Comments on: Seeing Through The Smoke

Special Contributor Lloyd Garver Pleads For Compassion For A Downtrodden, Often Overlooked Minority

[amayored]

Pity me the smoker? Don't waste your time. I enjoy smoking and I don't need your sympathy, quick smile or greeting. Don't think smoking is healthy for people? Get in your car and drive this planet into extinction with your oversized carbon footprint!
Leave me alone!

[toldyouso21]

Next time I light up outside and you come within smelling distance, move upwind. I was there first. Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? I know you're going to say it's bad for me and it will kill me, Posted by kaiyo4u at 08:23 AM : Apr 18, 2007

Other than your family and people who know you; I doubt most Americans CARE about what is bad for you--the reason people do care is that YOUR smoking is bad for the rest of us. Second hand smoke (that means just by breathing in smoke from a cigarette another is smoking) also causes lung cancer AND the high cost of taking care of smokers (emphysema, asthma, lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, heart conditions etc) means all of our insurance rates go up due to the illnesses of smokers.

So on a very real level--your "private little problem" is everyone elses--and people do not feel they should have to suffer, be at risk of certain diseases or pay for the selfishness and stupidity of others. It really is pretty simple.

[toldyouso21]

Because the guys puffing on each other's weiners affect only themselves. Smokers affect everyone around them. No one wants to breathe that ***.
Posted by Rafterman1 at 07:58 AM : Apr 18, 200

Actually, if they do not practice safe ***, then they may affect more than themselves. The same goes for heterosexuals in this country--but in the 1980's AIDs was a problem primarily of the g@y community and it ultimately did affect us all. (the rates of HIV are rising--mostly among Teens and women and the African American community)

[toldyouso21]

The writer has a point, But there is another side. Like obesity, a lot of the intolerance for smokers or other drug users is that they are NOT really diseases but disorders. Diseases are something you catch or are due to a change in ones body---usually NOT something under one's own control. Smoking, doing drugs, obesity, alcoholism are all illnesses that people deliberately partake in, seek out and then become addicted. When the insurance rates go up, or people breathe second hand smoke or have to care for smokers (again, like obesity or drug addictions) the people who were disciplined and smart enough NOT to indulge end up paying the price along with people who only thought of themselves and temporary pleasures. There is bound to be resentment, frustration, anger and a lot of sadness over that. My parents were both smokers and though they quit over 25 years ago, both died of lung cancer within the past 2.5 years. Am I angry or resentful? No. Sad. yes. They grew up at a time that glorified smoking and I lived my formative years in the hazy aftermath of Pall Mall Reds and Golds. I do wonder though, given what we know--why the government does not make smoking a restricted drug and not allow new smokers to be created.

[kaiyo4u]

Next time I light up outside and you come within smelling distance, move upwind. I was there first. Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? I know you're going to say it's bad for me and it will kill me, but with all of liberal whining so called tolerantists making the world a miserable place where there are no more freedoms... why would I want to hang around here any longer than I should? When you have no ethics to stand firm on and you blame me for your plight, you should look in a mirror...

[rafterman1]

Because the guys puffing on each other's weiners affect only themselves. Smokers affect everyone around them. No one wants to breathe that ***.

[dallison7]

This has become the world of Bizzarro!

We are told we should be tolerant of a man who puffs on another man's wiener, but not tolerant of a man who puffs on a cigar!!