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

If you stopped after 10 years, including formative youthful years you probably are free to stop again whenever you want and therefore truly are smoking out of choice rather than from addiction. Unless you're on Silk Cut Ultra, which might as well be dissolved in a glass of water and poured down a drain for all the good they do. Why do people complain about smoking so much when they're happy to see people load up on beer? Both can knacker health but the thing they ought to use as the major point of their argument is that fagsmoke, unlike beer, floats around in the air and can theoretically get anywhere, even back in throught the window of the workplace outwith which smokers take their fag-breaks, threatening their little lungs even whilst sitting at their desk in their non-smoking office building. Whereas health commandoes will moan at heavy drinkers to stop for their own sake, anti-smoking arguments combine this with the threat to the health of others. Seen that ad where the mother inhales and the sweet little child-thing next to her exhales? The thing is, smokers kow all this. We're not going to suddenly see the ad and go "Shit! I'm threatening the lives of the future of the human race!" because we know. We smoke because we like to. Same as that Blue Sticks advert that we're getting - it makes you want to light up. As for cinemas and aircraft? Aircraft have a limited amount of air when they're flying a few miles up, so the less that happens to it the better. As for a small area with lots of nice filters to remove the smoke before recirculating the air, I'm sure people that can afford to fly could afford to pay and extra tenner per flight to pay for the cost of the extra filtering gubbins that would be required. Cinemas? The management would probably claim that it would be encouraging people to smoke to provide a chuffing-only screen, not to mention the fact that it would mess up our enjoyment of the film to have the smoke drifting through the beams. In my home village rests the only back-projection cinema left in the country, where people were free to smoke without the problem of their exhalations being illuminated. It's probably a legal thing - by allowing smoking to take place in their establishment they're technically condoning it and are therefore at risk, though from what it's hard to imagine. There are people that are happy to sit in smoky pubs that wouldn't complain about being in the smoking screen at the cinema. Smoking-only flights might even pay for themselves. Philip Morris would probably be happy to sponsor such a thing to have a 70m long logo flying around the place. What non-smokers need to realise is that if they're driving a car they're as guilty as we are of f**king up other peoples' air. Even a vast crowd of smokers would have difficulty creating the large yellow clouds seen over major cities in which the car is allowed to roam free. The increase in childhood asthma is partly due to lack of exercise and excess pies but also due to the amount of crap in the air spewed out by the billions of cars people feel the need to drive all over the place with only one passenger - sort out this problem first rather than attacking something which does affect the people around one but in which the danger to onesself if many times greater than it is for them. Grr. We also pay for hospitals, schools and healthcare in the vast amounts of tax governments make from fags.

*smoker enters the forum*......AMEN!!!!!
p.s. just a quick note on smoking and health, i have smoked since i was 12 and you may not believe this but whenever i go to the dr. for anything that requires a chest x-ray it comes up looking like that of a nonsmoker, when i looked into my family background of all the smokers theirs were the same way.....what does that say???
monsy

You're immune! You need to be subjected to exhaustive genetic research to find that which protects you so that anyone whose job requires them to subject their lungs to carcinogens can undergo gene therapy to imbue them with your special properties, thus protecting them. Hope you don't mind; it would be for the good of mankind, after all. It still wouldn't mean that people have an excuse to drive cars, though, as they'd still be killing off plants and small furry animals.

your point about emissions from vehicles and factories is one that i agree with....everyone rants on and on about cigarette smoke yet they do not think twice about everything else that is going on around them destroying not only other humans but the planet as well....if they are going to get on their high horses over cigarettes then they need to go all the way and hit vehicles and factories as well, from what i can see those are doing much more damage than cigarettes ever can....
but hey, what do i know?....
monsy

The real danger-creators of passive smoke are those that don't inhale properly. True smokers absorb all the crap themselves so that it can't reach other people (except in a very reduced form). Clinton-style smokers merely humidify the smoke a little, thus making it more likely to be absorbed by innocent bystanders.

those are the people that i don't understand...i mean why buy them if you are not going to use them properly....seems to be a waste of money and time if you ask me and as you pointed out they are only ensuring that those that wish not to smoke inhale what they did not...i myself happen to oddly enough enjoy smoking and do it properly with no desire to quit anytime soon....
monsy

Without cigarettes the world would not have the voices of Tom Waits, Ben Ottewell and Mark Lanegan. Well, the world would have them but they wouldn't be nearly as good as they are.

AMEN TO THAT!!! .....and i for one would have very frazzled nerves as i suffer from a disease called motherhood (teenagers at that!)
monsy

Janis Joplin as well. And Captain Beefheart. What's more, they have the power to do away with the smoothness of the voices of Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Whitney sodding Houston.
Though my mother used to complain about it, I saved her a lot of bother by spending some of my teenage years up a tree reading a book. Reading a book whilst sitting down in a house is bad as it encourages slackness of the body whereas trees provide exercise, existential satisfaction from being in the environment in which we evolved and also subconsciously encourages the individual to support the growth of the internet so that trees can remain as trees and not have to be chopped sown and mashed to provide the material to make books.

i see i am not alone with the tree thing ..used to be my favorite place to sit and read or just think
as for smoking......i believe i am going to scream if i hear one more person telling me how bad it is for me (refer to earlier reference to chest x-rays) and how i need to quit for the sake of my health and those around me. i am polite enough to not smoke around those who wish for me not to and when i go out anywhere i make sure to be in the smoking area in order to satisfy those who do not wish to be near a smoker.....the way i see it is like this ; it is my body and my choice and what i choose to do with it is up to me, if they do not like smoking then DON'T SMOKE!!.....drives me bloody insane to have to listen to their rantings on a continuous basis, can't they find someone else to bug??!! or do i just have some sign attached to my forhead that says, "Hey everyone, I smoke and therefor you must irritate me to death!"?
monsy

Point the complainants in the direction of the annual government reports showing the amount of tax generated from tobacco revenue. Explain to them that they're only encouraging people to smoke in the time-honoured tradition of the "do not press this button" protocol. Ask them if they've ever smoked - those that have not are in no position to argue with anyone as they don't know how nice it is.

and once more you state a very good point ....i wonder what the government would do if everyone who smoked suddenly put them down forever? i mean all the money they get from the tax generated by the smokers purchasing their cigarettes would suddenly be gone!....as for nonsmokers complaints, i have to agree, they cannot say much for they do not know what they are speaking of. i must add this though, is it just me and my luck or have you noticed how the worst ones when it comes to complaining about cigarette smoke seem to be ones that have quit?!...what is up with that?!, i mean come on now people, you did and you chose to stop great for you. if we wanted to stop we would but we DON'T WANT TO STOP!! so leave us alone
monsy

They're either vehemently anti-smoking or Michael Burke, the lovely sincere newsreader who they bring in when there's a big disaster with loads of deaths or when they're making a documentary about how nasty fags are including an interview with Alex Higgins (now dying of throat cancer) and with shots of various voiceboxed people gurgling away to themselves. Michael Burke should have said that he still chuffs rather than that he's given up as he's not the sort of person that you want something in common with. As it was, one was supposed to think "ah, he says that he used to smoke but now wouldn't touch the stuff in such a kind, sincere voice. What lovely eyes he has, too. Wait a minute - he's right! What am I doing?" We can see what you're trying to do and aren't falling for it. What these programs always fail to recognise is that the people dying now were the ones that smoked 40+ tipless 30mg tar sticks during the war back when the streets were black with the smog of industry and uncontrolled traffic exhaust. Frank Zappa died from prostrate rather than lung cancer, which is another interesting point they neglected to bring up.

they always seem to convienently forget to mention the causes of death of smokers if it does not have to do with the fact that they smoked but if it was due to the smoking they ramble on and on about it for weeks on end.......

Hope you don't me adding to the conversation. My dad hasn't smoked for thirty five years he is 79 next week, he is quite ill and has been for the last two years, (his lrynx have crossed over so he has difficulty breathing). His brother is 82 smokes 40 a day and still runs up the stairs two at a time. And thanks for being the first to reply to my entry Wingpig. It's nice to know it's not only the referenced entries that are read.
PtB

No problem. It is, after all, what we are here for.
I balance smoking by climbing trees, scampering up hills, running up stairs, lugging heavy things about and so forth, This puts me a little behind people that do the same thing without smoking but far ahead of those that just do the smoking or neither. Smoking is an incentive to do these things. It's a shame that the people who decide on where we can smoke and how much we should pay so to do are usually overweight, red-faced, ischaemics-in-waiting that haven't exercised since they last had to open a car door by themselves. Accidents and disease notwithstanding, they're far more likely to die from their decision to be lazy and inactive than I am from my decision to light up. They can't comment on how smokers f**k up other peoples' bodies when they let theirs go to waste all by themselves.

AMEN!!!!! well said

Excellent comments! I smoked till I was about 39 (lots of ciggies, plus a pipe occasionally) - I gave up because I was competing at sports with youngsters, and giving up smoking gave me an edge over most of them. Many years later, I still fancy a cigarette occasionally! I also encourage smokers to smoke as much as possible, because the taxes that they pay help to keep the price of good malt whisky down at a level I can afford!

I'm sorry - you can't blame cars all the time. Car fumes consist of certain compounds that yes, may be causing certain atmospheric problems, but these are being addressed.

Sitting, puffing away at a fag and blowing it in my face is not only unsociable, but smelly, unpleasant, dirty, and fills my lungs with tar, not just yours.

Smoking causes cancer, yellow teeth and fingers, and bad breath.

Nobody got stained skin and smelt nasty because they sat in the car too long.