I am so sick of people going out of their way to try and make people who smoke feel bad about themselves. Why even bother saying something- I don’t go around Halifax making comments about your lifestyle and you shouldn’t either. Minding my own business in the corner is not me forcing you to smoke, so leave me alone! —If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t bother saying anything at all
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2013.
Everyone who pays taxes has a right to complain. When smokers clog up our health care system because of choices that they made with ‘their body’, the issue then becomes one of the smoker abusing the money that we all invest in health care.
Smoking isn’t the only thing clogging up our health care system, what about all the people at fast food joints clogging their arteries? The way the majority of people are living their lives is actually a death sentence; sitting at the office, in a car, at home watching tv for hours, or in front of their computer commenting on the bitch boards… oh shit, I guess I’m guilty of that last one.
Same argument applies for fast food, I guess. We’ve already been complaining about unnecessarily obese people who perpetually ride scooters. Why should they get to destroy their bodies, and then lean on systems to take care of them when they’ve destroyed their ability to do this for themselves? We pay for their care when they’re no longer able to fairly contribute.
When obesity is one of the leading causes of premature death in North America, The Captain can rightly complain. Death is an expensive business.
True.
I think I’ll open a funeral home. Business is always booming.
My slogan will be
“We Put the “Fun” Back in Funeral!”
I’d die just to get a spot in that place!
Fuck what other people have to say!!!! You wanna smoke? Be the best smoker you can be. You wanna shoot heroin in your eye while stunning a pint of rum? Go ahead!!!! Anyone says anything g to you about it, just answer with the biggest drag you’ve ever taken, exhaled slowly into their face. Ignorant busybodies need to shut the fuck up and worry about themselves.
I’m getting really tired of this culture of shaming people into adopting a certain lifestyle. Treating people like second class citizens or discriminating against them for doing something that is perfectly legal is pathetic.
I’m tired of a culture where people’s selfishness is promoted and actively detracts from our progress as a species.
Iirc, captain, a while back stats were posted that stated obesity costs a lot less in health care dollars than smoking.
Also: no one gives a shit that you smoke, ob, what we care about are the shitty things your smoking does to the rest of us (having to deal with your second hand smoke, smelling your dirty smoke scent off ya, having to wait months to see doctors because you stupid fucks made yourselves sick, etc…).
You wanna go around smelling and ultimately feeling like shit, fill your boots, but don’t think we don’t have a right to bitch about how your poor life choices are affecting us.
As long as you’re not minding your own business in the corner of a bus shelter, than go ahead and smoke your poison stinky.
How much does a packet of smokes cost these days?
Op. I agree with you. However, if you happen to infringe on the rights of non-smokers (smoking in confined areas, doorways, someone’s home without permission etc) it BECOMES their business.
Here’s the thing op. Here’s how i see it. If it is down to either settling your craving or someone else’s asthma attack, for you to even SUGGEST that your ‘right to be yourself’ trumps their right to life, you’re a selfish, self-entitled twat whose parents were retards who had no clue how to set boundaries for their asinine kid.
However, if you’re on the street smoking and some self-righteous bigmouth tells you to put it out because fuck smoking! then you have my permission to tell him or her to go fuck themselves.
No one’s telling obese people to stop eating…
Oh god, stay out of the bushes OB! You’ll be hunted down and murdered!
What about gambling, alcohol abuse, prescription drug abuse, hypochondria? Do they have an effect on the cost of OUR healthcare system (not YOUR healthcare system)? What about the effect of not providing euthanasia to terminal patients? I know my grandparents wasted about 1 million between the two of them with useless surgeries and palliative care for 6 months before they finally died in hospital. Complete waste of money and resources, performing surgeries on 94 year olds!!!!
How about the cost of treating drug addictions as a criminal problem instead of a social problem? You can always find a scapegoat for healthcare spending but, it should not be socially acceptable to publicly shame someone!!!!!
Smoking’s bad for you….
I have a right to engage in legal activity with a legal product…
You’re clogging up the hospitals…
my body, my business…
You’re costing us fortunes in tax dollars…
I’m providing a fortune in tax dollars…
just wanted to rush the dead horse along a bit.
“What about gambling, alcohol abuse, prescription drug abuse, hypochondria?” – Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All good examples. When people take their vices to excessive levels it begins to burden the lives of others. The same as people (my grandparents included, SHITD) who stubbornly cling to life (no matter how limited and painful) long past an appropriate time.
It is OUR Health Care system, just as it’s OUR planet, which is why I hope to see more awareness from people in the future on the actual impacts they’re having on the world around them.
Good points, zZz. But, what about people who are initially pressured, or duped, into smoking and become addicted? That wasn’t their choice. How about foreign economies who are forced to increase exports to meet our demands? You might think that creates jobs, but really it just lowers the working standards of the people creating our consumables as they attempt to keep pace, and takes away production that could be contained right here at home. How about the waste generated? We both know smokers aren’t exactly role models for cleaning up after themselves.
“…it should not be socially acceptable to publicly shame someone” – No, you’re right, but it shouldn’t have to be done in the first place. People should be aware enough to make educated choices that limit the negative effects on the lives of others. Smokers should know to stand outside an occupied bus shelter, just as they should accept that people will complain about them as long as smoking exhibits such negative effects on society.
Put the blame where it belongs. On the tobacco companies.
They are the ones who prey upon addictive brehaviour. They are the ones who lace their product with thousands of chemical additives, some of which are included specifically to keep people addicted and the profits rolling in. Who cares how many people will die horribly in the process.
Don’t believe me? How come pipe and cigar smokers who don’t smoke cigarettes aren’t (with possible rare exceptions) lighting up every half hour as soon as their feet hit the floor in the morning?
The sad part is most people start smoking as teenagers when their brains and abilities to make sound choices are still developing. They become so addicted they willingly indulge in smoking despite knowing the risks. By the time thoughts of quitting emerge it is extremely difficult to accomplish this. Sadder for some, they will die from smoking at a time in their lives when they want to see their children achieve the usual milestones in life: grad, wedding, grandchildren. It may be legal, but it is legalized insanity.
Haven’t met a smoker yet (including myself) who doesn’t get to the point where they wish they could quit. Some make it. Some don’t.
i don’t smoke cigarettes
cleocat, obese people aren’t blowing nebulized allergins into everyone’s face.
Again i maintain in public, people have to suck it up. But in a confined space… i can’t even see how anyone could justify that. That’s just an asshole thing to do and if you don’t like that, that makes you an asshole.
IF shooting heroin were legal, yes it would be stupid to try and restrict where you could do that. Because there is no toxic by-products seeping out of the user. As gross or distasteful as it would be to watch a junkie shoot up, it’s not really hurting anyone.
But.. i mean are people really so obtuse that they really cant’ see a difference between something that is simply distasteful to some and something that actually spits out noxious and toxic pollutants into an enclosed space?
That level of retarded self-centeredness is just beyond me. There are actually some of you saying that if some little kid with cystic fibrosis asked you not to smoke in the bus shelter, you’d scream at it about YOUR fucking rights.
If i believed in hell i’d be really worried about someone like that.
AND I FUCKING SMOKE.
😉 Gotcha sista-bitcha.
OP
Some people will see every oportunity to feel important and superior as somehow their right. They will “call someone out” on eating red meat or anything else that makes the self righteous person make the receiver “realize” how much better the self righteous person is. A wider perspective will conclude that the self righteous lecturer is partaking in his or her own self reflective mental masturbation.
It’s the reason why many professors, cops, managers and even doctors love to listen to themselves talk as much as their students or underlings, when most of the time some of the “important people” are paying more attention to which hot students might be impressed (just some not all). The motivation for doing so as well as the frequency of doing it will show what the person is really doing.
Not everyone who’s “doing something for the world” actually cares about it.
well typed, danny boy
Dan I agree,if a person does a selfless act with selfish intent it is indeed selfish.
Steve Your correct,attempting to shame anyone accomplishes nothing but forcing that person deep inside of their addiction,mental illness,etc..Making them feel too stigmatized and ashamed to seek help.
What Crayons said.
The problem with certain lifestyles is when they threaten the well-being of others. Smokers spew their noxious odour where others can inhale it. Sort of like chronic flatulence except more nasty. I have nothing against smokers smoking. They just have to contain it, they can’t smoke wherever they wish.
Bashing Big Tobacco and the fast food joints for our own weaknesses is getting a bit old. We’ve had the information of what this stuff does to you for decades now. We’ve known smoking is addictive and makes people sick since the sixties. Yes Big Tobacco was culpable initially for withholding information on the addictive effects of nicotine but that was forty years ago.
Kids aren’t stupid, they know cigarettes are bad for you but they want to fit in with the crowd and look badass at the same time. If their parents are okay with that, it’s their choice and their problem down the road.
The only damage obese people do to others with their take-out food is not offer any to share. Them bacon-and-cheese addin’ muthafuckas.
True dat.
http://toddlohenry.files.wordpress.com/201…
Let’s just take a looksee at what our friends at Westboro think about this
http://siriunsun.blogspot.ca/2012/03/westb…
Who needs islam when we have westboro?
Just kidding, I for one appreciate having a diversity of things to detest.
Betcha Fred Phelps really regrets the tattoo he got when he grad-ee-ated Bahble School.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/arIkK36LQoa34jf…
Ahhh smokers… They have kept me busy my whole career thus far. And don’t kid yourself, they cost a lot in their last years. Millions of dollars in health care in treatment for COPD, peumonias, strokes and heart attacks secondary to smoking. And let’s not forget about the combo of smoking with diabetics… Ahh, and ventilators and trachs, cuz that’s a fun way to live. Smoking costs NS a crap load of money and it keeps hospitals busy. It’s a shitty way to live and die when you’re 50, but you’ll look 70. And you’ll stink. I can’t stand the smell of smoke. It’s the smell of death and disease. I feel sorry for young smokers, they should know better by now. I do give a shit if you smoke bc of what I do, what I’ve seen. I’m not going to give you crap if you are minding your own business and making an effort not to blow smoke in my face. The millisecond you are an inconsiderate ass and come near me with a lit cig, in a crowded public place or near my kids, you will get a lecture.
FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE
“My Body is my Own!”
As with many others on this site, I have often wondered about the meaning of expressions like”My Body is my Own!”. What, if anything, does it mean? Does it mean anything at all? Indeed, what can it possibly mean? In other words, what, exactly, is presupposed in its utterance?
As with the expression “I’m talking to myself”, what is presupposed is the existence of some further, ghostly entity who is the agent in the communication and another who is the recipient. When I’m talking to myself, in other words, who is doing the talking and who is doing the listening? Is this some form of schizophrenic dialogue or, if not, what does it mean? Can the talker perhaps, surprise the listener in some way? Can the talker provide some new and exciting information or insight that the listener was, up to that time, unaware? Put philosophically, what exactly is the ontological standing of both the talker and listener? Do they have any ontological standing at all in the sense that they possess real-world tangibility? Or, rather, was this the origin of the concept of the “soul”?
So it is with the expression, “My body is my own” but with a slight difference. Instead of uttering the expression to oneself, a second external party is understood to be the recipient of the communication. The speaker is telling someone else that his/her body is his/her own. But, and here is the interesting part, if one’s body is one’s own, then what is the ontological standing of the “owner?” Does the owner subsist, in some fashion, apart from his/her own body? Is s/he some sort of ghostly presence who is, by definition, unobservable by his/her own bodily organs? Is this the origin of the concept of the soul?
So we are left with a philosophical conundrum. What, if anything, does the expression, “My body is my own” mean? Does it mean anything at all? Can it possibly mean anything? I leave that for you to reflect upon as you have your morning coffee.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
montrealman some words would be useful here…
Two sentences. saying your body is your own is fine but you also have to realize that other people have bodies of THEIR own. If you’re infringing on THEIR bodies, you’ve stepped outside of the realm of what is yours to govern.
That’s like making the argument “My body is my own, therefore i have the right to blow it up at a public event in the name of something i believe in.”
People who have their own bodies (and op you really aren’t the only person with individual thoughts, feelings and needs that exists in the world) might not want to blow up. So what about THEIR bodies?
“It’s the smell of death and disease.” Indeed. I agree 100%.
But everyone is free to choose this legal behaviour.
Or are they?
How much of this choice is actually manipulated by addictive chemical additives?
Is this ethical?
RSVP
: eats_crayons (06/18, 12:05PM)
“saying your body is your own is fine but you also have to realize that other people have bodies of THEIR own.”
I am aware that other people have bodies of THEIR own but you have totally misconceived what I said. My question was purely philosophical, i.e., who are we talking about when we say that “He is talking to himself”? Who is the “he” and who is “himself?” In other words, what I said has nothing to do with other people having bodies of THEIR own. I’m not infringing on anybody’s body. I know you will not understand that.
: (12:08PM)
No, it’s not like “making the argument my body is my own, therefore I have the right to blow it up at a public event in the name of something I believe in.” My post had nothing whatsoever to do with blowing up one’s own body or anyone else’s body at any public event. One is staggered at the extent of your incomprehension in respect to the point of my post. I know you will not understand that.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
“I know you will not understand that.” * 2
You really are an elitist prick.
RSVP
: zZz (aka The Dribbler, aka Benny) (06/18, 4:38PM)
In your case, Benny, I must plead guilty. This is simply to recognize the objective fact that, in comparison with you, I do belong to an elite.
However, my big question is why you didn’t give me a “dislike” as you always – and I mean always – do. There’s no need to rush Benny. Just scroll back and give me me one now.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Like I’ve always said: the right to breathe clean, healthy air trumps someone’s ‘right’ to smoke a toxin that will kill yourself and those around you, eventually.
My dad has COPD. It’s a mild case and is mainly asthma-like and gets better with puffers. You know how he got it? Not because he smoked, but because he WORKED in bars and clubs as a musician for decades. How is that fair? He went to WORK and got sick because of it.
Smoking doesn’t only affect the smoker: it affects all those around them.
Makes me glad I quit. That said, smoking doesn’t belong in any enclosed space, including bus shelters.
Now if someone’s puffing outside a bus shelter (with a polite distance from others) and there’s a stream of 18 wheelers, buses and other traffic roaring and belching by, the smoke from that cigarette is the least of anyone’s problems.
‘MONSTERCOCK5000′ – fuckin’ eh, Kitty!
to the OB: there are few habits you can indulge in that affect others more than smoking. If you’re within smelling distance of others, you’re assaulting them with YOUR smoke. If it were to your own body most of was would care less……but chances are if I can see ya, it’s bothering me having to breathe your noxious fumes.
Last I heard, fumes from vehicles were not addictive.