A-fucking-men, DJ. I'm sick and tired of this PC bullshit. Everybody is such a fucking whiny complainer these days. You people weren't spanked enough as children. Toughen up. Wear a fur coat. Eat red meat. Snort cocaine. Chain smoke. Drink. Fornicate without conviction. Make money. Make babies. Raise them right. Get the cancer. Die.

Or, survive. Guarandamntee you, fucking whiny complainers die sooner.

By this argument, I should be able to pound a smoker's head with a mallet, if they put up a fuss, they should stop whining and take it. I've got a right to exercise my arm muscles, and if I choose to exercise by swinging a mallet, that's my right as well.

Touche. I would put my cigarette out in your eye.

And I would take the other.

I can't take this mewling anymore.

in my experience, the smokers themselves whine far fucking more when you tell them they can't have a cigarette for a couple of hours

Just another weekend at Redlands with Scotty D and the boys, huh?

that is funny. considering obesity causes more deaths in america than smoking-related diseases, i think it's awesome when an overweight person tells me i shouldn't smoke.

that being said, i've cut way back and i'm quitting soon.

If she's 15½, but 16 at the arraignment, and I plead "No Contest", does that still count as a conviction?

like you said, its rare that a smoker would deny a request to put out a cigarette, especially from someone who is allergic. i've been in plenty of situations where i've been standing next to someone at a show and they've asked me (nicely) to put out a cigarette, and every time i've apologized, put it out, or moved someplace else where i'm not bothering them. i just don't see why we need a law to accomplish what custom does just fine. either way, if faced with someone who is determined to be a dick, you've still got to get out of line to find a club owner/cop to enforce the ordinance.

another unrelated thing thats been bugging me about this whole debate: people are up in arms that they be able to go to a BAR and drink BOOZE without the specter of cigarette smoke. doesn't alcohol cause massive harm to society? there's something like 40,000 alcohol related deaths per year, and thats excluding accidents and homocide. and yes, i understand the argument is that smoking hurts people other than the smoker. but what about drunk driving accidents? lately there's around 25,000 drunk driving fatalities per yer, which account for more than half of all traffic fatalities. at least one half of all violent crimes involve alcohol (any cop can tell you that.) all of this occurs despite of our current alcohol regulations, which are obviously pretty ineffective.
second hand smoke is bad for people, but in a much more indirect way than jamming your car into oncoming traffic. people don't live in laboratories--its impossible to say that any one person who develops cancer "got it from second hand smoke", because they'll always be exposed to tons more carcinogens in the environment. smokers don't riot, fight, rape and kill--at leas not because of the cigarettes.
so, all you politically correct anti smoking types, by the logic of protecting society from harm caused by others, are you ready to stand up against the sauce?

good points druic but its an uphill battle to argue with inantimate objests

Sounds fine to me.

One word: prohibition.

Last time I checked, drunk driving in public was prohibited as well. No one is denying your right to smoke, they're just restricting your ability to intrude on other people's freedoms by smoking in public.

Exactly.

I call bullshit. The few times I've asked people to quit smoking, they usually get all mock innocent, like, "it's just a cigarette".

I don't care about people killing themselves -- y'all do what you want -- I do care about it's effect on me. And it's not so much the smell, as the non-voluntary inhalation of carcinogens that I resent.

If I could trust smokers to be polite, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But I've seen too many buttheads/faggot-maggots become numb to common decency to believe that anything short of out-and-out legislation is the answer to this problem.

I love it. I love the smokers whining about how it's their "right," somehow, to smoke, and how no one else has a right to breathe "relatively clean" air, and by clean I mean "non-cigarette smoke filled" air, for all the weasels who are going to throw in exhaust, food, and body odors.

Why is it that smokers' solutions to the problem always involves non-smokers relocating? Why is my only option to avoid smoke to not go to a show I want to see? Why can't you make it through an entire concert without a cigarette? Are you that addicted that your life will crumble to ruins in those few hours between nicotine hits?

Remember, smokers, you are by far in the minority - you should be thanking us non-smokers for decades of tolerating your crap. We have now had enough and would like to reclaim our freedom, thank you very much.

but thats obviously not working. and what about the assaults and murders and all the other problems caused by booze? you *might* develop health problems from my second hand smoke, just as you getting drunk *might* result in me getting cracked over the skull in a bar fight, a kid getting abused, a car crash, etc. etc. yeah, drunk driving is illegal, but its obviously not stopping people from driving drunk. why is it ok to tolerate all the death and misery caused by alcohol? why not advocate for tougher laws, or even outright prohibition, cut off the problem at its source? my point is that its much more likely that drinking results in harm than smoking.

Exactly. And I think most people are hesitant to confront most people anymore because they're likely to get physically attacked over the issue. If you can't get someone to shut up in a movie theater, do you really think someone's going to stop smoking when asked?

you're going to give yourself a heart attack way before you die from second-hand induced lung cancer if you don't calm down.

I'm all for tougher enforcement of the law. I don't think prohibition is the answer, and I don't know why you think it's relevant. No one has proposed the prohibition of cigarettes, only restrictions on where you can light up--restrictions that already exist on the consumption of alcohol to which you consistently point as a comparable issue.

Do any of you anti-smokers barbecue meat during the summer, or do you go knock over the grills of your neighbors out having some fun?

P.S. I quit smoking two years ago. Cold turkey, bitches.

Quitting smoking is not hard at all

I don't understand why people can't do it

Because it should be up to the bar/club owner whether or not they want to prohibit smoking and up to you or whoever to patronize that spot or not.

Like I said, in my town the bar owners were given an exemption to the smoking ban if they wanted to and the ones that chose to still allow smoking still have bars full of smoking and nonsmoking patrons.

And its not your right to go to a concert or bar as long as its not a public (government owned) spot. Though I would imagine that people who think that government legislation is the way to solve all of society's problems would prefer that the government own all the businesses anyway.

See you at the bar, comrade.

its been a long day and i'm chock full of caffeine, so sorry if i'm being confusing on this, and i'm not advocating that we get rid of booze either, i'm just trying to take these arguments to their logical end points. you can trace a lot of the problem of drunk driving to the fact that we do allow drinking in public places--bars, ball games, etc. if people had to drink in their homes (just as many anti-smoking advocates argue that people should just smoke in their homes) we could make a big dent in drunk driving accidents--is that something you would support?
my point about prohibition is that unlike smoking, alcohol causes problems for other people no matter where its consumed. domestic assaults, the majority of which involve alcohol, are a prime example. i just think that a lot of the opposition to smoking amounts to "i don't like it so you shouldn't do it"--this stuff about harming society is a bit of an afterthought, considering that we're willing to allow the much more direct, greater harm that alcohol causes society. i just don't see how we logically draw the line between personal vice and public harm.