Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 09, 2011

  1. Comic face
    comicgos  over 13 years ago

    The ledge needs to be more narrow!

     •  Reply
  2. U joes mint logo rs 192x204
    Uncle Joe  over 13 years ago

    Alive with pleasure, but not for long…

     •  Reply
  3. Stewiebrian
    pouncingtiger  over 13 years ago

    Just be glad that they are just “regular” cigarettes.

     •  Reply
  4. Croparcs070707
    rayannina  over 13 years ago

    Thanks for spreading carcinogens into our atmosphere, you Typhoid Marys!

     •  Reply
  5. Warthog
    wndrwrthg  over 13 years ago

    “Smoking more, but enjoying it less?” Then you need to quit.

     •  Reply
  6. Missing large
    Cheri Langlois Premium Member over 13 years ago

    do they need a ledge???

     •  Reply
  7. Phonepic3altered4
    yyyguy  over 13 years ago

    lots of fun in the wintertime. ice and snow covering it all…

     •  Reply
  8. Cat29
    x_Tech  over 13 years ago
    ☚ This way to the “One Step Programme”
     •  Reply
  9. Missing large
    EarlWash  over 13 years ago

    Just don’t exhale.

     •  Reply
  10. Missing large
    EarlWash  over 13 years ago

    You guys are too close to the window.

     •  Reply
  11. 654px red eyed tree frog   litoria chloris edit1
    Superfrog  over 13 years ago

    It’s a big ashtray.

     •  Reply
  12. Dsc00030
    alviebird  over 13 years ago

    Today. Nearly every time I exit a store. I ride a bicycle, and have to lock it up outside the store. It takes a little time to lock it, or unlock it, and there are nearly always smokers standing around. Or burning butts left lying on the ground. And comparing it to other forms of pollution is specious logic.

     •  Reply
  13. Missing large
    person918  over 13 years ago

    ok, I’m all for no smoking in restaurants, bars, or anywhere indoors, or within 20 feet from doors, for that matter. but jesus, people, there isn’t enough room outside to let people smoke anywhere? at all? freedom involves letting people do unhealthy, even addictive, things. and I hope all you smugly talking about those pathetic, weak-willed addicts never consume caffeine or sugar?

     •  Reply
  14. Missing large
    roctor  over 13 years ago

    Once again you are violating myinvisible smoke free zone!!!

     •  Reply
  15. 008 6
    Elaine Rosco Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Even at $10 a pack, people still smoke.

     •  Reply
  16. Packrat
    Packratjohn Premium Member over 13 years ago

    And even at $5 per gallon, people still drive. I smoked for 30 years, then quit (over 6 years now). I still enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, although I don’t want one. I don’t judge those who smoke, but agree they should be respectful of those who don’t. There’s an answer, but it all revolves around common sense and respect, commodities sadly lacking these days.

     •  Reply
  17. Grimlock
    Colt9033  over 13 years ago

    Living life on the edge.

     •  Reply
  18. Missing large
    Brockie  over 13 years ago

    45 years, two packs of Benson and Hedges a day, cold turkey in one day over 5 years ago…so don’t tell me you can’t do it…there is still chocolate.

     •  Reply
  19. Missing large
    puddleglum1066  over 13 years ago

    Typical smokers, using the world for their ashtray..That’s really what annoys me the most about outdoor smokers, the way they think there’s a “Butt Fairy” who makes their burning cigarette ends somehow disappear when they fling ‘em on the ground or out the car window (I ride a motorcycle, and never mind the bugs—what really stinks is to get a cigarette end in your face at 50 miles an hour). Trust me, guys, the butts don’t just magically vanish. That went out with the old unfiltered Camels..Maybe we need a “smoker’s accessory package” for cars, consisting of lighter, ashtray, and windows that don’t open…

     •  Reply
  20. Large tv test pattern  color
    Lyons Group, Inc.  over 13 years ago

    It’s a good thing I stopped smoking at 12. Otherwise I wouldn’t be 51 today!

     •  Reply
  21. B3b2b771 4dd5 4067 bfef 5ade241cb8c2
    cdward  over 13 years ago

    While fewer people smoke, we have several AA groups meeting at our church, and since I live there, I breathe in that garbage quite a lot. AA meetings are one of the biggest concentrations of cigarette smoke. We’ve considered banning smoking outside the church, but it we decided that they are working on giving up one addiction already, so why make them give up both. Not sure I agree. I live in NY, and there’s more than enough to go around.You are right, though that tobacco companies specifically target kids because they are much more impressionable – and much more easily addicted. Sorry you don’t care – sometimes things take a long time to resolve. My dream would be for nobody to smoke, and nobody to make their livings from such a deadly addiction.

     •  Reply
  22. Owls 96
    gjsjr41  over 13 years ago

    I smoked for 38 years and enjoyed every puff. I have quit the habit for 13 yrs and can’t stand the smell of it.

     •  Reply
  23. Beaufaceshot
    js305  over 13 years ago

    What is it about smoking that makes it so good for everyone? It’s a drug that is habit forming. Your body tells you not to the first time you do it. Then there is the cost. That alone would make me quit if I were a smoker. I quit Dr Pepper when it got so high to order a drink with a meal. Special: All you can eat $5, drink extra at $4 each.Cigarette smoke stinks, not to mention possible health risks. I have a right not to take a bath, thereby stinking. Does that mean I have a right to sit next to you and make you smell me?

     •  Reply
  24. Danae
    Wiley creator over 13 years ago

    “AA meetings are one of the biggest concentrations of cigarette smoke.”

    And yet they somehow don’t see the irony in that. Smoking isn’t a habit, it’s an addiction. If cigarette manufacturers were forced to remove nicotine from their product, there wouldn’t be any more smokers.

     •  Reply
  25. Owls 96
    gjsjr41  over 13 years ago

    I smoked for 38 years and enjoyed every puff. Now I’ve quit for 13 yrs and can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke. Weird, isn’t it.

     •  Reply
  26. Missing large
    ChazNCenTex  over 13 years ago

    Smoke all you want, just keep the second hand smoke confined to the air that only you will breathe. After my stroke, at age 41, I quit smoking because nicotine causes your blood vessels to constrict. Pardon me if I’m a tad sensitive about the whole second hand smoke thing.

     •  Reply
  27. What has been seen t1
    lewisbower  over 13 years ago

    I have one question for you with second hand smoke phobia. Do you drive? Can you read? Can you do math?After you do a comparison of a cigarette to a tail pipe, talk to me.

     •  Reply
  28. 11 06 126
    Varnes  over 13 years ago

    Lady fingers, great avatar….how’s it work?

     •  Reply
  29. Destiny
    Destiny23  over 13 years ago

    It’s so obvious cigarette smoke causes brain damage. Otherwise you wouldn’t have geniuses comparing second-hand smoke to vehicle exhaust. Vehicles provide transportation of people and goods (including ALL the food you eat), which is essential in modern society, and to keep people alive. Cigarettes serve NO purpose at all! There is not ONE person on the planet who has never smoked who would be better off if he did.

     •  Reply
  30. 5346ae65734b4d0e82350407ef0d8e00 250
    cleokaya  over 13 years ago

    Ladies and gentlemen, please kindly step at least ten paces away from the window.

     •  Reply
  31. Sfg portrait
    sfgardner  over 13 years ago

    To all the smokers: Thank you. Your habit pays my wage, pays for my service van and it’s contents, gas, maintenance and the roads it drives on. It’s the cigarettes that are smoking. You’re just the sucker.

     •  Reply
  32. 11 06 126
    Varnes  over 13 years ago

    The reason I never started smoking was because at the time they were 35 cents a pack. I couldn’t spend that kind of money…….not if I wanted to buy Marvel Comics….

     •  Reply
  33. Missing large
    EarlWash  over 13 years ago

    Addicts: “Everyone else be damned…it’s all about me”.

     •  Reply
  34. Missing large
    dflak  over 13 years ago

    Washington State does not have a state income tax. They get their money from high taxes on tobacco, liquor and gasoline. If it wern’t for those drunk drivers flipping their butts out the window, the state would be even deeper in debt.

     •  Reply
  35. Cheryl 149 3
    Justice22  over 13 years ago

    It is no wonder that the common pigeon is becoming an endangered species..

     •  Reply
  36. Missing large
    person918  over 13 years ago

    I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, S. Russell, but I agree with your words regardless of there intent. I say everything should be legal that doesn’t harm others, and smoking a cigarette in the vast outdoors, provided you are not standing over a baby carriage exhaling downwards at it, does not harm anyone (except the smoker) in anything but the most vague, unprovable way. how about roasting smores over a campfire? that puts smoke into the atmosphere and is completely unnecessary. should that be illegal also?

     •  Reply
  37. Hawaii5 0girl
    treered  over 13 years ago

    never underestimate the power of addiction…

     •  Reply
  38. Birthcontrol
    Dtroutma  over 13 years ago

    gotta step 10 feet from the door or window folks! If not for tobacco, England would have ignored the “new world” after not finding gold, and Spanish would be the language of the nation, with maybe a few “frogs”.

    Quit smoking 14 years ago, started in the Army. Son started in the Navy, after 14 years, smoke bothers me. What bothers me more are all the fiberglass filters (butts)! Ban filters, not tobacco, but stop paying subsidies to farmers to grow one of the most profitable crops in the world.

    Use snuff, no smoke, no spitting required, and if you fill the cans with vegetable oil when done, put them in the garden, it kills off earwigs!

     •  Reply
  39. Missing large
    hippogriff  over 13 years ago

    Fifty years? Back in the 1930s when prisoners could be used as lab rats, there was an experiment where heroin addicts were given nicotine instead – mainlined, the dosage carefully monitored as it is highly toxic. Returned to heroin, they had withdrawal symptoms. I got this story from an MD who was doing research on smoking in the 1940s – long before the tobacco lobby admitted any research had taken place, much less admit it was adictive (which they have yet to do).

     •  Reply
  40. F35 debuts06
    michael.p.pumilia  over 13 years ago

    It’s amazing the rhetoric about smoking – for and against. Rights this, rights that. Allowing “people to do unhealthy, even addictive, things …then there is coffee and sugar.”No one talks about alcohol in the same measure as smoking. The two of them are expensive, nasty, addictive, unhealthy, but legal means to enjoy one’s life and tear up other peoples’. Both result in lost time at work, poor health, and health costs that are sky high. Both lead to pain, suffering, and possibly death. One can advertise in magazines and TV; the other can’t. One leads the car accidents, MADD, and injuries; the other one doesn’t.Me – I never smoked but drank like a fish. Now I don’t! Enjoy your vices but your “right” to do so ends near my body.

     •  Reply
  41. Missing large
    cwasmer  over 13 years ago

    Smoking is just rude. “people have the right to smoke” is akin to “people have the right to swing their fists.” sure – but that right stops at someone else’s face. Cigarette smoke is nasty, horrible, ugly, smelly stuff. And purposefully lighting a pile of tobacco on fire and imposing that on anyone who happens to pass by is just rude. No- smoking is not like other forms of pollution. Not at all. Smoking is purely for the “pleasure” of the smoker. Almost all of the other forms of pollution that one might complain about are the product of something that at least marginally provides some utility. Smoking cigarettes does not. There really are much, much better ways to entertain oneself than by smoking cigarettes. Can’t we be more creative than that by now?

     •  Reply
  42. Missing large
    person918  over 13 years ago

    JSFMIKE: I agree, there is a double standard with alcohol and tobacco. however, I fall on the side of the debate opposite yours. drunk driving = illegal. drunken wife beating = illegal. the purpose of laws is to protect people from each other, not themselves; illegalize the behavior that directly harms others, not behaviors that may potentially lead to other behaviors that harm others. so my right to enjoy vices doesn’t necessarily end near your body, but it does when it begins to infringe on your rights.with regards to smoking in public, is it infringing on your rights more than to the degree of an annoyance? can we illegalize babies and small children in public? they are very loud and annoying and as a result, raise my blood pressure and increase my risk of heart disease.

     •  Reply
  43. Missing large
    person918  over 13 years ago

    also, I only smoke when I drink. is that a chemical addiction or behavioral conditioning? if the latter, is that a “habit” rather than an addiction? the lines get pretty blurry on these things; the brain is run on chemicals, after all (primarily dopamine, in the case of the reward system)

     •  Reply
  44. Smokey stover
    ububobu  over 13 years ago

    Hey whiners, you’re more likely to die of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis than you are of second hand smoke.

    By the way I quit 35 years ago at 2+ packs a day after 25 years. 50 cents a pack was getting too expensive.

     •  Reply
  45. Lonelemming
    Ernest Lemmingway  over 13 years ago

    For all those on both sides of this argument, I refer you back to a Non Sequitur strip where Danae shows her dad a banner for tobacco companies that reads, “Nicotine! More addictive than heroin, but it’s legal!”

    On this argument I refuse to take a side. I don’t smoke and I don’t like smoking (I’ve lost a lot of relatives to smoking-related health issues), but neither do I push my views on others. If I’m in some place where smoking is allowed, I don’t get whiny about it. This is a (decreasingly) free country, after all.

     •  Reply
  46. Dsc00030
    alviebird  over 13 years ago

    Ah, but it does. It interferes with my right to not be exposed to a toxic, stinking nuisance.

     •  Reply
  47. Missing large
    stevetalley7497  over 13 years ago

    jmartin – Just before my wife passed away from cancer.

     •  Reply
  48. Batb
    thekingster  over 13 years ago

    I think it’s funny when emphatic people post wrong words…LOL. Check out my blog.

     •  Reply
  49. Avatar
    Mythreesons  over 13 years ago

    Touchy subject for me. My husband died two years ago from COPD and emphysema. Smoked heavily for years, but quit cigarettes 20 years before he died. The “smokeless tobacco” he thought would protect him didn’t. He quit that and the withdrawal put him in the hospital under sedatives. Nicotine is addictive to the highest power. His suffering at the end was something I hope none of you ever have to see or endure for yourself.

     •  Reply
  50. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Nicotine is addictive, smoking is habitual. As a smoker who’s (so far unsuccessfully) tried to quit, I know the difference. The physical craving for the nicotine can be sated with gum or patches (and now they’ve got lozenges, which are quite nice), but I still get fidgety for something to do with my hands, the oral fixation, the regular breaks from getting up from what I’m doing…

    As far as the littering aspect goes, yeah, when you force people to go outside to smoke and there are no ashtrays outdoors (as there used to be in bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, hotel rooms, and so on), the easiest thing to do is to throw the butt to the curb and step on it — and leave it there. I’m not condoning this, but that’s what it is. In Australia, there’s a lower propostion of the population that smokes, but just about every street-corner trash can (and about every street corner HAS a trash can) has a butt-receptacle attached, with a plate for stubbing it out first. (It helps avoid the littering, but also reduces trashcan fires if the ember isn’t fully extinguished).

    In San Francisco, before the statewide indoor-smoking law went into effect, we had one of the first LOCAL laws against it. But there was a loophole, in that a building could still set aside a smoking lounge, provided it (1) was enclosed, (2) had separate ventilation, and (3) did not open immediately on anybody’s work space. The building manager where I work was a smoker, so he made sure that we had a smoker’s lounge that was fully compliant. But the state law superseded the city law, so that’s gone now.

    What I think is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous is that there’s no place to smoke in airports anymore; if you’ve got a 2-hour layover between flights, the only way to grab a “quick” smoke is to walk half a mile to the terminal entrance, out to the drop-off areas, come BACK THROUGH SECURITY, and then walk another half mile to your gate. At least give us a deck outside or something! Again, back in the good old days, SFO used to have a compliant smoker’s lounge (enclosed, separate ventilation, etc.) on every concourse.

     •  Reply
  51. Missing large
    person918  over 13 years ago

    again, I’m fine with limiting where people smoke… it just seems to me drawing the indoor/outdoor line is good enough, and more than that is getting ridiculous. and yes, nicotine is highly addictive. does that make selling it immoral? perhaps. caffeine is addictive; does that make starbucks immoral? perhaps (for those of you amazed by what people will pay for cigarettes, think about what people will pay for 1 (one) cup of coffee)

    I feel like I’m repeating myself too much, so I shall cease commenting now.

     •  Reply
  52. Img 3744
    cknoblo Premium Member over 13 years ago

    I never smoked, but both my kids did. I didn’t allow them to smoke in the house or around me. They both quit, eventually.

     •  Reply
  53. Thrill
    fritzoid Premium Member over 13 years ago

    ^^bird, maybe a harmonica would be even better. It’s more portable, it works your hands and your mouth, and you can judge how well your lungs are recovering by how much easier it gets to sustain a note…

     •  Reply
  54. Yellow pig small
    bmonk  over 13 years ago

    “In My office Smoking is banned in the entire Campus. Smokers are not allowed to smoke in their cars in the parking lot. They must go out to the sidewalk on the backside of the Office campus to smoke or drive around the block, and they must extinguish their smoke before they pull into the office building parking lot.”.I thought that the courts had established that the inside of cars are not subject to corporate policies. That is, even if the business bans handguns on their property, having one in your car was allowed (if the gun was otherwise legal). By that reasoning, the business cannot limit smoking in your car.OTOH, they might just fire you, which would not be so good these days…

     •  Reply
  55. Scream
    weasel_monkey  over 13 years ago

    “Banning smoking is reducing our freedoms. If you don’t like cigarettes then avoid them”. So what the supporters of this are saying is that people who choose to smoke should have more freedom than those who don’t decide to smoke? Smokers should be able to go where they want and indulge their habit when they want but non-smokers have to curtail their activities to avoid smoke or – even worse – ignore their values, endanger their health and endure a smoke filled environment?!? Wow! I thought the US was about freedom and equality. Didn’t realise that only applied in situations where it doesn’t impinge on your personal addiction. Oh, and for those bleating about vehicle fumes; the day your cigarette hauls my food from farm to market, digs the foundations of a building or flies medical supplies to the needing is the day I hold a tickertape parade for the tobacco industry.

     •  Reply
  56. J money
    Joseph Krois  over 13 years ago

    Wiley! Stop riling these folk up! Great goshus a-mighty! U have surely placed ur finger on the pulse of the effected! Hack, hack, flem, hack, spurg…

     •  Reply
  57. Missing large
    ilsapadu  over 13 years ago

    Remember George Carlin saying that a no smoking section in a restaurant was like a no peeing section in the pool?I’ll suffer the heat & go outside with them or let my friends and sister smoke in the house as long as they still come see me.

     •  Reply
  58. Missing large
    oldguy2  over 13 years ago

    I once worked with a person who could smell second hand smoke while scuba diving…

     •  Reply
Sign in to comment

More From Non Sequitur