Should smoking be illegal?

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Education is getting to be a scam, anyway. I know university educated people who are competing for minimum (or slightly above) wage jobs.

Education is awesome for your brain, your well-being, whatever. Just don't count on a job that pays for it once you're finished.

This is a terrible thing to say but I am more intelligent and knowledgable than many of my friends who have Bachelor's degrees and even PhDs/masters. I know a few people that went to very, very good schools and they are well versed, much more knowledgable about the world than I am, and very cultured, but the vast majority are no less ignorant than I am. I'm a college dropout.

I also had a coworker at an old job that graduated from Harvard with a very high GPA and I knew a lot more about the subject she studied than she herself did. It depends on the school, the program, and the individual.

The biggest flaw with the way the world treats education is that we made education have to do with work. For thousands of years education had very little to do with working, it was about pursuing knowledge for the passion of it. Now we use it to "specialize" people in fields when that isn't what University should be about. It should be about knowledge. Let the tech schools handle the specialization stuff.


I think the ideas in the beginning of the first paragraph are a lot of what's wrong with government interference and regulation: the idea that people are too "stupid" to understand these things on their own, and make educated decisions without the government penalizing you for making the wrong choice. I'd like some links to provide evidence that eating fast-food will one day rob the earth of all edible resources. There are myriads of ways to replenish soil, and I'm confident as science progresses, even more efficient ways will be discovered.

I don't think people are too stupid to understand things on their own. I think they honestly just don't care (or in many cases are ignorant). As for links, watch Food Inc or any other documentary about how food is produced in this country and fact check like I did. If you meet and talk to farmers to see how this food is produced, and then look at the science behind it, you start to realize a lot of stuff.

Food inc covers a lot of my fast food bases, but a lot of what I learned came from questioning and doing research over time. Food Inc inspired me to do further research (I fact check every documentary I watch) and I learned a lot so it's not my only source, it's one of dozens. You can watch it on instant streaming on netflix and they have a website iirc.

What we are doing comes at a cost. It's really hard to explain/condense it into a short forum post though and I honestly don't have the time to be bothered with it. There is no "one link" I can give as proof. It's dozens of things that you have to piece together which is why I don't want to go through the trouble of gathering it all for you.

I absolutely never said that trying to limit consumption of unhealthy food limited human rights. I was simply implying that, if you think that disliking the idea of the government putting extra taxes on choices they deem wrong = claiming the right to overeat as a human right, that you must have a misunderstanding on what exactly a human right is.

Fair enough.
 
This is a terrible thing to say but I am more intelligent and knowledgable than many of my friends who have Bachelor's degrees and even PhDs/masters. I know a few people that went to very, very good schools and they are well versed, much more knowledgable about the world than I am, and very cultured, but the vast majority are no less ignorant than I am. I'm a college dropout.

I also had a coworker at an old job that graduated from Harvard with a very high GPA and I knew a lot more about the subject she studied than she herself did. It depends on the school, the program, and the individual.

The biggest flaw with the way the world treats education is that we made education have to do with work. For thousands of years education had very little to do with working, it was about pursuing knowledge for the passion of it. Now we use it to "specialize" people in fields when that isn't what University should be about. It should be about knowledge. Let the tech schools handle the specialization stuff.

In modern times though, a university education was never for "pursuing knowledge for the passion of it." Unless you come from a much more privileged background than I do, no one I know can cover the costs of a university education just to have the knowledge - they want a leg up in the job market, which sadly, does not happen in these times, for many degrees.
 
Also historically you could relegate professions like medicine or law to essentially be taught by training but we are a much more evolved society today with greater knowledge than ever before. In medicine, our knowledge of biochemistry and genetics, for example is vast. In law, transactions are incredibly complicated. So there is a reason why you need higher education for these that you maybe didn't 400 years ago.
 
On the subject of unhealthy food, this is a great point:

Portion Size, Then vs. Now - DivineCaroline

The funny thing that keeps coming back to me regarding portion sizes is this: Mad Men show creater Matthew Weiner, when filming a scene of the show in early seasons in a grocery store produce setting, asked for smaller apples for props, because our apples now are huge in comparison. That's crazy to think of.

I normally buy low fat burgers. Last week I bought a package of 8 regular fat burgers, because they were on sale, and I'm one of those poor university degree suckers trying to survive. The amount of fat left in the pan was disturbing. Does anyone want a package minus one burger? Ew.
 
Try ground venison instead of beef, very lean (but you have to like the gamey taste). We're so low on groceries right now, last night Phil invented a casserole featuring ground venison that someone gave me to feed my *dogs*. I believe it's 2 years old and that's why they gave me a freezer-full for dog food.
 
Ha! I'm not the adventurous type, so I'll stick with low fat ground beef (my b-i-l is a hunter, and has a freezer full of venison, just not my thing, not that they have ever offered me any)...just that the amount of fat in regular hamburgers was unreal.

Anyway...smoking! Who's a fan? :wink:
 
On the subject of unhealthy food, this is a great point:

Portion Size, Then vs. Now - DivineCaroline

I pretty much am buying the old sizes today.

At McD you can get a regular hamburger at around 300 calories.

I only drink 12 ounce Cokes, whenever I buy them.

I get the smallest pop corn at the movies, and buy pizza by the one slice.

a regular small coffee, no sugar, just cream.


I did downsize to all of the above in the last 5-10 years, I realized the so-called better value, larger sizes were just ruining my health.
 
On the subject of unhealthy food, this is a great point:

Portion Size, Then vs. Now - DivineCaroline

:up:

i have a couple of my mother's cook books from the 70s, and i tried a few recipes from them recently, and was amazed at how tiny the portions were compared to contemporary recipes - all the cake/tart recipes called for a much smaller sized cake tin for the same amount of portions...
 
And yet, in this non-smoking time, when smoking during pregnancy/around your children is verboten, rates of allergies and asthma are higher than ever. Why is that?

i love ciggies, but don't smoke any more... never managed to get addicted either... i've smoked very infrequently over the years, probably about 4 packs of ciggies in my whole life, never smoked when pregnant, never near the kids, yet my son developed really bad pollen allergy when he was 3 - incredibly scarily severe, and would trigger asthma, bang on the 3rd week of May, every year! luckily we got to the bottom of it very quickly and received targeted seasonal treatment/prevention as opposed to the blanket year-round daily inhalers for asthma, which really helped, and he then followed a desensitization program for about 6/7 years

anyway, he is now 16, and, like all his French mates, has started smoking - despite all my nagging and health warnings and scare-mongering LOL

and i've spent the past 6 months telling him his dragon of an allergy specialist was going to KILL him at his next annual check-up when she finds out he's started smoking as i imagined she would say all these years of hard work and treatment have gone to waste, and i was REALLY counting on the b!tch for some really good medically sound scare-mongering anti-smoking back-up

but no, she smiled when he said he'd started smoking, did a spirometry test, said his lungs were perfect and didn't show any ill-effects from smoking (for now), and said she was pleased with his progress - he was actually the best he's ever been, and he had a 70% desensitization success rate which was amazing given how serious his allergy was...

we walked out of the clinic and he just said "pah i told you so!" [THAT WAS MEANT TO BE MY LINE!] and he swears smoking has made his lungs more resilient - although i did say maybe the onslaught of tobacco on his lungs have made them not worry about a little bit of grass pollen any more LOL!

but seriously, i was pretty shocked at his allergy specialist - i have never been so gutted! i think it was pretty irresponsible of her really tbh...

but what if, what if smoking in some perverse way has helped cure his pollen allergy? it would be like Sleeper!

also, the worst thing, for me - my mother died from lung cancer - she never touched a cigarette in her life! she was the most anti-smoking person i knew!
 
Also historically you could relegate professions like medicine or law to essentially be taught by training but we are a much more evolved society today with greater knowledge than ever before. In medicine, our knowledge of biochemistry and genetics, for example is vast. In law, transactions are incredibly complicated. So there is a reason why you need higher education for these that you maybe didn't 400 years ago.

I thought that was implied. While it's clear that certain professions require "extensive knowledge" desk jobs, secretarial positions, data entry, and sales positions do not. Technical/profession specific schools were brought up for the careers that do require a professional education or apprenticeship. Those are no longer respected, however.

In modern times though, a university education was never for "pursuing knowledge for the passion of it." Unless you come from a much more privileged background than I do, no one I know can cover the costs of a university education just to have the knowledge - they want a leg up in the job market, which sadly, does not happen in these times, for many degrees.

Of course it hasn't been used for that in modern times. University goes back hundreds of years and I was talking about its origins. Education or studying like that was if you came from a privileged background and the benefit was learning things other people didn't know. Now somehow a four year degree is supposed to train you to put money in a cash register, flip a burger, or enter data into a computer? It should never have gotten involved with the job market outside of specific professions in the first place.
 
Re. university education, not to jump in an defend it because I often think it was a waste of time and money in some ways, but it did offer some general experiences that are valuable in the work environment. I don't think it can substitute for trade school or trade type training, but in college I was routinely forced to do a lot of things I'm still doing at work.... doing projects I might think are pointless, working in groups with people I don't necessarily like, managing time and resources, etc. OK so we did some of that in high school but the level of maturity and professionalism was not really the same as what is required in college and at work. I will be honest, if I'm asked to be involved in hiring a new team member I rarely consider anyone without a BA, even though the work we do requires technical certifications you don't get with a liberal arts BA. The technical stuff is easy enough to train and our employer will help people get the certifications they need but the level of professionalism, maturity, and interpersonal skills goes above and beyond what people experience at a high school or GED level, and I'm not talking about a highly professional career either, I'm talking entry level $32K/yr job.
 
Now somehow a four year degree is supposed to train you to put money in a cash register, flip a burger, or enter data into a computer? It should never have gotten involved with the job market outside of specific professions in the first place.

But it isn't supposed to train you for that. I'm not sure why you think that these days university degrees are tied into job training. They most certainly are not.

The reason that people tend to look at undergrad degrees even for secretarial positions (like we do when we hire legal assistants) is because if you have 10 equally good people competing who have a BA and maybe 4 who don't (because that's really a realistic ratio these days), then why wouldn't we go for the person with a BA who has 4 extra years of maturity, who has written major papers and we know with some degree of certainty is fairly literate and capable to do some critical thinking? It's not that we think that they're better trained to be a secretary, it's just that if the choice is there, why not go with it? If the choice wasn't there and all we had was applicants with high school degrees, it isn't as if we wouldn't hire anyone - we would, and could probably be happy with their work. But that's not reality these days.
 
I think for the most part those that are feeling that university degrees are useless are probably approaching them incorrectly.

Even though I don't "use" my degree anymore in the professional sense I grew more in that 5 years than I ever did in the schooling leading up to or if I hadn't gone to college. My time at college taught me critical thinking and problem solving, something that can be carried through any walk of life.
 
Also, college opened up opportunities for me that I could have never accessed on my own, such as career networking events like the business dinners where the Business Club would invite people from all the big companies around, and opportunities to travel (we were required to spend time away in order to graduate, North America and Western Europe did not count).
 
i couldn't do my job without my degree and all my training - i was a terrible student though, i wasn't particularly interested in studying, was so unmotivated, but was kind of stuck on the academic train lol! i just wanted to go far away, and be independent, and that was my only way out... lucky for me i guess i found it very easy to get thru my studies, doing the minimum work, having loads of fun, but still getting really good grades... also back then, i had a maintenance grant, did 3 part-time jobs for extra cash, and didn't have to pay fees as the state covered those at the time, so there was very little pressure - those days are long gone now though, sadly!

i really do worry about the future for my kids - things are so different and so very precarious now...
 
ladyfreckles said:
Except that's exactly what I'm suggesting and I never suggested taking away choice. Make the bad foor more expensive and the good food more affordable will really help people out. Many people eat "bad" foods because it's the cheaper option.

.

This is incorrect. Go to the grocery store and price out a week's worth of healthy meals. You're spending far, far less than you would eating fast food every day. As someone who eats a lot of Wendy's/taco hell/shotty gas station sandwiches because I'm lazy and those are my available options at work at night, I can tell you my eating habits cost a hell of a lot more money-wise than they do on my days off. The only time healthier food is really more expensive, is if you're talking about the super organic free ranged 8 dollars for a tomato crap out there. Regular produce is just fine, and that's mainly just a marketing ploy to prove upper middle class and wannabe hippie trust fund babies are just as stupid as the rest of us. The only way "bad" food is cheaper by comparison is if you're talking about someone who eats ramen every single day for every meal. Because no, nothing is ever cheaper than salt water and white noodles. Otherwise, this argument drives me nuts. There is nothing cheap about a ten dollar supersized McDonald's double quarter pounder meal, it comes down to laziness.
 
I think bad food being "cheaper" is about more than just the actual price of the ingredients. I'll admit I often get lazy and stop somewhere to "grab" something (not Big Macs though, usually some sort of sandwich that is made in front of me). For me it's not just the price of food but the "cost" of having to shop around for ingredients and the time it takes to make the food. Also right now with it often being about 100 degrees and humid which means 90 degrees inside the house, there's no way in hell I'm turning my *oven* on to cook meals and prefer not to use the gas stove either. It "costs" me less to just buy a cheap meal on the run because it doesn't involve any prep work or inconvenience to me. We have a really nice fresh market at the end of our block and have been shopping there a lot for fruits, salad stuff, and meats, but the food is really fresh, eat it within a day or two or its not good. It's hard for me to get into the habit of having to grocery shop every other day when I'm used to doing it once every other week. So yes it does come down to laziness which for me translates to the cost of my time and other factors that I often am not willing to deal with on a daily basis for every meal.
 
I figured that since ladyfreckles has been arguing that Unhealthy/giant-sized portions should be much more expensive than healthier, more reasonable options, she meant actual costs and not figurative time/convience factors. Some people do actually believe that cost-wise, low income inner city residents go for burger king over heavier options because it's what is financially accessible and readily available. Hell, subway is cheaper, better for you, and I swear we've got more of them here than we do your typical fast food joints (although since they dont have a drive-thru...). Now, if someone suggested limiting ebt purchases (I'm not sure what that translates to outside of Massachusetts, essentially food stamps) to not include two liter bottles of soda and potato chips and even smokes, I'd be all in favor of that. I do ever so enjoy seeing my tax dollars go to pay for the fatty in line in front of me to buy Ben and jerry's at 7-11 because he has anxiety and can't work. 7 billion people on the planet now? Guess what. 7 billion people have anxiety. It's a naturally occurring human emotion. But I digress...wasn't this thread about smoking? I'm gonna go burn one.
 
I think there is something to be said for bad food being cheaper, though.

You can go buy how many boxes of KD or imitation KD for a buck? Packs of ramen noodles? Or those boxes of Rice-a-Roni or whatever else you can sometimes buy for like 69 cents. Or get a frozen pizza on sale for $3.99. Or a pack of hot dogs. Those are typically bad decisions made and they are a lot cheaper than fast food and also a lot cheaper than making a meal from scratch.

If you live alone, it gets even more expensive because a lot of times you might buy produce that goes to waste because you can't eat it as fast as it will go bad and you also don't have time to go to the grocery store every other day.

I know that when I lived in NYC, you had neighbourhoods in Harlem where you'd literally walk for blocks and blocks on end and not see fresh fruit or vegetables aside from the odd banana or tomato. So your options are either to eat crappy canned food that's full of sodium or pay to get on transit and go buy food that way.

Yes, you can eat cheaply if you shop very carefully, plan all your meals and so on, but for people who have poor eating habits, picking up a box of KD is a super easy and much cheaper solution than anything else.
 
A few friends and I were talking about smoking tobacco, the risks associated with it, and whether or not it should be illegal. They brought up some interesting viewpoints.


Pros of smoking tobacco:
- Generates money from taxes.
- Relaxing/Aids Anxiety and depression
- Is part of a long tradition/ has been done for a long time.
- Weight loss.
- Seems to help prevent certain kinds of ulcers.

Cons of smoking tobacco:
- Has a serious carcinogenic effect.
- Causes part of your body such as your skin, hair and teeth to yellow.
- Addictive.
- Smoking-related diseases kill one in 10 adults globally.
- Every 8 seconds, someone dies from tobacco use.
- Risk of birth defects if cigarettes are smoked during pregnancy.
- Secondhand or passive smoke alone can cause significant increase in various diseases/risk of cancer. The effects are even worse for the one smoking.
- Smoking does not just hurt you, it hurts the people around you.

What do you think?

I'm of the opinion that prohibition does not solve anything and just forces things into an underground market. I am unsure of what a good alternative, besides strict laws about when/where you can smoke, would be.

I question whether anything good can come from smoking. It does not seem to help weight loss really and the anxiety smokers experience when its been a little longer than usual since their last smoke does not in my view make it an anxiety reducer but an anxiety producer.

There are 29 states in the USA that have statewide bans in public places like bars, eating establishments, and other public areas. Its hard to believe that the other 21 states have limited or no such bans at all. Those laws allow a small minority of people to risk and compromise the health of innocent people.

Also the idea that business would be hurt by bans is false given what we have seen from the 29 states that have bans as well as countries in Europe. Hell, if smoking is banned in Ireland, then even West Virginia and Alabama should have it banned. Not saying Ireland is a hick land, far from it, but the consumption of beer and smoking was very widespread before ban went into effect.
 
North America is definitely backwards on this subject. We've banned things far less harmful without a blink of an eye yet turned a blind eye on cigarettes. We've criminalized marijuana, which is much safer regarding long term health. I think part of the reason is that it's difficult to reverse gears on something like this. I'd like to see us someday be consistent about the things we allow ourselves to put into our bodies on a daily basis.

Well, there are 29 states with full state wide ban, plus I think there is a move to have a nationwide ban by 2020.
 
To me something is not really "banned" if it is still sold. Smoking is already "banned" in a lot of places, but that doesn't mean you can't smoke. Our city "banned" smoking in public areas and certain types of places but no one I know that smokes has quit or even cut back.
 
You can't really make it illegal.... I mean, that would just be over the top. I am not a smoker and never have been, but making smoking illegal would be good enough reason to make drinking illegal as well.
It is good enough that there is a law which prohibits people from smoking in restaurants/pubs etc. That certainly makes it more tolerable for us non-smokers. Everyone knows that smoking is not the best for your health...so the ones who choose to do it are doing it knowing that they are harming themselves. Freedom of choice.
 
But it isn't supposed to train you for that. I'm not sure why you think that these days university degrees are tied into job training. They most certainly are not.

The reason that people tend to look at undergrad degrees even for secretarial positions (like we do when we hire legal assistants) is because if you have 10 equally good people competing who have a BA and maybe 4 who don't (because that's really a realistic ratio these days), then why wouldn't we go for the person with a BA who has 4 extra years of maturity, who has written major papers and we know with some degree of certainty is fairly literate and capable to do some critical thinking? It's not that we think that they're better trained to be a secretary, it's just that if the choice is there, why not go with it? If the choice wasn't there and all we had was applicants with high school degrees, it isn't as if we wouldn't hire anyone - we would, and could probably be happy with their work. But that's not reality these days.

Stenographers don't need critical thinking skills, and a BA doesn't impart any either, for that matter. Critical thinking skills are innate.
 
critical thinking skills are developed. the brain is a muscle. some people have bigger muscles than others, but they can always be exercised.
 
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