<p>Why don’t we just ban cigarette selling and close down tabacco companies? We should not smoke in the US but people in other countries should, right?</p>
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<p>We tried that once with another popular vice. Google “18th Amendment.”</p>
<p>Seriously, I’m blown away by the people who are so concerned that they will be irreparably harmed by a picoliter of smoke they might inhale as they dash by the poor addicts huddled around a door puffing away. I’m old enough to remember when the average business meeting was enclosed in a cloud of smoke, when many college classrooms came equipped with ashtrays, and lighting up on a city bus or subway car wouldn’t even merit a stare.</p>
<p>Why can’t we just pity those in the grip of this horrible addiction and let them have their little pleasure?</p>
<p>Anna, it’s not just a minor inconvenience for some of us. I have no problem with them having an addiction and needing to indulge in it. I DO have a problem when that directly infringes on my health.</p>
<p>If an occasional puff from dashing by a smoker standing outside a door is all that harmful to you, you clearly would never have survived in the 1980s and earlier.</p>
<p>Well considering that people rarely die instantly from tobacco, I’d say I’d have survived just fine. Just because I’d survive doesn’t mean it would have been pleasant or that I wouldn’t have the long-term effects that people are experiencing now.</p>
<p>Also, people survived in the days without proper sewage and filtered water but that doesn’t mean it was pleasant or something I’d consider going back to.</p>
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<p>In my experience, it’s never docs in scrubs outside smoking, but nurses, and even more often, respiratory therapists. Go figure.</p>
<p>I’m with you, romani. Severely asthmatic and allergic to tobacco smoke. I used to come home with a sore throat, cough, and fever any time I went to a friends house whose parents smoked. I wouldn’t care if people actually stayed 10 feet away from the buildings like they’re supposed to, and actually used the ash trays provided instead of littering. But they don’t, and I was really relieved when umich banned smoking on campus my senior year. I got really tired of having to hold my breath every time I went through a doorway to avoid having an asthma attack, and having to keep my windows closed year round because smoke was wafting up into my windows. I used to live on the 4th floor with a window that went out to a courtyard, and people would smoke down there at night and I’d wake up and not be able to catch my breath because the smoke was coming all the way up to our room. It was terrifying.</p>
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<p>I knew a psychiatrist who died in his 50s, from lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking. Yet he had the chutzpah to treat smoking addiction.</p>
<p>^^^I used to pass three hospitals on the way home from work every day and I saw this at each one every day.</p>
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<p>I am too, and I’m also old enough to remember when just about every kid I knew grew up in a home with at least one smoking parent. It either turned you off smoking forever, or made you start sneaking them as soon as you could. Funny thing, though - none of us had all the asthma, respitory problems, etc., that kids seem to have today.</p>
<p>And people who say they can’t quit - they mean it! I gave them up 23 years ago and I still want them in stressful situations. I also have dreams in which I smoke and wake up in a panic thinking I’d taken it up again. It’s a powerful addiction.</p>
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<p>I’m still willing to bet that most people in scrubs observed smoking outside of hospitals are nurses and other ancillary staff rather than doctors. Shoot, where I worked, even the janitorial staff wore scrubs.</p>
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<p>Is that really true? “None of us?” I don’t know, but it seems unlikely.</p>
<p>Of course, today’s kids are also inhaling a whole lot of pollution, and seem to also suffer more from allergies, so if asthma rates have increased, it sure wouldn’t be surprising.</p>
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<p>Amen. I quit 35 years ago, come August 6. I had tried numerous times to quit, without success. I finally managed with the help of medical hypnosis, and even then, it was touch and go for a couple of months. And like you, I still occasionally get an urge (though I’ve never given into it), and I dream about smoking - though in my dreams, I can always stop and start whenever I want to.</p>
<p>I knew a woman in her 40s, with diabetes. She was going blind. Her doctors told her that her smoking was a major cause in the rapid progression of her blindness. And still she could not quit.</p>
<p>The psychiatrist I mentioned upthread well knew the risks, and well knew how ridiculous a smoking shrink looked to his patients. And still he could not quit.</p>
<p>So I pity the poor people who are still addicted. They suffer from an illness. Making it harder for them to engage in the addiction will not cure it. Why make their lives any more difficult, especially with nonsensical claims about the effects of very occasional, very small doses of second-hand smoke. You truly absorb more harmful chemicals if you commute to work on an urban expressway every day than you will in a lifetime of dashing by smokers standing outside a building.</p>
<p>I’m totally with romanigypsyeyes on this one. I fail to understand why smokers’ smoke should be allowed to create unnecessary difficulties for asthmatics and others. Or even stink up my clothes, for that matter.</p>
<p>Having a right to do something does not mean having a right to do that thing anywhere, at any time. I have a perfect right to have sex with my spouse, but not in public on a college campus, even if I am more than 15 feet from the door of a public building. Somebody’s liberty has to be limited here–either smokers’ freedom to smoke, or the right of people who are sensitive to cigarette smoke not to be bothered by it. Since smoking doesn’t actually do anybody any good (except tobacco farmers and people who work for or own stock in R. J. Reynolds or Lorillard–oh, and I suppose oncologists), I favor curtailing the rights of those who opt to smoke instead of the rights of those who don’t.</p>
<p>[EDIT: this next paragraph was cross-posted with annasdad’s post #35, below.] </p>
<p>It’s not that I feel no compassion for people who want to quit smoking and cannot. I appreciate that they are in a terrible bind. So are alcoholics, but we don’t let them drink at work.</p>
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<p>Well, of course, some people did. Both my parents smoked, heavily. Both my brothers suffered severe asthma; for some reason, thankfully, I didn’t. Was my parents’ smoking a contributing cause to their asthma? I have no idea.</p>
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<p>I’m not talking about rights. I’m talking about compassion.</p>
<p>Anna, I’m sympathetic to those with addictions but I still fail to see why the public should suffer because of others’ addictions. We’d have a problem with heroin addicts leaving needles everywhere, no?</p>
<p>And because we can’t solve every public health issue, we shouldn’t try solving some? Well that doesn’t make much sense either.</p>
<p>I fully support all-campus bans on smoking. My workplace has an all-campus ban on smoking, even in cars, which I don’t think is that unusual anymore. Doing so on campus helps prepare students for the workplace.</p>
<p>I have severe asthma, medicated every single day. Both my parents were heavy smokers, my mother while pregnant. I have no doubt that this was one contributory cause. My brother escaped. It has caused incalculable harm to my life. Won’t detail here.</p>
<p>Back to original topic. My D’s college, Barnard, is smoke free and was when she attended. Since it’s private, I’m pretty sure Bloomberg wasn’t the author of the policy. Haha. One more reason beside guys to go over to Columbia. Just kidding. She wasn’t a smoker.</p>
<p>I think the women liked it.</p>
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<p>If there was conclusive evidence that the extremely moderate amount of smoke that one might possibly inhale passing by a smoker on the street, or at the entrance to a building, or (for heaven’s sake) having a fourth-floor window open, was medically harmful, then I would be with you. (Maybe there is; I haven’t seen it, and would welcome enlightenment.) Banning smoking in interior public places was a necessary thing; banning it outside (in the absence of said evidence) is not; banning it in your own enclosed private vehicle just because it’s in my parking lot is excessive nannyism.</p>
<p>I quit 35 years ago before they went to $.65 a pack.
Also before companies tweaked their formula to make cigarettes even more addictive.
[BBC</a> NEWS | Health | Cigarettes ‘engineered’ for addiction](<a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/393075.stm]BBC”>BBC NEWS | Health | Cigarettes 'engineered' for addiction)</p>