[nature scene]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the ban on smoking in movie theatres was not a bout the smoke but about fire harzards in a very very flammable enclosed space.
same with banning smoking on planes.

put that in your pipe and smoke it!

[Everyneurotic]

Glice fucking rules.

they are planning on doing this sometime here, i doubt it will ever happen.

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I am talking about BARS. people who go to a bar to drink liquid poison are concerned about caseous poison? stupid!

Well, the overwhelming majority of rock shows take place in bars, do they not?
I do think a smoking ban will be detrimental in the short term to bars with an older population of mostly smokers who just want a place to hang out and pickle their livers in peace until they die of a delightful combination of cirrhosis and lung cancer, but for bars/nightclubs that are primarily music venues that also serve alcohol while putting on one-night-only entertainment events to draw the people in? All I see is a tradeoff of misery from one group to the other, and I'm going to enjoy it.

EVERY law is social engineering. No law is there to tell you what you CAN do. They all exist in order to forbid or limit behavior.
Very rarely does a new law make my life easier, and I'm gonna go ahead and have a good time with this one. There are any number of infinitely more "fascist" legal issues out there than this one.

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the ban on smoking in movie theatres was not a bout the smoke but about fire harzards in a very very flammable enclosed space.
same with banning smoking on planes.

Doesn't really matter what the motivation behind it was to me. The end result is still the same, and people got the fuck over it.

[gmku]

I like smoking bans. I hate the smell of smoke that clings to me after I've been in a bar or restaurant. It's terrible. And it interferes with my enjoyment of the food, drinks.

I smoked for a short time when I was younger. Smoke interferes with your taste of wine and beer, it doesn't enhance it.

I hate walking past smokers on the sidewalk and having to inhale their cloud of carcinogens. Yuck.

Smoking is disgusting. I hate it.

Ban it everywhere, I say.

[Savage Clone]

Meh, outside is outside.
Pretty hard to argue that there isn't decent ventilation when you're outside.

[gmku]

Yeah, but you gotta walk past em. It blows into your face.

Did I say I hate smoking?

[Rob Instigator]

smoking health hazard

smoking and it's effects kill over 100 thousand USA citizens a year.

drinking and it's effects kill over half a million a year (counting drunken driving accidents)

BAN ALCOHOL AGAIN!

that would increase the public health so much more than banning smoking!

plus smoking cigarretes does not make you drunk, make you lose control and rape, steal, fight, shoot, jump, or in any way cause pain to another human because you smoked a cig or a cigar or a pipe.

the same can NOT be said for alcoholic beverages.

Long live hypocrisy!!!

[Savage Clone]

Yeah, I guess you're right.
The reason I don't drink much at all is because every time I do, I have to apologize to all my friends for my rapey, trigger-happy behavior the next day.

[nature scene]

Hell, ban driving too.

There's a lot of people that don't do what I want them to be doing when I'm on the road. I'm putting myself at risk (and possibly others) every time i get into my car.

Or this. The economist's view (gotta love it):

What if smoking actually produces a societal benefit rather than a cost? What if the savings in Social Security and healthcare payments due to early deaths caused by smoking are greater than what is spent on providing medical care for smoking-related problems?

What is it about cigarettes that have produced a backlash that other quite dangerous products haven't?

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the same can NOT be said for alcoholic beverages.

Long live hypocrisy!!!

I'll drink to that!

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by nature scene

Hell, ban driving too.

There's a lot of people that don't do what I want them to be doing when I'm on the road. I'm putting myself at risk (and possibly others) every time i get into my car.

What is it about cigarettes that have produced such a backlash that other quite dangerous products haven't?

How about we have a ban on totally unrelated issues being used as corrolary examples when addicts are confronted with the glaring obnoxiousness and intrusiveness of their habit?

The thing about cigarettes that bothers people is that the irritating effects are not solely confined to the user. It's fucking annoying, plain and simple, and when a habit/lifestyle is that entrenched, legal bullying is really the only way to get people to wake up to the fact that their behavior has become irritating as fuck to most other people when out in public.

You also need a license to drive, which takes effort to get and can be revoked when you fuck up.

[nature scene]

It's not unrelated, the product is just different. If we had started this with a hypothetical product X, and had talked about the dangers of this product, and then asked if it should be banned - we would have ended up banning cars instead of smoking.

There's a lot of obnoxious effects of other people's driving that are not solely confined to themselves either. Pretty fuckin' annoying too. I'd bet that what comes out of a car's exhaust pipe is probably worse for you than what comes out of someone else's cigarette.

Playing the addict card I see. Ever heard of rational addiction? I'd imagine that plenty smokers (not all) make rational calculations about their addictive choice.

[Cardinal Rob]

I'm for the ban. Public smoking infringes my rights.

[Rob Instigator]

just like there are responsible drinkers out there there are also tons of responsible smokers, but smokers are not given the benefit of the doubt.

I have apersonal theory that it is the massive amount of airborne pollutants plaed into te air by our vehicles, power plants, industrial plants, etc etc that are truly causing the high rates of lung cancer we see, and that smokers and smoking are the red herring, the scapegoat, that can be waved in front of our sheep faces.

Notice that the US government decrys smoking and it's ill effects but does nothing to keep US tobacco companies from marketing and selling twenty times more to china a dn india and asia and africa than they ever would selling to the USA market, by giving them subsidies to use tax money to advertise in these foreign countries. There is no concern for the elfare or well being or general health of people shown there. they only care when it is convenient for them.


stay blind people! it makes TV better!

[nature scene]

Originally Posted by Cardinal Rob

I'm for the ban. Public smoking infringes my rights.

I think that's the best way to frame this argument. I still don't agree with the ban, but framing it as a personal liberty/rights issue on the side of non-smokers is the way to go about making that argument.

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by nature scene

It's not unrelated, the product is just different. If we had started this with a hypothetical product X, and had talked about the dangers of this product, and then asked if it should be banned - we would have ended up banning cars instead of smoking.

You don't need a license to smoke, and you don't need much training to start either.

[nature scene]

So what should I do about the people that drive, with a license, and still suck at it and put me in harm's way?

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by nature scene

I think that's the best way to frame this argument. I still don't agree with the ban, but framing it as a personal liberty/rights issue on the side of non-smokers is the way to go about making that argument.

Agreed, but there again you run into the problem of smokers' rights groups telling you to "just stay home if you don't like it." Circular arguments.

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by nature scene

So what should I do about the people that drive, with a license, and still suck at it and put me in harm's way?

Well, some of them get ticketed and fined on occasion; even jailed for major infractions...

I could easily handle driving a car at 100 MPH, but just because I can do it doesn't mean I get to.

Still has fuck-all to do with smoking.