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.
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?
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.
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…
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.
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?
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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….
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.
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?
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!
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).
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
^^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…
“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…
“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.
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.
comicgos over 13 years ago
The ledge needs to be more narrow!
Uncle Joe over 13 years ago
Alive with pleasure, but not for long…
pouncingtiger over 13 years ago
Just be glad that they are just “regular” cigarettes.
rayannina over 13 years ago
Thanks for spreading carcinogens into our atmosphere, you Typhoid Marys!
wndrwrthg over 13 years ago
“Smoking more, but enjoying it less?” Then you need to quit.
Cheri Langlois Premium Member over 13 years ago
do they need a ledge???
yyyguy over 13 years ago
lots of fun in the wintertime. ice and snow covering it all…
x_Tech over 13 years ago
EarlWash over 13 years ago
Just don’t exhale.
EarlWash over 13 years ago
You guys are too close to the window.
Superfrog over 13 years ago
It’s a big ashtray.
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.
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?
roctor over 13 years ago
Once again you are violating myinvisible smoke free zone!!!
Elaine Rosco Premium Member over 13 years ago
Even at $10 a pack, people still smoke.
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.
Colt9033 over 13 years ago
Living life on the edge.
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.
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…
Lyons Group, Inc. over 13 years ago
It’s a good thing I stopped smoking at 12. Otherwise I wouldn’t be 51 today!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Varnes over 13 years ago
Lady fingers, great avatar….how’s it work?
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.
cleokaya over 13 years ago
Ladies and gentlemen, please kindly step at least ten paces away from the window.
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.
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….
EarlWash over 13 years ago
Addicts: “Everyone else be damned…it’s all about me”.
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.
Justice22 over 13 years ago
It is no wonder that the common pigeon is becoming an endangered species..
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?
treered over 13 years ago
never underestimate the power of addiction…
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!
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).
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
alviebird over 13 years ago
Ah, but it does. It interferes with my right to not be exposed to a toxic, stinking nuisance.
stevetalley7497 over 13 years ago
jmartin – Just before my wife passed away from cancer.
thekingster over 13 years ago
I think it’s funny when emphatic people post wrong words…LOL. Check out my blog.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
oldguy2 over 13 years ago
I once worked with a person who could smell second hand smoke while scuba diving…