Hey, on the flip-side, if they didn't take a job in a place that allowed smoking, maybe they wouldn't need that health insurance.

I know, a dumb answer. I was just trying to keep pace with yours...

No, I don't.

Why would you think otherwise?

Alcohol goes in, smoke goes out into the air that everyone breathes. This needs to be explained to you?

Working around alcohol doesn't cause any physical harm to the employee. Working around toxic cigarette smoke is no different than being exposed to dangerous toxins on any other job.

My uncle died of emphysema from asbestos poisoning. He was a blue collar working, Korean war veteran. Are you asserting that his suffering and premature death was justified because he chose to install asbestos for too many years? It's all he knew. It's the only way he knew to pay the bills. The bills don't stop coming just because you quit your toxic job to go and retrain for another job. The loyalty is to keep working to keep the bills paid so his family had a roof and food. But yeah, I guess he's just a stupid moron that should have quit.

That's an interesting point along the lines of proposing new things along with a bump in taxes on cigarettes to be funded with that bump. I hadn't even thought about that. It's just a great example of people conflating government interest in their well being and politician interest in creative ways to generate revenue without alienating voters. That is, the government has two conflicting agendas - making smokers unpopular enough that it can profit heavily from them while pandering to the moralist crusaders created by the propaganda against it. You can't easily have it both ways, but they're searching for some kind of balance.

I'd wager dollars to donuts that any politician who claims to want increasing bans on cigarettes very much does not and would vote accordingly, while giving platitudes to the crusaders. In this vein, the anti-smoking crusaders remind me a lot of the anti-abortion crusaders - taking up a cause that no sane politician would actually have any interest in seeing implemented.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

No, what you are spewing is horse shit. You cannot compare working conditions at the turn of century to what they are today. Those actions were needed then, not now. For one, technology has changed, as well types of industry.

Yes, that is my attitude. The government has no right to come in and tell me what I can and can't allow on my private property.

I can see what road we are getting ready to go down.

You are right, the concept is pretty simple. I want the same thing you do danno. However, I don't think the government has any business getting involved.

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There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

Doesn't inherently impact those around me???? Whew, why do you think I worked as a bouncer at bars? Or when bartending I had to physically throw out and/or fight drunks due to their own intoxicated behaviours? Or tend to the alarmed and/or wounded who get hassled or accosted by drinkers? Bars don't hire bouncers and fights and other disruptive behaviours don't start over cigarettes. People who drive after drinking a few drinks have a 2-7 times more chance of causing a car accident despite being below the customary .08 blood alcohol limit. Under the legal limit drinking drivers injure and kill plenty of people by statistical studies and the reasons are self-evident--impairment starts with the first drink. And there would be far less over the legal limit drivers if drinking in public establishments were banned.

None of this even gets into the financial and emotional damage alcohol causes given, unlike tobacco, it is an intoxicant.

The reason the anti-tobacco people overhype tobacco but leave alcohol underhyped is because of one selfish reason--they like the booze but dislike the tobacco.

how the hell did we go from CC to smoking bans?

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There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

Working in a smoke-filled environment is not a "chance" exposure. It's part of the working environment and it's about long-term exposure over a long period of time. The flu is a natural virus that most people don't even realize they have until it's too late and only kills people whose immune systems are already weakened. There's a far greater chance that lung cancer is going to kill you as opposed to the flu.

Now ask yourself, how many employers go easy on someone that calls in sick with the flu? Most employers adopt the attitude that you should be at work, regardless of how sick you are. How many companies do you know that have a mandatory stay-at-home-if-you-have-the-flu policy? Not many, if any at all. That tells you how much employers really care about their people as opposed to their profits.



You can suck cancer into your own lungs if you want, but the second you blow it in someone else's face and tell them to get another job if they don't like, then you become a dick that needs to be controlled. Just like all of the other employers that need to be controlled by the myriad of safe working environment laws that we have today, all for the sake of common people, not for the elite. The elite are more than happy to kill you for profit. They're called big tobacco executives.


Oh yeah,this makes lots of sense. You're pissed off at the government banning smoking but you seem to be implying that you wouldn't be pissed off at the government if they legislated higher wages for people that work around cigarette smoke. That's great. How much do you think people should be paid for potentially getting cancer 20 years down the road? You'd have to be some kind of actuarial from hell to crunch those numbers. On top of which you're promoting a strain on the health care system by paying people more money to get cancer down the road.

Really great solution. It's a wonder that you haven't been put in charge of the entire world.

Wrong. Read my above post. Alcohol consumption affects millions of innocents. And you know it so I need not explain that to you.

Wrong again. People did not know asbestos was hazardous then. They do now. Asbestos is now contraband for installation.

People know cigarettes, like alcohol, are bad for you. However, unlike asbestos installation, alcohol and tobacco remain legal for consumption as leisure activities. If they work in environments that cater to these leisures, then it's by consent with knowledge.

I wouldn't say he was a stupid moron, but I would say he was rather unskilled in matters of risk assessment...

So why then impose your instantly and increasing impaired due to drinking hazards on others. Drink at home in your own company.

What's so elite about a casino, bar, or strip joint? They are vice trades. People work or hang out there because the pay is better and/or they like what goes on there. Nobody has to work in a vice trade--they are sought after work and the vices come with the territory. In fact, the patrons and the workers profit and/or enjoy the activities found in them that cause deleterious effects on those who choose not to hang out or work in them.

Tobacco would be banned like so many other hazardous products if it weren't profitable. They know from all past experiences that nicotine is extremely addictive and people will pay the ever increasing prices for it. In fact, if it gets some to quit and some to pay, it's even better for revenue raising because it makes the same or more money with less costs.

Raising taxes with the argument that it helps people to quit is like a drug dealer saying he's raising prices in order to get his addicts to quit. It's an insulting argument by the governments who pretend they are 'anti-smoking.'

Yeah, that hasn't happened since 2007.........................

La. community's first black mayor-elect shot to death three days before taking office on CourtTVnews.com

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Damn! I wish someone would tell me how I got a bruise the size of a softball on my thigh when I was kicked by an unruly patron that we were escorting out! And how in the hell did the former owner of the bar end up with a handful of hair snatched out of her head when she was breaking up a cat fight? And how did my son-in-law end up with a bruised shoulder when he was pushed into a jukebox during a fight he was breaking up? Geez! All this time I thought it was caused by people drinking too much alcohol!!!! How stupid of me!

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

I believe his death was ruled a suicide....he was deep in debt if I remember correctly.

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"