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

Having been exposed to second-hand smoke almost all my life AND seen how smoking has totally ruined the lives of my loved ones, I firmly believe that smoking ANYwhere on the whole PLANET should be punishable by the gallows and(!)/or the guillotine. Yes I sound extreme, and here is why:

I watched my Grandfather die slowly of lung cancer and many other related problems over the course of over 15 years. He actually quit for a while and said he felt so much better that he wished he'd quit 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, the damage already done was irreversable. And to add injury to injury, his "friends"(??) gave him static about not participating in their nicotine habits, and he actually started smoking again and continued 'til his death in 1995.

Ok, so that was a typical sob story but it's true, and it's happened countless times to others in this world and the reader knows it. Now on to "smokers' rights"...
Whenever the issue comes up, I hear the same ol' thing time after time: "We have rights to our bad habits too y' know!" Yeah right. Yes, I have a right to consume alcohol, bite my nails, sit in my cubicle and masturbate (among other things), but the blatantly obvious difference is apparently not getting through to inconsiderate smokers. Umm... y'all.... think about the AIR we have NO CHOICE to breathe. Tobacco smoke permeates the air indiscriminately, and YOU have NO right to corrode our most vital resource for life. If you have trouble understanding this concept, go back to your elementary science textbook and read about the Law of Diffusion. No matter where you smoke.. airport smoking lounge, restaurant smoking section, outside in the park, etc. .. it eventually invades the air that us decent people have to breathe.

And finally, a personal thing I'd like to share with the reader: My wife has been a smoker for longer than I can remember and she just flat-out refuses to aknowledge that she needs to quit. I've tried everything under the sun.. being gentle & supportive, being strict & nagging, trying to come up with stop-smoking schedules, etc. and can you guess what good it's done so far? I have (after years!) given up on trying to talk with her about it, since it almost invariably results in a big argument (putting it mildly) My step-daughters all smoke, and my oldest granddaughter was recently caught experimenting with cigarettes (she's only 12 as of this writing). The "learning by example" axiom is clearly at work here. (Incidentally, they all smoke around their kids too.) And yes these are my particular personal issues and not the reader's problems, but they emphasize the reason why I have an extreme view of smoking in general.

Having said all that, I should reiterate my solution for smoking today: immediate execution. Tobacco smoke is one of the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse (greed, inconsideration, and crack cocaine are the other 3), and I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels the same as I do.

I thank the BBC personnel for letting me use their web space for discussing this horrid plague of gargantuan proportions, and may God have mercy on us all.

In my opinion you lost all credibility when you mentioned God.

The rest seemed pretty reasonable, though...

*laughs at the comment about God*

So true. Anyway...

"Having said all that, I should reiterate my solution for smoking today: immediate execution."

A bit harsh, and quite ironic seeing as you seem to think that all smokers eventually suffer this self-inflicted fate anyway.

I'm afraid I must completely disagree with you. As difficult as it must have been to watch your grandfather die due to smoking, you musn't think that you had any right to try and prevent him from doing so. It is an entirely personal choice to smoke or not, just as I believe it should be.

The morals in smoking, I think, actually reside in the responsibility of the smoker; as long as the effects of cigarettes are only affecting the user, then I see no problem in the matter. It is a smoker's duty to avoid annoying others in the same way that it is a woodchopper's duty to avoid accidentally decapitating others. ^_^

I don`t think you should shoot people just because they smoke. First, you should ask if they`re prepared to stop.

It occurs to me that perhaps smoking could be covered by the laws that make suicide illegal.

Except that in England, suicide is *not* illegal. Assisting suicide is though, so perhaps you could get Imperial Tobacco on that charge

Or even just the shopkeepers who deal in the evil weed...

Actually, going back to the harshness issue...

Given that we live in a profit-motivated, low-tax seeking, efficiency-led world (and yes, I know that we don't, although it seems that we want to) then the following seems to be a solution.

In countries that have a public health service:
> Execute smokers who, after a given test period (say three months), and who cannot afford a smoking licence, have failed to quit. This will save money for the tax payer, by decreasing the massive health costs these people end up dragging us down with, neatly reducing any tax loss arising from falling tobacco sales.

Those who can afford a licence should only be able to buy from registered premises and only consume on thos premises, much as heroine users are supposed to. The premises would, in theory, be self financing. They would require sealed air-locks and scrubbers.


In countries with no public health service:
> A large tax break given to any family who turns over a member for .

Either way, smoking should immeadiately prevent one from being able to get life-insurance / health insurance, and even if there is a public health service in the country, it should not fork out for smoking related illness.

If they need care, they must pay for it.

Oh yes, I forgot that they changed the law on suicide some time ago.

I assume the same applies to the whole of the UK, not just England.

Yep. You'd be right.

But please, don't use loads of CAPITALS - people'll think you're a) impolite and b) aggressive.

I agree totally. Now everyone stop breathing that carbon monoxide back into my nice clean air and we'll get along just fine. And stop driving cars, using electricity or anything plastic or wood or leather, or buying cheap clothing made in sweatshops.

Your grandfather probably didn't know as well as he could have the risks involved in smoking - so yes, get pissed off at the tobacco companies that witheld and argued against studies on the effects of nicotine and smoking, just as today giant corporations (like clothing companies) withold information about their operating practices. But you've also got to learn a better way of dealing with the issue than proposing to ban smoking, and worse, suggesting that human beings should be put to death for doing what your grandfather did - although I suppose he would have been spared the agony of cancer if he'd been hanged. Still, it's good to vent your emotions from time to time, no?