<p>SUNY’s already have very, very low tuition, even for OOS. If they decrease the insurance costs perhaps they won’t have to lay off faculty.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why people try cigarettes in the first place. You either hate it or you get addicted.</p>
<p>I know a number of small businesses that will not hire smokers. if they smell it on a person, that’s it.</p>
<p>I don’t feel sorry for smokers. If you want to quit you can. My niece smoked for 20years. She tried to quit several times but always slipped. Soon as she found she was pregnant she went cold turkey. My husband smoked before I met him. I told him I would never date a smoker, ever. He quit.</p>
<p>I too don’t understand while people start smoking. It’s so nasty. And I have no pity either. </p>
<p>I’m lucky I love in a state where smoking is not much tolerated. I had a hairdresser who smoked and I told her i couldn’t have her working on me because her clothes smelled of cigarettes. Gee, she realized she could lose clients, and she quit,</p>
<p>^^^^ Some people can quit, some people can’t. I don’t know what you get out of being so rigid and hard-nosed. I know of people who struggle with all sorts of addictions, and would give a lot to being able quit. Addiction, I’ll repeat, is a brain disease. Some have it more severely than others.</p>
<p>I know of teams of researchers working on this exact issue.</p>
<p>Apparently, you are the only one who thinks addiction is such and open and shut case.</p>
<p>I guess I’m surprised that smoking is even permitted on campuses. I have never noticed anyone smoking at any of the campuses I have visited, and it just never occurred to me that it is currently permissible.</p>
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<p>Which is the reason that some of us still dream about smoking and occasionally crave a cigarette, 30-plus years after our last puff.</p>
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<p>If my kid were alive in the 1980’s instead of today and had survived infancy (not a sure thing, given how much he depended on relatively new medical treatments as an infant), he’d almost surely be on high doses of oral steroids to control his asthma. Oral steroids that cause conditions like cataracts, and growth suppression, and imuno-suppression, and brittle bones. Would he actually be dead? No, not likely or at least likely not yet, but his quality of life would be dramatically different. He certainly wouldn’t be playing football, or doing many of the other things that make him happy.</p>
<p>My father was alive in the 1980’s, or at least the first portion. He worked in a field that required him to spend a lot of time in a smoke filled room and died of lung cancer at 55 despite never having put a cigarette to his lips.</p>
<p>If smokers would observe rules about staying in designated spaces, and not crowding entrances etc . . . , then I’d be fine with that. That isn’t what actually happened.</p>
<p>The first caution on cigarette packaging appeared in 1966. The first warnings appeared in 1970. 42 years. I have no patience for anyone who started smoking in the last 42 years. </p>
<p>Well, I do have patience for people with huge mental health issues, and with people battling other drug and alcohol addictions, since nicotine addiction goes hand in hand with those problems… But that isn’t what we are discussing on this thread.</p>
<p>If I’m outside, I can smell the cigarette smoke as soon as my neighbor lights up in his driveway on the other side of the street. I can’t stand the smell, but his wife and kids won’t let him smoke inside. I think most smokers are unaware how far the smell carries.</p>
<p>I have a son who would not be alive had be been born in the 50s. Though I don’t think cigarette smoke is that deadly that a whiff here and there is going to kill a lot of people, who knows what the tipping point is when a cell reacts to a carcinogenic agent and mutates into a cancer cell?</p>
<p>I really can’t stand being around smokers…I particularly hate being forced to walk through a cloud of it when employees congregate outside the entrance to their workplace while on their break…this is how it is at my local grocery store. Come to think of it, I should probably voice my disdain to the management
I have friends and one sister who smoke…last weekend , my family surprise me with a birthday party and one of my guests through their butts into my kitchen garbage. My girls were sooo mad about it. It really stunk up the closet where the trash and recycling is housed.
I had to put a bowl of baking soda in there just to get rid of the stench.
For those of us who have never lit up, it is just awful to deal with…and to make matters worse, I am asthmatic so it is also physically restrictive to be around it
What I don’t understand is what makes someone choose to light up , when people like me, with lung diseases would do anything to have the choice for fully functional lungs</p>
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<p>I guess then you have no patience with anyone who made a dumb decision at 16 or so that they’ve lived to regret later. Personally, I made enough dumb decisions at 16 that I have a great deal of empathy for others who did likewise.</p>
<p>Ban smoking everywhere. I hate smoke. (My dad was a heavy smoker–no mercy. Smoked in the car in the winter and refused to open the window. . . Everyone smoked back then. We used to make ashtrays for art projects at school. My sibs and I even rolled cigarettes for Dad! He finally quit when he had a heart attack/bypass at 51–no smoking in the CICU.)
I am somewhat sympathetic to addicts, but any smoker under 40 has no excuse. We’ve known smoking causes cancer for so long. Why would anyone start? People should take responsibility for their own bad decisions. No one forced them to start smoking. It is not the cigarette itself that causes the addiction. It doesn’t just jump into your mouth and light itself. I don’t like the “victim mentality” among addicts. They knew the dangers.</p>
<p>One of my pet peeves is going outside for some “fresh air”–and smelling cigarette smoke. Whether it’s just outside the building or on a trail in the woods–I don’t want to smell someone’s smoke. Even if it’s “just a little bit” and I’m not allergic, it is still offensive/pollution.
Funny how some folks want the government (taxpayers) to cover their healthcare expenses, but they still want to continue unhealthy habits like smoking and overeating–and they’ll get really upset if the government tries to tell them how to take care of their health or puts any restrictions on their “personal freedom.”
Folks can and will break any addiction if they have no access to their “substance.” But most addicts can’t or won’t put themselves in that situation for long.</p>
<p>Yup, that’s right, no patience, annasdad.</p>
<p>I have sympathy for how difficult it is to quit, but I feel no need to give smokers any rights to smoke in public places, and no patience with any smokers who feel upset about their rights being curtailed.</p>
<p>I’m all in favor of the ban - I wish our state schools had something similar. I understand the issues with the nanny state, but what about the rights of the non-smokers? Having a “designated smoking area” is sort of like having a “no peeing” area of the pool - outside of an enclosed area, it’s going to spread to everyone else.</p>
<p>My grandmother was a 2-3 pack-a-day smoker and died of lung cancer at age 57. My other grandmother has chronic emphysema, largely due to breathing her husband’s secondhand smoke for 37 years (he died of heart failure at 59, by the way). </p>
<p>I have chronic lung infections, likely due, my doctor says, to my father’s smoking 2 packs a day in the house and in the car with the windows up for my entire childhood. Just being near smoke these days results in an instant headache for me, not to mention taking twice as long as most people to get over a cold or lung infection.</p>
<p>We recently took a family trip to Disney, and the “unofficial” smoking area at our resort ended up being on the walkway to the bus stops. What about my rights and the rights of my children to breathe clean air? </p>
<p>Sorry, but I don’t have much sympathy.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is an easy remedy for being judgmental. Yes, some people have an unhealthy sense of entitlement, it’s true. But some people judge others without any idea of what they go through.</p>
<p>If we could all listen to and respect each other, more progress would be made.</p>
<p>I have had to sit outside an apartment while my cousin smoked inside. Obviously, it should have been the other way around, but she felt very entitled. Her attitude was, “Why should I be inconvenienced for her. She is the one with the asthma.”</p>
<p>All the people in the family supported her, not wanting to “get into it.”</p>
<p>Yes, it was annoying.</p>
<p>Eventually, she stopped smoking. She hates smokers now, as intolerant as ever. I still love her.</p>
<p>She eventually got lymphoma (under control) and needed two hip replacements.</p>
<p>Life has a way of teaching us lessons.</p>
<p>My asthma is enough under control that random smokers don’t bother me. The constant steroids have made me overweight. Guess what? Everyone judges me for that. They have no idea of what I eat.</p>
<p>We really don’t know what an experience is like until we have it. I do know that no one volunteers to kills themselves with smoke, be fate, or maybe even be judgmental. They are all things to struggle against. Some are more successful than others. I feel for the failures and celebrate the successes.</p>
<p>You went to Disney, skydivemom?</p>
<p>[air</a> pollution from Disney World Hotspot 02/02/07 - YouTube](<a href=“air pollution from Disney World Hotspot 02/02/07 - YouTube”>air pollution from Disney World Hotspot 02/02/07 - YouTube)</p>
<p>What about our rights not to have our air polluted by Disney’s gunpowder? That you’re supporting with your patronage? I’m sure you enjoyed the fireworks, but I don’t have much sympathy.</p>
<p>No, I’m not judging you for going to Disney or enjoying the fireworks, and I don’t really feel that way. But it does kind of put the shoe on the other foot, does it not?</p>
<p>A simple error on my part – no misquoting intended.</p>
<p>But your original point was that inconvenience/cost barriers to smoking work really well for educated people, and they work just okay for less educated people, especially HS dropouts. First, assuming that’s true, that’s a really good argument for more inconvenience/cost barriers across the board – cutting the cigarette use of uneducated people by even 5% would be a public health triumph. Second, the thread is about a ban on university campuses. There are some HS dropouts who work on those campuses, but universities are the densest centers of highly educated people in the country. This is exactly the right location for an initiative that’s more effective for educated folks.</p>
<p>@annadad - Actually, we didn’t enjoy the fireworks - we brought our younger kids back to the hotel beforehand so we would be able to get up early and beat the crowds. </p>
<p>To be honest, we thought it was pretty ironic that Disney proclaims its “environmental friendliness” everywhere - from park literature to shows (Circle of Life) and rides (Living with the Land) - and yet are probably one of the biggest polluters in Florida. </p>
<p>Doesn’t put the shoe on the other foot for me - there are lots of ways they could likely be more environmentally friendly. It doesn’t change the fact that I started the first few days of our vacation with a mild headache because we walked through a cloud of smoke to the bus stop.</p>
<p>Is Irony the same thing as Hypocrisy?</p>