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Opinions On Smoking

68K views 646 replies 337 participants last post by  ChanceMcCall 
#1 ·
I was just interested in what everyone's opinion is for smoking on here. Couldn't make a poll for whatever reason though.
 
#79 ·
Quit back in September, when I had the flu so bad I couldn't breathe for a week. Smoked for 46 years, had 8 heart attacks, 5 stokes, 2 open heart surgeries, and angioplasty to many time to count,Oh and my second ICD in my chest! My Xrays look like a kids LEGO set with all the Stents, wires and stuff in me, but I managed to keep on puffing,....til I couldn't breathe. I miss them and still want one and miss cigars the worst, but now that I'm off them, I won't go back as I know I couldn't survive again!:bthumb:
 
#81 ·
I still chew the 2mg nicotine gums a couple of times a day plus A cup of coffee. Thats my jones list. :eek: My doc is a coffee junky and said chew all you want Al, you'll never get lung cancer from gum. :D My innards are more sensitive now on the Coumadin so I gave up my Altoid mints, 3 tins a week for oral satisfaction. I'm boring but getting healthier.
Unlike you BW I miss not the allure of any tobacco products. The smell of it turns my guts. I use to say if I got cancer I would start again but I really don't think so now.
Giving up butts after 43 yrs was one of the hardest mental obstacles I've ever overcome.
All you quitters, hang in there it does get better. The "triggers" to smoke are very short lived. :t:t
 
#80 · (Edited)
Quit 26 years ago. It's a killer nobody that smokes seems to be afraid of until it's to late, they all say "oh well I have to die from something". If you've ever seen a full grown man in a baby crib crying from the pain that goes with Lung Cancer and begging to die isn't pretty. There are much better ways to pass from this world. How can anyone just blame the companies and not include the farmers growing this crap?
 
#395 ·
Well,I for one do blame the farmers as being part of the companies.Also the Federal Govt. who profits by selling the farmers quotas each year to grow the **** stuff and all the states and cities who profit by the taxes they receive from tobacco sales too. I don,t smoke but I,ve dipped for 40 years or more,quit a million times but couldn,t stay quit.That,s my fault, I take the blame for it.Jim C.
 
#82 ·
Considering that smoking is proven to cause so many forms of cancer, heart disease, and other issues, i am a bit surprised insurance carriers have not taken a stand to limit their losses, and lump smokers into a high-risk insurance category.

with the current push for a nationalized healthcare plan, one would think there would be an effort to address the staggering costs of smoking on the healthcare system.

Funny, but i see no such initiative.... maybe because the Kenyan in charge is a smoker? or have the tobacco lobbyists managed to pad enough pockets to make sure that issue never comes up?

not many smokers on my side of the family.... wife's side though, nearly all of them smoke. (the ones that it hasn't killed yet anyway).

If smokers want to light up, i also think they have the right to do so...but i dont want to have to smell it, nor do i want their medical costs "averaged" into my healthcare insurance premiums, which basically passes their risks onto me & everyone else.

Back before i sold off the Respiratory Division of my business (i own a medical company) i'd see a few that were determined to smoke themselves to death...they'd light up while hooked to an Oxygen concentrator. (we all know how much fun it is to get burnt to a crisp!) :rolleyes:

Another one that had survived his first round of throat cancer would pull the tracheotomy tube out of his neck and stick a lit cigarette in the hole to puff away.

Smoking is pretty much like taking a toll-road....but in this case, that road leads to somewhere you really dont wanna go, and you will (literally) burn up a lot of money to get there.
 
#84 ·
...or have the tobacco lobbyists managed to pad enough pockets to make sure that issue never comes up?
I think that's a big part of it. And also the fact that so much revenue is derived from taxing it. Just as smokers are addicted to cigarettes, the states and feds are addicted to the money it brings in for them. In effect, the tobacco companies probably love that factor because it's a way for them to directly bribe the government without it looking like a bribe, right?

...

Smoking does not cause cancer. It is a factor, yes, but you can smoke all your life and not have cancer. Radon gas is another major factor in causing cancer, but most people know nothing about it.

The smoking bans are what I have a problem with. I'm cool with banning it on public property, sidewalks etc, but when you start banning it in Privately owned restaurants you cross the line.

If you don't like what a business owner does, don't go into the business. They pay money to own that property. All this nanny state nonsense is what is ruining our country. What ever happened to property rights and liberty.

Oh yeah, I can't stand the smell of smoke, and I don't frequent smoking businesses. Gross.
There are so many interacting variables that all you can really do is show that some things "increases the risk" of cancer. Very few are so nasty as to cause cancer quickly and in 100% of all critters exposed.

What's interesting is the "risk management" side of this all.

People often go to great lengths to avoid things that are very far down on the list of dangers while ignoring things that are very high on the list of potential causes of death or harm. I suppose it could be argued that obsessing over a lot of these (low risk) things causes more damage to you by stressing you out than the "risks" themselves do.

I think one big reason that many businesses have gone to non-smoking is because they do get breaks on their various insurance policies. And they may also fear being sued by employees, etc. So it ends up being a lot cheaper and safer just to become a "non-smoking" facility.

I suspect that when a town votes to ban smoking in businesses, it might be, at least in part, motivated by various business owners themselves who want to go to non-smoking to save themselves money on insurance and reduce their exposure to lawsuits, but who want to make sure that all of the other businesses have to do it at the same time so that nobody ends up with a perceived advantage.

But here, we don't have any such law. Yet almost all businesses are "smoke free" which tells me that the business owners themselves are mostly finding it to be to their own advantage to do so. And when a restaurant goes "non smoking", they always seem to trumpet that loudly on their signs. So I think it is a selling point and most of them have realized that an awful lot of people avoid restaurants that allow smoking.

The only businesses I find that allow smoking here anymore are most of the bars (not all) and two restaurants (that I know of). Every place else is non-smoking even though there is no law about it. The one bar that I know of that is non-smoking does a dynamite business, probably on that basis.
 
#83 ·
I am an ex smoker. I feel much better since quiting, and I don't understand how anyone affords to smoke. So expensive.

Smoking does not cause cancer. It is a factor, yes, but you can smoke all your life and not have cancer. Radon gas is another major factor in causing cancer, but most people know nothing about it.

The smoking bans are what I have a problem with. I'm cool with banning it on public property, sidewalks etc, but when you start banning it in Privately owned restaurants you cross the line.

If you don't like what a business owner does, don't go into the business. They pay money to own that property. All this nanny state nonsense is what is ruining our country. What ever happened to property rights and liberty.

Oh yeah, I can't stand the smell of smoke, and I don't frequent smoking businesses. Gross.
 
#85 ·
I think one big reason that many businesses have gone to non-smoking is because they do get breaks on their various insurance policies. And they may also fear being sued by employees, etc. So it ends up being a lot cheaper and safer just to become a "non-smoking" facility.
Not always though, one woman was raped working at a pub in England not long after they came out with the indoor smoke bans because she had to smoke in a back alley.
 
#86 ·
First: Of course, that sucks!

But as for legal/civil exposure to the business: Was she able to successfully sue the pub?

In that case (assuming she sued), since it was a city or province law, I wonder what the basis of the suit against the employer would have been?

But I think the statement that "she had to smoke in a back alley" is interesting. It's very telling in my opinion.

Who/what FORCED her to smoke at all? What's odd is that smokers seem to feel that not only is it a right, it's not even a choice. It's just a given that everyone has to make allowances for them to feed their particular addiction. Either they need to put up with the smoke anywhere the smoker might want to light up, or, if they ban that, then they must somehow accommodate their addiction in some other way.

Perhaps businesses and laws need to protect the ability of everyone to properly "tend to" whatever other addictions they have, too, no matter what those might be. And everyone else needs to give them the time, consideration, and a "safe space" to do it (whatever it is).

It's a shame that this happened. But I'd be really annoyed to hear that she was able to successfully sue her employer over this unless he forced her to smoke somehow.

But I can hear it now... "The defendant could reasonably be expected to know that his/her employee would "need" to go outside to smoke, and despite that, he/she did not provide proper security for her while she did so. Where was the armed guard (properly licensed for the UK, of course) that every smoker should have assigned to them when they go out for a puff?"

"I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Take every penny the evil pub-owner's got and award it to my plaintiff!"
 
#87 ·
The other thing that happens to support the addiction is "smoke breaks".

My wife is a surgery scheduler for the cardiac surgeons in a Children's Hospital. She is allowed two 15 minute breaks each day but is so jammed with work she rarely uses them.

One of the other ladies in the office is a heavy smoker. She gets to take smoke breaks but to take them she has to go to the designated smoking area which five floors below. So she goes down the hall to an elevator which she takes five floors and then she walks outside. She smokes one or two coffin nails and then reverses course. Takes at very least 15 minutes and more likely 20. She does this a minimum of 4 to 5 times a day:eek:

So everyone else gets to help her with her work because "there not enough time" for her to do it. How is that fair to the non smokers. On top of that it is a Childrens Hospital actively supporting her smoking addiction which seems kind of wild to me.

My wife is addicted to doing puzzles. Maybe she should get 4 or 5 puzzle breaks a day? Seems only fair to me.
 
#396 ·
The other thing that happens to support the addiction is "smoke breaks".

My wife is a surgery scheduler for the cardiac surgeons in a Children's Hospital. She is allowed two 15 minute breaks each day but is so jammed with work she rarely uses them.

One of the other ladies in the office is a heavy smoker. She gets to take smoke breaks but to take them she has to go to the designated smoking area which five floors below. So she goes down the hall to an elevator which she takes five floors and then she walks outside. She smokes one or two coffin nails and then reverses course. Takes at very least 15 minutes and more likely 20. She does this a minimum of 4 to 5 times a day:eek:

So everyone else gets to help her with her work because "there not enough time" for her to do it. How is that fair to the non smokers. On top of that it is a Childrens Hospital actively supporting her smoking addiction which seems kind of wild to me.

My wife is addicted to doing puzzles. Maybe she should get 4 or 5 puzzle breaks a day? Seems only fair to me.
At Arkansas Childrens Hosp. the entire hosp.area in and outdoors is a no smoking area.Samo at most of the larger hosp. in the state.Jim C.
 
#88 ·
Yep.

It's the same where I work. I hate to complain, but whenever I walk between buildings, I see the same folks out smoking. Pretty much every time. If they're always there when I happen to be going from building to building, then it seems logical that they must be there virtually all the time or I wouldn't just happen to see them at every random time I'm out.

So I can only assume that they get a lot of paid smoke break time that I don't get. :D

What should happen is that people should "clock out" when they get up to go for a smoke, and then clock back in when they return. And other folks, when they take their breaks, should also clock in and out for them.

Then, if you're allowed two fifteen minute breaks per day, the system simply gives everyone credit for a half hour of time every day. That way, whatever happens happens as far as time.

But most systems round to the nearest fifteen minutes, etc., so you'd have to set the system up to be accurate to the minute for this experiment.

I'm not seriously proposing this, but it would be interesting to try it, just as an experiment, to see if the smokers do, indeed, get a lot more "break time" than the non smokers.

I know it sounds like we're picking on smokers. And I don't want to do that.

I wish everyone could easily quit smoking if they wanted to do so.

I understand that it's a very VERY hard thing to quit.

But I do think that when a smoker becomes militant and thinks of their smoking addiction as something over which they have no control, and also begins to think that everyone else somehow owes them special consideration because of that addiction, it's counterproductive to the mindset necessary to help them quit.

I hope all of you who are quitting the best of success. And I also hope that those of you who are not yet trying to quit will be able to quit soon, too.

I think one thing any smoker might miss would be those frequent work breaks. Maybe a good way to help with quitting would be to take those same breaks, but instead of going with the other smokers, go with a group of non-smokers who all go out for a nice little walk and BS session at about that same interval.

It'd probably be good for us non-smokers to get away from what we're doing and take a nice walk a few times a day anyhow!

I see it where I work. One smoker wants a cigarette, so they round up all of the other smokers and they all go out together. That's nice... except for the smoking part of it. And it probably causes all of the smokers to smoke more frequently because the one who wants it first gets them all to go.

I think we need to institute non-smoking walking and talking breaks for everyone. If a person trying to quit could join in for those walks, it might help with one part of the habit and make everyone feel better.

Crap! I'm just full of sunshine today. :D It must be spring!

Oh, and I'm addicted to RFC. I need four or five fifteen minute RFC breaks per day while at work ;)
 
#89 ·
Lost my mother and father to cancer from smoking. My sister is now dying from lung cancer after smoking 2+ packs a day. I have NEVER smoked nor do I care to. Don't like it when people smoke around me. Will not allow it in my house. To smoke or not to smoke is the choice of the individual, but do not disrespect my wishes either.
Metaleer
 
#91 ·
I don't like it at all. Don't like the smell. I've never smoked or chewed and never will. Never so much as tried it. Never saw the point. Doesn't offer any benefits to me whatsoever. Never understood the fascination with somone even wanting to try it as the only benefit to it is to ease the urge of those who are addicted and why would one even want to risk getting addicted to it? To each their own. I don't judge anyone for doing it. Thats their right. But for me there is absolutely no point to it at all. Same with alcohol. Never tried it never will. I may be opening a can of worms but I never saw the point in drinking either. If I wanna satisfy a thirst there is so many other things out there to drink that I prefer over a beverage that could alter my judgment and damage my brain and liver. I mean there is a lot of people dying from smoking each year but people get hurt and die every day from alcohol related accidents too. Just isn't worth it in my opinion. But again I'm not here to judge anyone or to try and take away their rights. Just isn't for me
 
#98 ·
comment :

Smoking is just one in a long line of "thingys" of contributing causes of heart disease, but not the # 1 cause ? Over the past several years "BEING OVER WEIGHT" has been recognized as being the largest contributor to heart disease ...

Soooooooooo ,,,,,, should the same stigma be attached to "fat people" as some have attached to "smokers" ? ? ? "IF" we start finger pointing at those who have habits detremental to good health, at some point we may be pointing at ourselves ?
 
#99 ·
Smoking is just one in a long line of "thingys" of contributing causes of heart disease, but not the # 1 cause ? Over the past several years "BEING OVER WEIGHT" has been recognized as being the largest contributor to heart disease ...

Soooooooooo ,,,,,, should the same stigma be attached to "fat people" as some have attached to "smokers" ? ? ? "IF" we start finger pointing at those who have habits detremental to good health, at some point we may be pointing at ourselves ?
Well said McBendy !
 
#103 ·
A friend has a degenerating back. Is in constant pain and had operations to fix. Doc asked him if he smoked. He said yes for about 20 years. The doc claims in his work, lots of degenerative skeletal problems are caused by the toxins ingested from smoking.
While lung cancer and other respiratory problems are what we think of most. It takes a severe toll on the heart. Some one develops a lung disease they die over time. People make the connection. A smoker drops over from a heart attack. Not so much.
Now if you smoke and live in L.A or some other place with air pollution? You have probably three times the risk.
 
#106 ·
i smoked for 30 yrs. quit for 5 yrs went back to it for another 5yrs. dr told me i needed to quit. at that point i had been trying to quit for 3 months. when he told me i needed to quit. i did and havent looked back. never had any cravings either when i quit that last time. ive been clean about 13 yrs now. but i will die of heart disease. its working on me as i type.i just hope i get to shoot up all my ammo b4 i kick off.:Blasting_:Blasting_:Blasting_
 
#108 ·
My wife is a Nurse at the a hospital cancer center.

When I pick her up after work sometimes there are people outside the main entrance smoking because it is not allowed inside the building.

That is somewhat ironic I think.
There's also x-rays and other radiation in hospitals and everywhere, how good do you think that is for cancer.

Ask my brother In Law who is dying from lung disease from smoking, wanna talk to him let me know I can provide you with the hospitals number and his room number.
How would that make any sense, anyone who has been personally effected by something generally will be against it, what do you think someone with liver disease would think about alcohol, or someone who's family got killed by a drunk driver, or all the new crap made that produces radiation if they're dying of cancer due to that. Smoking has never been proven to be a cause of lung cancer, unless there is also another factor helping to cause the cancer as well. Besides smoking greatly decreases the chances of getting dimesia, so while many non-smokers are brain dead, i'll just be dead, i can live with that.
 
#110 ·
There's also x-rays and other radiation in hospitals and everywhere, how good do you think that is for cancer.

How would that make any sense, anyone who has been personally effected by something generally will be against it, what do you think someone with liver disease would think about alcohol, or someone who's family got killed by a drunk driver, or all the new crap made that produces radiation if they're dying of cancer due to that. Smoking has never been proven to be a cause of lung cancer, unless there is also another factor helping to cause the cancer as well. Besides smoking greatly decreases the chances of getting dimesia, so while many non-smokers are brain dead, i'll just be dead, i can live with that.
I agree.
 
#109 ·
I grew up a smoker AND I have been treating smokers

I was a smoker. I grew up working a tobacco farm. Everyone here in NC was a smoker. I became a radiation therapist and have seen how devistating to your health and your life it can be. I quit long ago and KNOW it was for my best.

Smokers have more health problems, poorer physical fitness and take much longer to recover from things like common colds.

I am still short of breath some when I run or chase the grandchildren.

They don't do nearly as well with their cancer therapies either.

The is zero good to be had from use of tobacco. I saw my whole family slowly crippled by it. Please y'all, quit for the sake of your children and grandchildren. They need you.
 
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