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

What a poor argument! "Don't criticize smoking until you critizice ____"
Well, I don't like car exhaust or industrial pollution or pesticide residue and runoff from tobacco production or government subsidies for that production or the environmental pollution from the manufacture of those pesticides or any of that other crap that comes from corporations having too much power in our society.
All these things are very bad.
And so is tobacco smoke. It makes me cough, it makes me uncomfortable. It unfortunately is not illegal in most public places in the United States, except for in California. And I don't like having to hold my breath as a I walk past smokers on the sidewalk, let alone the inconvenience of avoiding certain restaurants or other locals.
And I equally despise this myth of the smoker as independant. What sort of independance is it when you are addicted to a substance that you can only get from large corporations with unwarranted political clout and extensive advertising campaigns?

I do believe that it is important to keep cigarettes legal; however, we should indeed kick the polluters out of public places. My home counties (Livingston County and Monroe County, New York, US) have banned smoking in restaurants and public buildings until restaurants make separately ventilated areas. The point is to slowly pressure people into giving up smoking. If we banned the possession of ciggies, we'd create the same problem that the whole Western world has with illegal drugs already. Drug use rises even as (or because) governments crack down on it.

Yes, smokers are influenced by advertising. So are alcoholics, coffee drinkers, cereal eaters, candy munchers, movie-goers...

Slowly pressure people into not smoking? What ever happened to freedom of choice?

"Slowly pressure people into not smoking? What ever happened to freedom of choice?"

It doesn't exist here in the States. People are being slowly pressured to stop smoking in various ways. You have the small-minded people who go around wishing death on smokers, you have cities that outlaw smoking in public places, regardless if there's a smoking section established there and you have the ever present threat of money. A pack of cigarettes where I am costs nearly $5; a price that is destined only to go up. If you go elsewhere you'll find the same cigarettes much, much cheaper. It's all in the taxes levied against smokers. A very targetted and biased attack against a group of people by other people who feel it's wrong.

Meanwhile, on the way to work I'm behind a bus that's pumping foul black exhaust right in my face, I see factories with smokestacks spewing black clouds into the sky. Trucks ejecting black plumes all over the place. That's all right, because it isn't hurting anyone. Ahem.

Perhaps I should lay down some history before I jump feetfirst into this seemingly unresolvable discussion. I think I must be genetically indisposed to smoking because I've never been tempted to try a cigarette. As far back as I can remember, the act of smoking has digusted me. Both my parents smoked, and I vividly recall being turned off by it to the point of nausea, even when I was 5 or 6 years old - too young to be aware of the politics of the subject, and at a time when smoking was still acceptable, but the health implications were just beginning to be made public. At a time when, if there was an anti-smoking lobby, they could have held their world summit at a small restaurant off the Edgware Road. As I got older and started secondary school, I was offered cigarettes in the playground, and I always turned them down, no matter how strong the argument that it would make me cool or grown-up, because I didn't want anything to do with them. A few years later, I began drinking in pubs and was faced with it full on. It didn't take me long to discover that, as much I enjoyed having a drink with my friends in the ambience of a pub, I couldn't bear the effects of the people there who were smoking - mostly, the stinging eyes and sore throat, the way that my clothes and hair would smell the next day, and although I didn't know about it at the time, the passive smoking too. After a while, I decided that the unpleasantness I experienced from the cigarette smoke overwhelmed the enjoyment I was getting from a night out at the pub, and I stopped going. It was a concscious decision, but ultimately, my freedom of choice was denied by the actions of others. I now find myself in the same position 20 years down the line - my wife and her workmates go to a bar every Friday night after they clock out, and naturally, she wants me to come along too. We both finish work at the same time, so it would be an easy thing to do. I went there once, and I told her that I couldn't bring myself to go again because of the cigarette smoke in the barroom. I think it was smokier than any place I've ever been in. Mention has been made in one of the other threads for this entry about smoking being ok in "well ventilated spaces". This is Texas, in the summer. People don't open windows here in the summer, it's too bloody hot - yesterday the mercury hit 112. Windows are kept shut and the air conditioning is kept on, just the way that in colder climates people keep the windows shut and the heat on, so there is little or no ventilation.

Throughout history, people have done a great many things which at the time were considered to be ok, but have had public opinion go against them, and have either been outlawed or become something 'you just don't do', usually with a great deal of hostility from those who want to continue, and sometimes with a war - slavery for example. When the breathalyser was first introduced in Britain, there was an almighty uproar about how it would put every country pub out of business, but that didn't happen, and now driving drunk has become one of the most despicable things one can do (unless you're a young male bragging about it to his mates). Public opinion seems to be going the same way about smoking, but it will be a long time before this one is resolved, and in the meantime there will be many more discussions as heated as this one, with the pendulum swinging many times between 'support for' and 'backlash against'.

Oh, and it's a mistake to think that no-one is saying anything about vehicle emissions or industrial pollution, or that everyone finds them both perfectly acceptable (which is what I interpret from your last paragraph).

If smoking only killed you and I didn't have to pay taxes that helped take care of people who are knowingly harming themselves then i would be fine with cigarettes. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

I do agree, however, that there is a lot of pressure to stop smoking. In America, cigarettes cannot be advertised on television and the popular advertisement character "Joe Camel" was banned. This is not a good example of being a free country.

These points make cigarette smoking a very gray area. As long as everyone knows the harm of cigarettes the blame is all upon the person who is willing to smoke. As long as they don't smoke around me, I'm fine. Respect my choice not to smoke (by not making me breathe the unfiltered excrement) and i will be happy to pay the monetary sum towards taxes for medical stuff.