h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am a "light" smoker and if anyone asks me whether or not i am a smoker/non smoker i always say non smoker !! I think there is a certain stigma attached to smoking and people who smoke will identify with this as if you smoke in public you are often made to feel like a second class citizen ! However I do feel that smoking in a public place especially near small children is particularly ignorant and do try to avoid it myself !
ruth

Why do you smoke then anyway?

I am a "real" smoker.
I know the tobbacco companys LIED about health risks and addictiveness
I know the goverments LIED about the health risks TOO!
if you actualy THINK about what you read and hear about these thinks than you can belive neither what the tobbacco companys or your goverments say it is plain to any one who thinks ( and about 90% of earth does not THINK they just do what they are told )that there are lies being told by all.
smoking is BAD for you, smoking is BAD for others.
HOWEVER a being stressed out and violent is bad too, make your choice.
more later now I am going to SMOKE.

So...why do you smoke?

It's usually people who get stressed that start smoking. I get very stressed out when people go on and on about passive smoking in public places. It's been many years since I went into a pub or restaurant that didn't have an extraction system and air conditioning. It seem to me that these are some of the best places to go for both smokers and non smokers. Also, since there was a railway there was always a non smoking carriage, now, on my line Kings x to Cambridge there is no smoking at all but, I do pay the same fare and don't get treated fairly. If I cannot be catered for as non smokers are I should get a discount

Most smokers say that smoking is calmative.
I'd say it's only calmative to them because they are addicted.

It seems that you are implying that addiction to cigarettes causes its own stress which then must be relieved by smoking. A foolish loop that one could avoid by simply giving up smoking or never smoking in the first place. I don't find this to be true. Life is full of stress. I learned to smoke because of a stressful situation. It was a distraction, something to focus on other than the stress. If someone had handed me a toy with bright flashing lights that might have worked as well. But no one had one of those on them. They did have a cigarette.
Cigarettes have had many functions in my life. Before i actually started smoking when i got upset i would tell someone to give me a cigarette so i could kill myself slowly. Passive suicide. Never actually smoked it then. Later cigarettes became my social crutches. I leaned on them in times of social anxiety (which means any time i'm in a group). Now i smoke occasionally, but there is no routine to it so i don't feel addicted. Maybe all my addiction slots are filled. Maybe i'm too lazy to be addicted.
I personally think coffee is more addictive than smoking, but then, i don't drink coffee so what do i know?

Because i can and if i couldn't, i would anyway. I smoke because pious, self righteous people tell me i shouldn't. I smoke because this is my body and not yours and i will decide what i put into it and not you. I smoke because i'm 'addicted' and i can live with that and if it kills me, then so be it. We all have to die of something. If you have a problem with my smoking, then stay away from the places where i smoke. I don't smoke in the places where you say i can't, so get your lungs out of the places where i can. I'll make my choices. You make yours.

it seems to me that the tobacco industry has executed one of the greatest marketing scams of all time. They've made suicide and wasting your hard earned look like a lifestyle choice. And Health warnings are essentially useless in reaching smokers. As Dennis Leary once said, in reaction to 'Death' cigarettes, you could market a brand called 'tumours' and smokers would line up around the block to buy them.
Clearly, if the remaining smokers were truly worried about their health they would have stopped smoking by now because nobody can be in any doubt as to the effects.
So I have an alternative reason not to smoke - and it's a killer reason, if you'll pardon the pun.

Firstly, you should stop smoking because as a smoker, you are being farmed for your cash like a battery chicken is for it's eggs. At a fiver for a packet, you are giving the government an enormous amount of tax - most of which they will waste on illegal wars, indecent pay offs to PFI companies, expensive parliament buildings that no one likes (guess who lives in edinburgh) and quangos, chaired by mates of theirs who they were at Eton with - and that's just the Labour Party. You already pay enough tax to these rangerover driving gits - don't give them anymore than is neccessary. Brew your own beer if you can for the same reasons.

Secondly, you should stop smoking because you are also emptying your own pockets into the coffers of an industry that took great pains to make it's product as addictive as possible, with the specific intention of getting you hooked. If you don't beleive me, watch 'the insider'. I get very annoyed when I hear smokers talking about their freedom of choice. As an addict you are not free - you are chained to your addiction.
Stop thinking that you have a right to smoke if you want to and consider that you ought to have a right to not smoke if you don't want to but whilst addicted, excercising that right is almost impossible without causing yourself a great deal of pain. I know people who have gone without food rather than go without fags - that's just nuts.
So don't put money into the investment trusts and pension funds of the most despicable pushers we've ever seen on this earth. Stop smoking and spend the money on someone who isn't lauging at you for being stupid enough to kill yourself on their behalf, especially as it's in order to make them obscenely rich.
Don't be a battery chicken - be free range, keep your eggs in your own basket and tell Philip Morris were they can shove their fags.

Can anybody on here tell me whether there is greater chance of getting lung cancer from air fresheners against the chance from a getting it from a cigarette.

Air fresheners can contain an ingredient called formaldehyde which has been admitted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency can be a cause of cancer. This ingredient can also affect asthma sufferers.

It is likely that people who smoke use air fresheners to mask the odour of cigarette.

I don't doubt it - can't bear air fresheners either - but I don't think you can discount the effects of the fags either!

The Tumours brand thing was a Bill Hicks joke, the greatly inferior Dennis Leary stole it (as he did with much of Hicks material) but that's neither here nor there.

As a human being in a Capitalist society YOU are also being farmed, exploited and used like a battery chicken in almost everything YOU do. Doesn't matter if you eat at Mcdonalds or adhere to a macrobiotic diet, some b*****d is profiting and getting rich from it. If you wear clothes some b*****d is profiting and getting rich from it. If you work for a living some b*****d is profiting and getting rich from it. Unless you live in a different world to me, then some b*****d is profiting and getting rich from YOU too. So stop doing everything immeadiately!

But unlike you, i refuse to accept this state of affairs. By smoking as much as i possibly can, i will die quicker and NO ONE beyond the undertaker will profit from me. That's how i plan to stop being a battery hen. How about you?

No, i mask the odour of cigarette smoke with a good cigar.

OK firstly - I may be wrong, but I'm a really big Bill Hicks fan and I never heard him use that line. I'll stand corrected if you can tell me which performance you heard it in.
And yes, Bill Hicks used to do pro-smoking material - but he used to do anti-smoking material too. He said of smoking and alcohol that they were the drugs that did nothing for you - and it's true. Fags only have a positive effect if you have bi-polar disorder when they have a known ability to calm the side-effects. Unless you're schizophrenic, they do nothing but calm your addiction.
Secondly, I buy my veg from a local organic collective. I buy free range meat as much as I can. I buy my clothes second hand - usually from charity shops. I bank ethically, I buy fairtrade wherever it's an option and I promise you I don't buy diet books - especially not macrobiotic ones - for christ sake. In so far as I can, I take care to not support industries that behave badly. It's not that difficult to do. It just requires discipline and a belief that what you do with your money matters.
So go, smoke yourself to death you imbecile - let evil, right-wing people who despise you, get rich at your expense. After all - your only harming yourself right?
No, wrong - you're financing the continuation of other people getting chained into the same crap cycle you're in.
Stop pretending you're in control. You're weak, you don't want to face the fact that giving up will hurt.
All the rest is bravado.

Firstly - The Bill Hicks thing I probably read in Love All The People or in one of the biographies. It's not word for word the same line as Leary used but it's very similar. Personally I can take or leave Bill Hicks. Some of his stuff is inspiring, some of it (like the attacks on teenage/single mothers) wouldn't have been out of place in the right wing press.

Secondly, I don't believe for one minute that I am in control but I don't believe you or the vast majority of human beings are either. We live in a society where a tiny minority profits from the exploitation of the rest of us. In that respect, all industries behave badly. Okay, some appear to behave better than others in terms of how they invest the profits they make through the labour of their workers but those profits still came through exploitation. Maybe some of those industries don't pollute the planet, exploit 'Third World' countries or directly contribute to the arms industry but they are part and parcel of a system that does. I also bank with an 'ethical bank'. It frequently charges me £35 for being overdrawn by pennies and showed no compassion at all when I was in serious debt a couple of years ago. Like all banks, when it comes down to it they put profits before people.

'let evil, right-wing people who despise you, get rich at your expense'. I'm sorry but no matter how perfect you think you are or how principled you believe your money is spent, this will happen anyway unless we get rid of the whole rotten system. It's not something we should accept and we should fight it by whatever means are at our disposal.

'you're financing the continuation of other people getting chained into the same crap cycle you're in' - Okay, if that's true (and people aren't free to spend their money on whatever they like as you seem to be) I’ll stop buying tobacco and only smoke stuff that has been stolen.

When I do choose to give up (which I inevitably will) it will be me who decides. My problem is and always has been, I am sick of being told what to do and how to live my life.

Imbecile - good word that, one of my favourites but do we really need to sink to the level of personal insults? You're right about the bravado bit tho' and I apologise for being so flippant. I really should take life more seriously.

Ok - I'm by no means claining to be perfect and holy - but what I'm saying is you can make as effort not to use companies that are out and out awful - and that's all the fag companies.
second, I think you're wrong on the Bill Hicks - he said lots of entertaining and/ or controversial stuff about cigs but that one isn't his. I've just finished love all the people, I've read the biog and I've heard pretty much all the material.
Thirdly - he did not attack single mothers. He attacked people who had kids they didn't care for and take care of (the 'cops' routine and the 'truck driver juniour routine') but he did not attack single mothers per se, to the best of my awareness.In those routines he was attacking stupidity, ignorance and laziness - all valid targets to me. I've been a single mother - just not a stupid and uncaring one. Quote me the material if I'm wrong.
Thirdly - I'm sorry if you take offense at being called an imbecile - but if you think that smoking yourself to death is something you should be proud off, then I think it's a fair opinion to form of you.
You say when you give up it will be your choice - I disagree. You're chained to an addiction so every word that you say to defend it is a lie to deceive yourself into believing your free will hasn't been taken from you. I don't believe it - I know because I used to be a smoker.

And I don't think you should take life too seriously - but I do think you should take death seriously.

Don't take offense - I just wanted to make you think about what you said. Looks like I've succeeded.

Oh and all banks are gits - but at least the co op (that's who right?) aren't investing your hard earned in exploitative practises abroad. That's the best you can hope for alas.

I smoke in part due to the self-mutilating aspects of it. Of course thats just a small part of it. I also smoke because I like it. I also CHOOSE to smoke because I can. Just in case some people are wondering, I have no problem smoking in public areas and if someone says that its bothering them I stop. I do not smoke around children, and if I need to, I go elswhere.
Of course I should also mention that if someone TELLS me to put my ciggarett out I will blow smoke in their face for being rude, and I will make my way down the lane thinking about how nice it would be if Rude-ness caused cancer and not smoking...perhaps then the world would be a happier place. (and there would be no-one to blame, thus no-one to nail to a lowercase t.)

you know something, I reckon if you're going to debate about something, you should probably be able to spell it.
I wish ignorance could be legislated against - but it looks as if I'm destined to be disappointed.

there is no such thing as a "light" smoker or a "heavy" smoker. if you smoke, then your an idiot.
in the last 6 months, my class (currently year 11) have gone through such a drastic change, it has cleared all our heads.
Six months ago, smoking was the coolest thing ever, now, if you are caught smoking by a friend, you betta have a good excuse. even if you say you are the "social" smoker, thats absolute bull and you know it.

smoking damages your body, gives you shorter breath (especially if you want to be fit) and it makes you look like a freak once your teeth become black, you're coughing flem all over the place, your eyes are buldging out, and you smell of smoke. NOT COOL MAN!

stay clean, and stay cool.

I don't feel that the quality of someone's spelling should decide whether or not they are entitled to an opinion. We all have to overcome prejudice in our lives so lets try and respect each others views. Love, peace and lentils to everyone.