But, there's a far greater chance of contracting the flu from someone who is contagious than getting lung cancer from working in a bar for a year. And, flu can lead to other complications as well. One is not all that likely but deadly, the other is almost certain but not that deadly. Pick your poison.

Well, as much as I appreciate a good rant against Big Corporate Man, that's really not relevant. In both cases, we're talking about the government, and not the company itself, acting as mommy. If a company decided on its own to ban smoking, that's its prerogative, but the government is making them do it. I'm just wondering why you don't support laws mandating that sick people stay home from work and forcing corporations to enforce them. People at my company who want to smoke have to walk a long way to go outside, and often waste a lot of time bullshitting there. From a profit standpoint, it would be better to let people smoke at their desks, but that's not how it works. Why would it be any different if the government expanded your motherhood campaign to include sick people?

I think this about sums up your position and probably explains why you're substituting hysterics bordering on a hissy-fit for rational discourse (you strike me as a reasonably intelligent, if extremely emotional, sort and if you calmed down a bit, you'd probably realize that your various hyperboles and strawman arguments don't improve your argument). To you this isn't a health issue, but an issue of controlling other people's actions and enforcing your morals on others and sticking it to the big, corporate bogeyman.

I've never encountered anyone who blows smoke in someone's face and tells them to enjoy it or quit their job. I have encountered lots of server/bartender employees who bitch about going outside in sub-zero weather to smoke when all of the customers, employees, and managers in the place smoke. I personally witnessed a moment in a bar not too long ago where the bartender and all of the customers (it was a slow day, evidently) were all outside smoking and no one was actually in the bar. But, don't let what people actually want stop you from demanding surrogate mommy-hood from the government. That'll really show those elite fat-cats whose boss - driving the salt of the Earth out into the cold to smoke so that the non-existent non-smokers could drink themselves into oblivion without having to worry about carcinogens while they ruin their livers.

First of all, I'm not pissed off at all right now. I think that, like a stoner who assumes everyone on TV is also stoned, an extremely emotional individual tends to believe everyone around him shares the same trouble controlling himself. My feeling toward any smoking bans, drug prohibition, government spying on citizens, exorbitant taxes, and all of the other things that you nanny-staters advocate is more annoyance than anything else. I think that people should be able to have rights on their own private property and that government interference should be at a minimum, but smoking bans don't really bother me personally.

Secondly, you also assume that I want the government to legislate and control everything, probably since that's the role you think it should have. I'm not suggesting that the government legislate higher pay rates but rather that I would negotiate them. And, I don't think you're giving actuaries and modern software enough credit, for what it's worth.

Well, of the two of us, I'm not the one looking to shove my self-righteous moralizing down everyone else's throat and demanding that the government do it for me. I'm looking only for free exercise of rights and nothing besides, so it's really no wonder I haven't been put in charge. I'll leave that up to people on a moral crusade, such as yourself, though I might suggest trying to control your emotions a little or you'll be hard pressed for people to take you seriously.

__________________
"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

Hyperbole aside, if I were sitting next to you drinking out of a glass, without a specific inquiry into the contents of said glass, you'd not know if I was drinking an alcoholic beverage or not. If you weren't facing me, you might not know if I had a beverage or not.

If, however, I light up a cigarette somewhere in the same room with you, you'll know. If you're asthmatic, you may have a reaction.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

The heuristic of "knowing" seems somewhat irrelevant to the point. In one case you can smell the "risk" and in the other case you can't. There's still an unnecessary risk to your person occurring in either case. If you're exposed to enough second hand smoke over the years, it might result in some medical condition. If you're exposed to enough drunk people, you might get knifed, punched or run-over. In both cases, the risky behavior isn't really necessary and could feasibly hurt other people.

However, both of these have a far less certain chance of hurting people than my example of the people who put me at risk by leaving their houses with contagious ailments. These people should have their income tax doubled and receive dirty looks wherever they go.

__________________
"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

It's not just "smelling" a risk. For many of us, cigarette smoke causes a reaction in the lungs.

And, of course, people can be contagious without knowing that they are. Unless you're suggesting that all people be forced to stay home at all times, you cannot prevent infectious people from circulating. Infectiousness often occurs during the incubation period, as well as after symptoms have subsided.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

I understand that and that sickness isn't voluntary, but it's still an undue risk for me. Perhaps if we raise the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol enough, we could have police and firemen administer tests for contagions once a week, going door to door (the extra money to cover the cost of increased firemen, policemen, and the tests). Anyone who came up positive would be under house arrest until the next week's round of testing.

When I get the flu, it causes a reaction in my lungs. I don't see why I should be subject to other people's germs.

__________________
"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

With the understanding that you're being at least partially tongue-in-cheek, I have to respond. There are no tests for contagions. Cold and flu viruses change far too regularly to develop any such test. And, of course, an individual can be exposed the day that they take the test and become contagious a day or two later. So, you'd either have to test every day or require everyone to stay home

That or you can wash your hands regularly. That seems to be a pretty good preventative.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Yes, I am. I wouldn't seriously propose such a thing. Though it's not necessarily preposterous on its face, it certainly goes against my "libertarian" leanings with a vengeance. What I'm really dancing around here is that the argument against smoking in public is, like the argument against alcohol/DUI, or the argument against drugs, or the argument against guns sometimes, a moral argument that many attempt to couch as purely a health argument.

Being sick and contagious is undoubtedly a serious, immediate risk to the health of everyone around you. Sure, you'll probably get over it, but some people suffer complications or chronic conditions as a result. The already sickly may even die. Unlike secondhand smoke, which is a contentious subject due to (1) the obfuscation over the years of big tobacco and (2) retaliatory obfuscation by anti-smoking crusaders and is a question mark in terms of who will be affected how and when, you sneezing on me while sick is an enormous short term risk to my health.

And yet, if you're standing in a public building next to some guy who is wheezing, has bloodshot eyes, and a runny nose, you'll likely think nothing of it, despite the fact that he's probably sentencing you to a few days of utter misery. Or, more likely you'll pity him. But, if he lights up a cigarette, by God, it's time to call the good manners police and cast him down with the Sodomites for exposing you to a negligible amount of smoke that doesn't hold a candle to the car exhaust you breathed in on your way there.

This is my point with these types of arguments. These things ebb and flow - the public gets focussed on this or that, and things change. But, let's not pretend that it's really an issue principally of public health with moralistic overtones. It's a moral issue masquerading as something else. I'm not saying that it is for you - in fact, I doubt it is at all - but it is for most.

__________________
"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

Maybe it's just me, but if I see someone like that, I'm taking the next elevator car or holding my breath as I walk by and get as far away from him as possible.

Smokers? They're a lot harder to avoid. Me, I can smell the smoke (and feel it, too) from several car lengths away. I can smell it coming from my neighbor's house 30 or 40 feet away. To try to compare the nuisance of a behavior that a minority of Americans choose to purport on the rest of us to catching a cold is a bit ludicrous. To compare it to drinking is similarly silly - I can drink a beer and have no intoxication whatsoever. If I smoke a cigarette, everyone around me is affected.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

But there's a mitigated risk factor here. You catching a whiff of a cigarette on a particular occasion is like you smelling BO - just a smell you don't like. That is, there is some infinitesimal chance of it having a legitimate deleterious effect on you above and beyond the average general pollution of the air. You being around sick people has a much higher probability of causing problems. So, if you calculate expected value, they're not particularly different, I'd imagine.

But you're now complaining about being able to smell a cigarette. I'm constantly assaulted by the smell of people around me which I don't enjoy, but I'm hardly interested in legislating them to the fringe of society. You now seem to be substituting continuous, forced indoor exposure to smoke (i.e. public places in the 70's) for simply catching a whiff of a cigarette, which is like catching a whiff of a skunk or bad car exhaust. If that's the basis here, you're advocating legislation based on your aesthetic preference.

The health risks don't come into play until you're in close proximity to a smoker in the same way you would be to our contagious sicky.

And by the way, underlining "choose" does appear to indicate a moralistic argument. My first blush was wrong. But then, consider that sick people choose to leave their houses and force their sickness on us, just as people choose not to wash their hands and wear coats, thus increasing the likelihood of them getting sick and making me sick.

__________________
"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

Dude, seriously? You smell your co-workers?

EEWWWW!



I don't know how observing that smokers choose their behavior is being moralistic. And, as I explained earlier, people are contagious when they are not sick. Wearing a coat has nothing to do with acquiring viruses. Realistically, your elevated chances of illness are a result of your own behaviors, not others'.

Edit: and, no, I'm not talking about just a whiff. I can smell when a smoker has come into the building and been in the elevator before I have. Am I saying that they shouldn't be able to smoke at all? No. Am I saying that they shouldn't be able to force the rest of us to smoke with them? Yes.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

There used to be a guy working here that would sometimes work in the cube across from me. I would be able to smell him before I could see or hear him coming. I'm not exaggerating.



I was under the impression that exposure to cold reduced the effectiveness of the immune system, but I may be the victim of an old wives' tale there. Not that it matters much - in matters of "public health" perception tends to create reality from a legislative standpoint.

But the reason for the moralizing is that you're emphasizing the "choice" angle. This implies that if smokers couldn't help spewing smoke from their lungs - if they were born this way - then everything would be all right. Evidently the health risk isn't all that alarming, if the only reason you won't tolerate it is that it's a "choice". You're willing to tolerate this apparently horribly dangerous and detrimental thing provided people can't help but expose you to it? How bad can it be?

I'm being a bit of a smartass, but just to propose this moralistic angle. People moralize without realizing it. I certainly do at times.

I didn't get the impression that you were saying that. But this gets into some tricky situations.

Obviously I can sympathize with your situation of smoke wafting into your home. That actually used to happen to me - in the Spring, I'd turn on the AC early in my old apartment because my downstairs neighbor's smoke would waft in through the open door.

But what if a smoker is sitting on a park bench and you decide you want to sit there? Can you have a seat and tell him to extinguish his cigarette because now, you're here, and you take precedence?

What if a group of smokers is in a bar, owned and operated by smokers? Can you drive up to the bar, knock on the door, tell them to cut it out, and then leave, never intending to actually go inside?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think the problem is that there are conflicting agendas in political treatment of smoking. It's being vilified and people crusade to outlaw it on the one hand, but the politicians peg careers to the revenue it generates. In reality, public opinion of it is getting to the point where it ought to be added to the grand list of nanny-state endorsed prohibition, and yet it remains legal. If I were a betting man, I'd venture a guess that the pendulum will start swinging in the opposite direction soon and you'll see smoking gradually reintroduced in places (this is just a hunch).

As an interesting fun fact, I've been reading a book about colonial America, and a lot of the laws vis a vis cigarette smoking from that period are similar to today's.

__________________
"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

But if health is the real issue, the better result is that you not even be there drinking or inhaling smoke. If second hand smoke keeps you out, all the better on all aspects insofar as health is concerned.

Alcohol is fecal matter--yeast shit. People are drinking feces, a toxic substance. Worse, unlike tobacco, it's an intoxicant and impairment starts with the first drink . . . that's pharmacologically indisputable. If anything diminishes you off your game by your own choice, that comes at the expense of others as you move and act.

A penny's worth of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure so the old saying goes. Why do we still allow drinking in public? Because the majority of the public wants to drink in public places, and the costs of that are assessed on the public, even if it costs them their very lives and even over the objections of the truly nonparticipating and innocent who pay the costs, even in some case with their own lives.

Secondly, on health, if you are going to a place that allows drinking, health is not your priority or your purpose. Indulgence in hazardous substances and activities is. I believe that health arguments as for working or attending vice trades such as bars, strip joints and casinos is a waived issue so long as the vices themselves are legal in society and the vice trade business at issue wishes to entertain them. Enter at your own choice but one must take the legal vices and all assumption of the risks with them.

In law, there is a doctrine called 'estoppel,' or the 'clean hands' doctrine. A person, IMO, does not have clean hands to allege a health objection to an otherwise lawful vice when seeking engaging in a vice trade.

Basically, you would be asserting the right to intoxicate yourself in circumstances more to your liking and that society aid you to better facilitate your desire to drink intoxicating substances.

And that leads to my third objection for at least this post (respect for property concerns aside, etc)--I don't even believe it is good health policy to ban smoking in vice trades.

If health is to be the only concern, then unhealthy places like vice trades such as bars, strip joints, casinos, etc, should be illegal in the first place and even before that the very vices themselves. But demurring on that, then there should be no social encouragement or 'inviting' factors to frequent vice trades and/or engage in vices.

If dislike of smoking keeps people out of bars, casinos, strip joints, etc, then that is better for the overall public health. There is no good reason, from a public health point of view, to give anyone a 'helping hand' to make attending these places and engaging in their activities more inviting and palatable.

This is especially fair and consistent to the non-drinkers, non-smokers, non-gamblers, non-strip joint persons in society (and plenty of those types do live amongst us) who wind up being deleteriously effected by the wilful choice of others to engage in these activities. They alone of all people have the most standing to assert aggrieved status. The person who wants to kick out smokers so they can drink, gamble, etc with vices, has the most 'unclean hands' agenda to complain.

I know of several resturants/bars that went out of business due to the smoking ban, clearly the ban had the employees best interests at heart - now they are all out of a job.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb discussing what's for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb willing to contest the majority decision!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie! while you're looking for a rock. ~ Wynn Catlin
"There are no innocent civilians." - Gerneral Curtis Lemay. A.K.A Bombs away Lemay

And you know they went out of business because of the smoking ban, how, exactly?

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears