just the way kids are.
Now some anti-smoker psychos have come up with 3rd hand smoke, claiming just being a smoker will harm your kids. All I can say is, they better start figuring out how they can build enormous orphanages throughout the states to house all the kids they need to protect. They are going to have to take all the smokers kids and the kids of people who barbeque or have fireplaces, fire pits or camp fires too. If cigarette smoke is that bad imagine fireplaces or fire pits!
Somehow the jerks didn't manage to sway OSHA, who reported that SHS fears were bull. It's amazing in the 21st century that there are still so many stupid people willing to believe anything they hear. Even John Stossel on ABCs 20/20 exposed the SHS studies as bull, and he is not a smoker.
That's my opinion. |
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seabooty
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by gilster
on Sun May 24, 2009 7:30 am |
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gilster
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by libertarian99
on Sun May 24, 2009 11:40 am |
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Oh, my God! Why didn't I think of that as a way to raise money? I have a domain, so I could just set up a Web site with a shopping cart and ask people to donate to my public health cause.
Maybe we should all just stop fighting the antis and cash in on the hysteria they have generated. We can all set up "public health" Web sites with shopping carts where we can ask the sheeple to donate. No one will know we are smokers because they can't see us.
Why didn't I think of this before? As it stands now, we are being robbed daily. But we could get our money back by setting up these Web sites. Then the antis and hysterical non-smokers could voluntarily hand our money back in the name of their own cause, and we wouldn't have to stress ourselves out so bad fighting them. |
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libertarian99
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