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| Killing her softly with his smoke
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With all the information available world-wide, I really am bamboozled about why people are STILL taking up that filthy habit of smoking.
We all know now how bad smoking is for our health, your unborn child's and the people around you who have the unenviable choice of either not breathing at all, or reluctantly sucking in the passive smoke fumes and then dump the butt on the ground...
Where are all the bleating environmentalists when you want them...
But young people who have the full advantage of education and hindsight from others before them (ie the emphysema sufferers and the people speaking out of a hole in their throats) and yet they still take up the habit? What's their excuse? Absolute stupidity!
And I have no sympathy for them when the government puts up the taxes on cigarettes.
Today I saw a young couple in the Brisbane mall, holding hands on their lunch break, enjoying the nice sunshine and early Christmas decorations around them.... blowing poisonous smoke into each other's faces as they attempted to gaze lovingly into their partner's eyes through the haze of smoke around their heads and the people nearby trying to eat a non-polluted lunch....
Foulness.
The fugees song (well a version of it anyway) immediately popped into my head
"Killing her softly with his smoke, killing her softly..."
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These days smokers are exiled from everywhere. No-one in their right mind wants a smoker within 20 metres of them, even if they do dispose of their butts. They’re like the modern day Mary and Joseph- no-one wants to open their doors for them, there’s just no room for smokers. They’ve been banished. And they have the hide to claim "Smokers have rights, too!" What about my right to breathe clean air????
We have really strict smoking laws in Queensland. Things like you can't smoke in any pubs/clubs/restaurants areas where food is served, there's no smoking within 4 metres from a doorway and it's a $150 fine if you drop your butt.
Being a no smoker, I applaud the fact that in Brisbane we can go out drinking and come home not stinking. But because the smokers have now been exiled from buildings and doorways, there's a gauntlet of smokers lining footpaths everywhere you go! It's like walking into a special effects stageshow, fighting your way through the clouds of toxic fumes, choking on the exhaled poisons from these morons using their "smoke break" as an excuse to do less work than the non smokers who, by the way, are not entitled to a "non-smoke break" 5 times a day....
Why is it that people can smoke at any time of the day and not be called an addict? If you have a beer before 10am, people say "Ooh, starting a bit early, aren't we?" And yet it doesn't matter how many cigarettes people have in a day either, 5, 10, 20, whatever, but any more than 6 drinks a day and suddenly you're an alcoholic.
We also have a crazy law here where you can't drink alcohol in a public place, but feel free to smoke and pollute your lungs and mine, as long as you're further than 4 metres from a doorway...
Drinking in public doesn't offend nearly as many people as smoking does- the worst you're going to inhale from a drinker might be some stale beer breath, which is much better than the rat poison and nail polish remover chemicals you'll get from standing within a 5 metre radius of a smoker.
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Posted by kaos264 on 2007-11-26 00:27:48 | Rating: | Views: 78
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I think the larger difference between drinking and smoking in not the over-all health aspect of it but more so the way that people act. Drinking in an inhibitor(is that the right word?) it impares your judgment. Where as smoking, well quite frankly you are starting out with bad judgment right from the start but it doesn't make you any.... less smart.. if you get what i mean. The problem with smokers is that when you ask them to leave point A they crowd point B, when in all honesty they should have designated smokers areas. In the country i live they have banned smoking in public places but they haven't quite gotten to the doorway things yet. I honestly think that the most sensible solution is to say. after such and such of a year, anyone born in this year or later will not be allowed to purchase cigarettes.... make them slowly illegal. honestly people under the legal age shouldn't even be able to obtain them legally in the first place so they should have no need to buy them later. This also doesnt infringe on the rights of people who have been smoking for so many years and just cant give up the habit even if they have tried. We have to remeber that we have only just begun to learn the seriousness of cigarette smoke and all the chemicals that they are putting in the cigarettes that people smoke today as apposed to perhaps 130 years ago or so... If people were soming just pure tobacco i dont think that things would be as bad as they are today. I think they only reason why goverments have not instigated on the elimination of cigarettes is because of the profit they can make off of it. Discouraging people to start smoking and charging others more money just to feed thier habits. Its a no win situation really. All we can do is try and make our own children aware of the dangers, and force our goverments into finding a solution for a healthier tomorrow. And asking the people around us to "Butt Out" in public areas.
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Posted by LittleStar
on 2007-11-26 03:26:47
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freedom of choice comes to mind..
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Posted by Wayne
on 2007-11-26 04:51:22
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Little star, that's an interesting idea about gradually phasing them out, but as you said, the greedy governments profit way too much to do that!
As for freedom of choice, Wayne, I'm happy for people to kill their own lungs off- that's their own decision and yes, I guess it's a right if they want to send themselves into an early and unhealthy grave if that's what they decide to do, BUT I do take offence when they kill off MY lungs too cos I have to walk through their exhaled smoke. I don't have a choice when it comes to that, other than to maybe cross to the other side of the footpath, if I can find a smoke free spot among those sucking away on their cancer sticks!! :)
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Posted by kaos264
on 2007-11-26 11:52:15
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Ruh-roh, kaos...we may have hit a snag here...was going to leave a comment on it here, but I think I shall now devote an entire blog post to this very subject. I do so hope you will at least hear me out and see what I have to say on this subject...
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Posted by gtownmom
on 2007-11-29 22:21:33
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