Banning Smoking????

[Ken King]

Vic (or is it actually Richard Cranium),

As far as engineering I won’t take your broom, though I notice you say that you are a "bad cop" (which I take to mean that you’re the lump at the end of the counter at the local doughnut establishment or that guy sleeping in the car tucked away off the road). I am directly involved in the test and evaluation and know of causal relationships. And I actually have read many of these studies that typically only endorse a suspicion that there is a causal relationship. Unlike you I don’t believe them nor would I regurgitate the propaganda from the anti-smoking motivated organizations when they state that smoking “causes” cancer. That is what these groups say, not that it might be a catalyst to activating cancer cells but that smoking causes it. I would hope a trained investigator such as you could understand the difference or is this concept beyond your abilities? I would have no problem with them saying that it is possible that it causes cancer, but no, they say it factually does. Or if they said “due to some people having a likelihood for cancer (due to genetics)” it is recommended that you should not smoke.

I worry about you too, if in fact you are a cop (I guess those guys at the malls think they are cops even if they don’t carry guns), that instead of protecting life and property you are ready to go after the evil smoker instead of an actual criminal.

 

[JabbaJawz]

Live and let live. I don't agree with banning smoking in public places. While I don't understand smoking and have never done it myself, there are those who enjoy it and they have every right to partake in the behavior. Both of my parents have always been smokers, so I'm used to it. If I go into a bar I expect to be around smoke - it's just part of the terrain. Restaurants do have sections for smokers/non-smokers, and I just request non-smoking and let it be. In some places you can smell smoke even from the non-smoking section, but it's just one of those things. I'm sure if I requested it, the restaurant would seat me farther away from the smokers, but usually just being in 'non-smoking' is enough for me.

 

[willie]

Originally posted by vraiblonde
When we go out in public, we are going to encounter behaviors in our fellow humans that we don't like. I don't like poor manners - chewing with your mouth open, incessant complaining, loud belching, public profanity - shall we ban that?

And don't forget pikin your nose at the stoplight.

 

[vraiblonde]

You're a nice person, Lauren.

 

[Kizzy]

For some reason, I have seen a lot of death around me from Cancer. My mother, my grandfather, my boss, a girlfriend my age, several co-workers, a child from church, my father, the list goes on. My mother died at age 50 and never smoked, but she was around it growing up. My grandmother smoked for 50 years and now at 80, she is cancer free, but her brother who smoked for 20 years died of cancer (he was 50). My girlfriend died at age 28 of cancer and never smoked. My boss died at 36 and never smoked. My boss who died was a health nut. He worked out, stayed out of bars because he hated smoking. He wasn't feeling well and went to the doctor's office, they ran test, he was dead a year later, basically the same thing that happened to another co-worker who was 38. I have relatives who are in their early 80's that have smoked since birth it seems and they are cancer free, and we have a volunteer at work who is almost 90 that just quit smoking in the past few years who is cancer free.

I'm sure there are a lot of factors involved in cancer and I'm sure smoking doesn't help as a contributing factor, but it seems to me it is a hit or miss thing. I have read stories of those who are diagnosed with cancer, only to go back and have test run later and it show negative. Could different people's immune systems destroy the cancer? :shrug: There are so many unanswered questions when it comes to cancer.

I am a smoker and I enjoy it. What really ticks me off is whenever the government wants to build a new bridge they increase the cigarette tax. The State of Maryland received a large sum of money for the tobacco settlement and I don't see them handing out materials for smokers to get off the smokes, nope they just raise the tax to fund special projects when they cannot find the money elsewhere. I want to quit for that very reason. I'm sick of funding the government's special projects. AND to think that during World War II, the government sent cigarettes to the troops to calm their nerves.

I do not think smoking should be banned everywhere. For pets sake, you could live in a plastic bubble and that doesn't mean your never going to get sick and die. We will all die someday for some reason.

 

[Ken King]

Originally posted by cattitude
I thought this was a discussion board. People were posting their opinions. Name calling is name calling, a$$ is no worse than twit or insinuating stupidy. Perhaps I was wrong to get in the middle of your discussion with Searide and for that I apologize. Understand me? Not hardly.

Cattitude,

The apology is willingly and readily accepted and in turn I owe you one for displacing my ire towards you, for which I apologize. I'm sorry, as humbly and sincerely as one can be in a typed post. I shouldn't have lashed out at you when it wasn't you that stirred me up.

I still believe that this exchange has helped me understand you better and your post (quoted above) adds to that understanding (which is different than what my feelings were earlier today, as it seems my emotions took over for logic and reason). This doesn't mean that I know how you feel or how you would act in any given instance, but that my thoughts about your character are clearer. Honestly, I think you are a good person, a worthy contributor to the forums, and I would also like to add that the time (or is it times) that I have met you I truly enjoyed the experience.

To any others I might have offended with my outburst I also apologize. Dee Jay has been working with me for several years to soften my approach when debating or discussing issues with participants. At times I revert back to what I think are basic survival instincts and when "battling" on the forums I sometimes go for a kill and tend to squelch the ongoing discussion when it probably wasn’t necessary to do so. Again, if you were offended, I am sorry for that in an equally sincere manner.

This issue has been digging at me for many years as I simply see it as those who are anti-smoking trying to inhibit me in my pursuit of happiness. There are many organizations that won’t be happy until smoking is banned or, in the case of Maryland, taxed to the point of being prohibitive.

The facts, as I know them, are that it cannot be conclusively or absolutely stated that smoking “causes” cancer. I will acknowledge that it probably isn’t the best thing I can be doing solely from a physical health standpoint. But if it truly “caused” cancer, why do so many smokers escape the malady? To answer my own question, I believe that it is the result of a genetic deficiency or abnormality that makes some more susceptible than others. Some believe that it is related to other lifestyle activities (like dietary influences) that make them more or less susceptible to cancer. Could be, I don’t know. It is probably a combination of many things that bring about the ailment. But to make the blanket statement that smoking “causes” cancer is, in my mind, a result of junk science. And to me junk science is when an attempt is made to prove pre-conceived notions without explaining the existence of exceptions that clearly indicates that many that smoke do not suffer from what they say definitively is the “cause”.

 

[JabbaJawz]

Originally posted by willie

And don't forget pikin your nose at the stoplight.

 

[JabbaJawz]

Originally posted by IM4Change
I do not think smoking should be banned everywhere. For pete's sake, you could live in a plastic bubble and that doesn't mean your never going to get sick and die. We will all die someday for some reason.

It's true. Personally I don't want to do anything (smoking) that may assist in my early demise, but if other people want to do it, it's none of my business.

 

[VicMackey]

Originally posted by Ken King
though I notice you say that you are a "bad cop" (which I take to mean that you’re the lump at the end of the counter at the local doughnut establishment or that guy sleeping in the car tucked away off the road).

Sorry, but "Vic Mackey" is a character in a TV show (FX's excellent and award-winning "The Shield"). The only similarity between he and I are our personalities; I'm not a cop. Gee, you have a lot of animosity toward cops. Get a couple speeding tickets recently?

That is what these groups say, not that it might be a catalyst to activating cancer cells but that smoking causes it.

So you don't understand cancer. Here, I'll educate you: certain DNA mutations cause cells to grow uncontrollably. This is cancer in an ultra-simplified nutshell. There is no "catalyst to activating cancer cells" as far as I know. There is the basic process: X damages DNA, and cells begin growing uncontrollably. Yes, for the nerds out there I've glossed over subtleties, but that's pretty much it. So medical science boils down to either epidemiology (look for cancer, then identify commonalities amongst the people that have cancer, and assume a causal relationship. This is usually pretty dumb.), or identifying an actual mechanism by which damage to the DNA can occur. I'm pretty satisfied with both the epidemiological and "basic science" studies--admittedly very few--that I've seen. Besides, it doesn't take a genius to figure that coating your lungs with tar and nicotine probably isn't the healthiest thing you can do.

And you never responded to defend your chop-logic "I don't have cancer and I smoke thus my single data point disproves decades of hard science" statement. I still doubt your skills as a tester.

I worry about you too, if in fact you are a cop (I guess those guys at the malls think they are cops even if they don’t carry guns)[/B]

Now see, that I agree with you. Mall "cops" must be the lowest form of life anywhere. They're either fat or old or both. The Target store in California, MD, has some tubby doofus in there in the evenings occasionally that just makes me laugh. He's like 400 pounds and looks like he's 12 years old.

 

[JabbaJawz]

Originally posted by VicMackey
Get a couple speeding tickets recently?

YES

 

[watercolor]

Originally posted by laureng
YES

I almost got one the other day!

 

[vraiblonde]

What it boils down to for me is there are umpteen million people in these here United States. At some point we have to learn to get along and compromise with each other.

This goes back to my argument about anti-discrimination laws. A privately owned business should be able to determine who they want to serve - whether they decide to not accommodate smokers, they won't serve blacks or gays, whatever. Let the public decide with their own money whether they want to patronize these establishments or not.

 

[jazz lady]

NYC Ushers In Smoke-Free Era

New York (AP) - In a smoke-choked Manhattan tavern, Cynthia Candiotti asked a neighbor for a light and took a deep drag on her cigarette, savoring a last barstool puff before the city outlawed smoking in bars and nightclubs.

For Candiotti, 26, the ban is a double whammy: "I can't tell you how many dates with cute guys I've gotten by looking into his eyes while he lights me up. That's as good as smoking."

With fear, loathing and lament, the city of Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart and Philip Morris USA was ushering in the smoke-free age Sunday, one tick after midnight.

Goodbye to the cloying smell of cloves. The wispy white rings that settle into a layer of haze at bars, pubs and nightclubs. The smoker's hack and smelly clothes after a night out, whether you smoked or not. The phone number written on a matchbook cover.

"First they cleaned up Times Square, then they said you couldn't dance in bars or drink a beer in the park. Now you can't even smoke when you go out on the town," said Willie Martinez, 37, who sat, chain-smoking, in an East Village bar. "This is like no-fun city."

"There's one word for this: Ridiculous. Stalinesque. Brutal," interrupted Elliot Kovner, 48, as he added a few choice vulgarities.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former smoker himself, pushed through the ban with a zeal that angered smokers and even some nonsmokers. He stood firm even when an incensed smoker wearing a Superman suit showed up at City Hall carrying a 12-foot-long ersatz cigarette and a sign threatening him.

Health issues are a priority for Bloomberg, a billionaire who once donated $100 million to Johns Hopkins University.

"Fundamentally, people just don't want the guy next to them smoking," Bloomberg said. "People will adjust very quickly and a lot of lives will be saved."

The ban covers all workplaces, including bars, small restaurants, bingo parlors and other venues not covered by the city's previous smoking law. Owners of establishments could be fined $400 for allowing smoking and eventually could have their business licenses suspended.

A state anti-smoking law passed Wednesday is even tougher, closing a city loophole that granted an exemption for businesses that provide enclosed smoking rooms. That law takes effect this summer.

The bans have led to fears that bars will go out of business and rumors that secret "smoke-easies" will pop up - but of course, New Yorkers can be given to exaggeration.

Proprietors in California complained when a similar rule was enacted four years ago, but business did not drop significantly and polls showed most patrons backed the ban.

About 400 communities nationwide have adopted smoking bans in restaurants, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation.

But none has New York's history of smoking, from the smoke-filled back rooms of Tammany Hall and the old neon cigarette signs of Times Square to the "loosie" - a single cigarette sold in bodegas for as much as $1 to customers who can't afford a $7 pack. (City and state taxes have lifted cigarette prices to among the nation's highest.)

Until the 1920s, 30 percent of all cigarettes produced in North America were manufactured in the New York metropolitan area.

Philip Morris, long headquartered in midtown Manhattan, announced a few days after the city ban was approved that it would move to Virginia by 2004. Economic reasons, the company said.

Smoking, ban opponents say, is part of the city's in-your-face, adrenaline-fueled culture.

"A ban might work in California," said Eddie Dean, who owns a club called Discotheque and a bar called Tiki Lounge. "New Yorkers are defined as a different kind of person. It's a gruffer place. It's less healthy. People are a little more aggressive. I just can't see them tolerating it."

Back at the Orange Bear in the Tribeca section of Manhattan, Cynthia Candiotti's face was obscured behind a cloud of smoke.

"Smoking and boys have sort of always gone together," she said, considering her cigarette. "Smoking, I'll probably quit. Boys, that's a whole other matter."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It will be interesting to see what happens after this goes into effect.

 

[vraiblonde]

It will be interesting to see what happens. This sort of stuff brings out the rebel in me - I'd quit because it makes my skin age and my hair lose it's shine. But I'll be damned if I'm going to cave in to the PC liberals and their fanaticism.

They're wrong, though, when they say it didn't affect businesses in CA. I know of 2 bars in little Chico, CA that had to close because of loss of patronage after the smoking ban was enacted. Cops used to go into bars and fine the owners if anyone was smoking in there. One bar actually paid off the cops to not report them. Those are the only instances I know of first-hand but that's just one little town. Prohibition, anyone?

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Bloomberg would have held a vote on this issue instead of ramming it down their throats like the little dictator he is.

 

[jlabsher]

Well if all the propoganda is true we should all be dead from seconhand smoke. My parents both smoked 2 packs a day until the doc told them to stop when I was around 10. Most folks smoked in the 60s. We are still here with no problems. I hate to see the government trying to tell us how to live our lives, making victomless crimes illegal. Reminds me of the seatbelt issue or the helmet law. Yes it bothers some people.

If you are in a restaurant and the person next to you is smoking and it bothers you, civilly ask them to stop and tell them it bothers you. I'm sure they will stop.

The government has no place in outlawing smoking. We all supposedly are adults and can communicate with our peers.

The whole thing kind of wants me want to park a tractor in the reflecting pool.

 

[Ken King]

Originally posted by VicMackey
Sorry, but "Vic Mackey" is a character in a TV show (FX's excellent and award-winning "The Shield"). The only similarity between he and I are our personalities; I'm not a cop. Gee, you have a lot of animosity toward cops. Get a couple speeding tickets recently?

Well, I guess you just like to lie, your Profile is where you said that you are a cop. Also, no speeding tickets Opie, no animosity towards cops either, morons are another story.

So you don't understand cancer. Here, I'll educate you: certain DNA mutations cause cells to grow uncontrollably. This is cancer in an ultra-simplified nutshell. There is no "catalyst to activating cancer cells" as far as I know. There is the basic process: X damages DNA, and cells begin growing uncontrollably. Yes, for the nerds out there I've glossed over subtleties, but that's pretty much it. So medical science boils down to either epidemiology (look for cancer, then identify commonalities amongst the people that have cancer, and assume a causal relationship. This is usually pretty dumb.), or identifying an actual mechanism by which damage to the DNA can occur. I'm pretty satisfied with both the epidemiological and "basic science" studies--admittedly very few--that I've seen. Besides, it doesn't take a genius to figure that coating your lungs with tar and nicotine probably isn't the healthiest thing you can do.

What is “X” that damaged the DNA, come on Mr. Wizard help this ignorant fool? Growing uncontrollably from the influence of an external source pretty much defines “catalyst”, doesn’t it?

And you never responded to defend your chop-logic "I don't have cancer and I smoke thus my single data point disproves decades of hard science" statement. I still doubt your skills as a tester.

I didn’t mention that those with the highest consumption rates (in Japan) have the lowest incident rate? You haven’t read were others have posted similar observations? Hard science, BS, manufactured results is more likely to further a specific agenda of dictating what is sociably allowed in our society.

Also, when paraphrasing comments it isn’t necessary to use quotation marks. I was taught that you use them to quote what was actually stated, not what you think the words meant.

I'll ignore your comments about my professional skills as it is clear you are in no position to know what it is I do. Just another cheap shot doled out from a snake in the grass too chickensh!t to use their real identity.

Unlike you, I don’t hide under a pseudonym nor do I lie about what it is I do in my profile. I was right, you are a Richard Cranium. Crawl back under your rock and pretend to be a TV cop elsewhere.

 

[VicMackey]

Originally posted by Ken King
Well, I guess you just like to lie, your Profile is where you said that you are a cop.

Sorry, I assumed folks on this board were culturally hip enough to detect the name of a TV character. Didn't realize you were all so naive.

no animosity towards cops either,

Which is why you made pithy comments about donuts, right?

Unlike you, I don’t hide under a pseudonym nor do I lie about what it is I do in my profile.

Well, I hope you're not planning on changing jobs any time soon--most employers will do a quick scan of the internet to see what sort of stuff their potential employees are into. Over the past few years I've ended up not hiring dozens of people, because when I search for their names I find their online activities prove them to a be a moron. I guarantee if I were interested in hiring you, and saw the sort of silly pap you posted on these forums, your app would go straight in the round file.

The point is, there's a reason to not use one's real name or occupation in a profile. Especially in this area with so many gun nuts in it. I've seen a lot of hotheads on this board who blow up at the least provocation--a pseudonym is a fine way to ensure the wrath of some ticked off SMIB stays in the electonic world only.

Anyway, I see it's pointless to argue with you--you'll never believe the overwhelming evidence that smoking causes cancer, and will instead harp on the few anecdotal cases such as yourself. And that's fine. Although I despise smoking (I'd like to see it banned outdoors too--there's always some out-of-shape dipstick lumbering down the street in front of me, blocking the street and puffing away. Yeah, I really wanted to inhale your carcinogens you stupid pig), the good thing is that smokers tend to die off early enough before they've sucked up too much health care money. So I'm willing to tolerate smoking as a cheap way to fund health care.

 

[migtig]

Originally posted by VicMackey
Especially in this area with so many gun nuts in it. I've seen a lot of hotheads on this board who blow up at the least provocation--a pseudonym is a fine way to ensure the wrath of some ticked off SMIB stays in the electonic world only.

This one little paragraph of yours bothers me. Could you please answer some questions that it has raised for me?

Please define a "gun nut".

Who are you to make such an assumption about people in real time vs internet time? which leads to, if you think you know so much about all of us on this forum are you an MPD? And if not, thinking that you are so much better than us, why did you join here?

Where the heck are you from that you can come on this board and call us SMIB's? Do you have that right? Or are you so superior you just assumed it? And don't you realize SMIB is a racist and derogatory term?

 

[Christy]

Originally posted by migtig
Where the heck are you from that you can come on this board and call us SMIB's? Do you have that right? Or are you so superior you just assumed it? And don't you realize SMIB is a racist and derogatory term?

Actually Mig, I'd rather be a SMIB than a fictional tv character.

 

[migtig]

Originally posted by johndoug
I have been in St. Mary’s county since I was 16 and always found it FUNNY that the people down here are so offended by SMIB “Southern Maryland Inbreeds” Why? Are they inbreeds? Were there families? Does anyone here even know an inbreed? When will these people GET OVER IT. If they aren’t inbreeds then they should just laugh it off, Like we do.

By the way what Race is a SMIB? Black, Red, White, Yellow, Red, Pink….I mean it is racist or so you say.

JD - it is a prejudist comment that is belittling and demeaning to a group based upon their regional upbringing - in this case Southern Marylanders, but it's the same in a lot of places ie "hillbillies". Hey if this guy was born and raised here and wants to say SMIB as an inside joke that's fine. But it came across as negative and belittling, not as an inside joke. Just becuase someone is from one local, no matter where that is, is no reason to be insulting, demeaning, derogatory of the "group" as a whole. After all he could very well believe we are all inbreeds just because of where we live. I call it racist. And since SMIB is an INBREED of Southern Marylanders the race is white.