The anti-smoking thread

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financeguy

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We've had a few pro-smoking threads here so maybe it's time for an anti-smoking thread, hmmm?

I have pains in my chest pretty much all the time.

I get heart palpitations from the nicotine gum I have to chew to keep myself from smoking.

I am paranoid about getting cancer.

Before I started smoking, I needed only 6 hours sleep a night as a smoker I needed at least 8 (and still felt tired).

I am still addicted to nicotine and sometimes I think I always will be.

I am 33 years of age.

It needed to be said.
 
financeguy said:
I have pains in my chest pretty much all the time.

I just want to clarify, to avoid appearing melodramatic, I have had tests done and have no cardiac problems or anything, yet I do get chest pains which personally I blame on smoking (what else could have caused them?)
 
redhotswami said:
So, since the libertarian thread turned into an anti-smoking thread, does that mean this thread is going to be about libertarians???


Maybe now I'll find out what they really believe in...
 
My dad just turned 50 and he's already had a major tumor removed from his jaw and a smaller one removed from his back. The one taken from his jaw was supposed to leave half of his face paralyzed (no ability to smile), but he got lucky. He develops pneumonia easily. He still smokes a pack a day. If that new shot works out, my mom is making him get it. He's already blowing thousands of dollars a year on ciggs when they can barely make their house payment.

My grandpa has had four major heart attacks, the last one putting him in a coma for a while.

Both of these experiences have left me so shocked and disgusted, I don't think I can bring myself to ever smoke a single cigg. There's just no point. It's unhealthy from the first drag.
 
anitram said:
That's always the most shocking to me too.

Given the number of celebrities, rock stars, etc, that smoke and given that tobacco advertising is still legal in many parts of the world, including many US states, it is not at all surprising.
 
financeguy said:
Given the number of celebrities, rock stars, etc, that smoke and given that tobacco advertising is still legal in many parts of the world, including many US states, it is not at all surprising.

I don't buy that as an excuse for why people smoke.
 
financeguy said:


Given the number of celebrities, rock stars, etc, that smoke and given that tobacco advertising is still legal in many parts of the world, including many US states, it is not at all surprising.

Actually, like weight issues for girls, drinking, and other things that seem to crop up in teens and early 20s, I think friends/peers are a much more significant influence. Like I said my dad already has plenty of health complications from smoking. My little sister and I won't touch tobacco with a ten foot pole, and we're the ones that watch TV, keep up on popular music, read celeb rags, etc. My brother - he's pretty out of that loop, but he's been smoking since he was 15. Why? His friends do. When he's not around his friends, he doesn't smoke. Since he now lives and works with his friends, they all smoke.
 
I'm really disappointed that one of my friends has taken up smoking. He's just 19 and he says it's only a social thing and he doesn't smoke regularly. I'm sure we've all heard that one before ...

Smoking is repulsive and there are no two ways around it. I'm delighted at the anti-smoking laws that have been passed recently. Now I can actually go and watch rugby on the big screen at a local pub and not come home stinking of someone else's filthy habit.
 
I started smoking a few years ago because my neighbour and friend did. We would spend many a night in her converted garage playing pool, playing music, gossiping, talking, hanging out. She smoked, and after a while I began to slowly, too. My parents were smokers, most friends smoked, it was a natural progression for me. I dont know if or when I ever made a conscious decision, though I must have at some point. I gradually smoked more and and more until I was nearly at half a pack a day at one point. To be honest though, I dont know if I ever became fully addicted. I never smoked at work or in the mornings. Never around people who didn't smoke. Never smoked in public. I kept it to how I first started; in the evenings, relaxing, or whatever. Anyway, years passed (I was 16 or 18 when this all began), and about 18 months ago I was watching tv with those ads that are shown in abundance here, and the one with the dr saying "I cant operate" in contrast to the smoker saying "I cant quit" got to me. I stopped instantly. I did not have another cigarette until the Christmas just gone, when I bought a pack about 3 weeks ago now. Stress from uni and the drinking season was what I put it down to. I managed to get through 3 in the pack before finally 'donating' them to a mate. They are vile. I couldn't finish them. It makes me wonder why and how I ever started, but that is neither here nor there now. I dont smoke now and will never do it again. I'm thrilled at that. I wont be a smoker again. I cant do it. I've jumped on the reformed smoker bandwagon. when I die, it wont be from smoking related causes.
:up:
 
My great-grandfather died of a heart attack because he smoked
My grandfather (mom's dad) got lung cancer and died over a year or so because he smoked a pipe. In the end he died of stomach complications because he took massive amounts of excedrin to deal with the pain of his lung cancer.
My grandmother (dad's mom) got lung cancer which spread to her brain and died seeing animals coming out of the walls, because she smoked.
I mentioned these next two in the libertarian thread, but my brother has some nasty asthma and allergies because my parents smoked all through our childhood.
I have lesser asthma, and when I was little had a chronic sinus infection because my parents smoked. It left scarring in my sinuses that means on most days the smallest change in air pressure gives me a headache, which unfortunately triggers a migraine. I get about 4-5 a week if I don't take medication.
Both my parents have quit in the last few years, but my dad (he's 50) has COPD now and probably won't be able to do anything athletic again.
 
As someone who is allergic to tobacco and can't breathe around cigarette smoke, I'm all for an anti-smoking thread.

Some people cry "smokers rights!" :blahblah:

No. Your right to smoke infringes on my right to breathe clean air and you can go shove your cig up your bum.
 
U2democrat said:
Some people cry "smokers rights!" :blahblah:

No. Your right to smoke infringes on my right to breathe clean air and you can go shove your cig up your bum.

What I don't get is why libertarians aren't all for anti-smoking laws, as their pro-smoking arguments seem to boil down to "I should be allowed to smoke if I want to!" In actual fact, arguments in both directions employ the same "I should have the liberty to do what I want!" logic, with the 'do what I want' in one case being smoking and in the other case being breathing clean air. However, this is the primary pro-smoking argument, while it is just one of multiple primary anti-smoking arguments. The anti-smoking side has a stronger case and involves the "I should have the liberty to do what I want!" logic the libertarians like to use.

I was also under the impression that you were only free to do something as long as it did not cause others serious harm. I think giving people asthma attacks is quite good enough reason to argue against public smoking at the very least.
 
financeguy said:


Given the number of celebrities, rock stars, etc, that smoke and given that tobacco advertising is still legal in many parts of the world, including many US states, it is not at all surprising.

Given the cold hard facts people get about cigarettes from childhood, this is a lame-ass excuse to start what everyone knows is a deadly, disgusting, foul habit.
 
^ :up:

I don't care if people smoke, but do it in your own home, and don't get offended if I ask you to move away from me, if we are outside and you start smoking. Don't people realise they are breathing dirty chemical filled smoke into other peoples lungs. How would it go down if I lit a big industrial chemical filled rag and waved it around in peoples face for 5 minutes.

I'm all for people taking responsibilty for their actions, so if they want to smoke, by all means smoke, but if you blow smoke in my face you'll fucking hear about it (i think the guy who lit a smoke near me at u2 is still feeling the effects of my wrath HAHAH :reject: )
 
Ok, the rhetoric is really getting out of hand around here.

I smoke. Yes, it is a bad habit, but I am not a bad person. You know why? Cause I do it in my own home. I live alone. End of story.

Not everyone who enjoys a smoke is a crazy paranoid libertarian, or a jerk.
 
Kieran McConville said:
Not everyone who enjoys a smoke is a crazy paranoid libertarian, or a jerk.

Of course not. But offering any excuse other than addiction or enjoyment is lame.

And, many many people who smoke in public are fucking rude about it, and the people who smoke in places where they know it's prohibited should be removed immediately from that place.
 
As I said, don't care what you get up to in your own home, you're a grown man, you know the risks, so you make your choice. It doesn't make you a bad person, not at all, but when you encroach in someone elses space, smoking is an extremely intrusive thing to do, and im glad there are now laws against it, because it does really affect other people around you if they are not smoking.

But also, with all the health risks involved i don't know how anyone could stll be addicted to the stuff. An occasiona smoke is not going to harm you, like an occasional glass of wine or beer, but if someone is drink 20+ beers a day, like cigarettes you gotta know you are really fucking up your insides.
 
Yeah I've got no problem with no-smoking in public spaces. I wouldn't dream of encroaching on others' space.

I find however, that others have no problem encroaching on mine. For example the neighbours and their non-stop barking dogs. And the other neighbours with their non-stop doof-doof bass music. And the insane drivers who put my life at risk everytime I enter the main street of the city (a more, shall we say, immediate threat to life and limb).

Yes, this is an anti-smoking thread, I get it.
 
Several people in my family have died of emphysema and my dad's father died of lung cancer at age 26 due to smoking.

My mom smokes although she's cut back and I don't give her shit because after a point it's just obnoxious. I don't go around telling people they should quit if they keep it to themselves, but there's no use pretending it won't kill you.
 
My story:

I had my first smoke at a party in Grade 11. Not unusual, I imagine, but I never smoked again for another year and a half or so. One night I was up late in the early summer of 2004 (after I graduated) at my parents' house, and thought I smelled smoke so I went to check it out. Turns out my stepbrother was smoking in his room, he offered me one and I took it. I started with every so often - maybe once a month at a party. In the summer of 2005 I worked at a museum with a guy who owned his own car and smoked like a chimney in that car. Since the museum was in the middle of nowhere and the only way to get lunch was to drive 20 minutes to the next town, he drove me. He smoked a lot, and eventually I was, too. Three or four cigarettes a day at work and usually one at about 2 am at night, hanging out a window in my parents' house with a fan on full-blast and a full can of Febreze at the ready. My parents would have killed me if they knew.

But they never found out, and at the end of that summer I moved into residence. I went out two or three nights a week to the bars for the first couple of months and smoked while I drank, but I mostly gave up smoking during daylight hours once I moved out of the house. By the time December rolled around, I was back up to four or five cigarettes a day, in broad daylight. I had to stop cold-turkey when I went home for Christmas break though, and I got a (non-smoker) girlfriend, so I unintentionally cut back to only smoking when I went out to the bar - although I was smoking nearly an entire pack with my friends every single time I went out. Things stayed the same until May.

I then moved into the house I live in now with two friends from residence, both of whom would smoke about a pack a day between the both of them. I began smoking more and more again until the point where I was back up to about five cigarettes a day (sometimes more though). One day in June, I decided to quit. Just like that. I'd had enough of the taste (I never enjoyed smoking itself, only the head rush after). And somehow, I just stopped. I decided one day while smoking that it was my last, and it was. I had one smoke in August when I was drunk, smoked about two puffs but it tasted so awful that I put it out and resolved never again.

Fast forward to November 2006. I got a new job in a restaurant kitchen, and at least 80% of the people I work with smoked. The first day of work I wanted to go out and socialize with my new co-workers so I asked one of them for a smoke. And I didn't stop there, I smoked for a month, until mid-December. I've quit again. My last cigarette was smoked after I failed an exam on the 15th of December and I haven't had one or had the desire to have one ever since.

Here's hoping I don't start again. :up:

But the point of that story was that despite being bombarded with stories of how bad smoking was and having lost more than a couple family members to smoking, I still did it anyways because of friends. I wanted to fit in. I think a lot of kids who start smoking nowadays have similar stories.

We know how bad it is, but we start because of some social reason, not because of celebrities who smoke. I consider myself lucky that I got out (at least so far) before I got to the point where I couldn't. :)
 
financeguy said:


What is your alternative hypothesis?

I have to agree with what Lies and Martha said.

In my classes here you'd be lucky to find one or two people who smoke. I only have one friend who smokes. A lot of them quit, most of them never started. The ones I know who did smoke did it because their friends did, their parents did or their parents were really against it so they did it to rebel against them. Nothing to do with rock stars and celebrities smoking.

Last year I worked in two schools abroad and in some classes half of them smoked. I found that there cigarettes were much cheaper - here it's around £5 for a pack of 20 ($10) and in Spain you could buy a pack for under 2 Euro. Next year they're raising the legal age from 16 to 18, in Spain I saw kids of around 14 buying cigarettes. Also in school they would be smoking outside in the playground with their teachers puffing away too and I don't doubt their parents smoked either. It was acceptable, everyone else around them did it so most of them started smoking too.

Everyone starts smoking for different reasons but I've noticed that when you're from a country that has a lot of anti-smoking ads on radio/tv/magazines, schools don't allow it, where smoking is more expensive less people do it and more people try to quit. When you move to somewhere where it's the complete opposite there is a noticeable increase in the amount of smokers.

I had a friend last year who smoked all the time. She had cancer and various health problems. She was 14 years younger than her partner but she looked 14 years older than him. Her skin was really bad and she had two operations during the 8 months I was there. Hearing about how she suffers would put me off ever touching a cigarette.
 
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