Craven, you think they should fight? BRING IT ON! jk
I guess that's a little self-ritious of me
Why do you change your avatar so often? I sent you a note about a dancing girl you had in the avatar, but as soon as I sent the note, the thing had changed.
I didn't get that PM, I get more than 50 a day so many times they get pushed out of my inbox by new ones (and I avoid my inbox).
I don't change it manually, it's a script that monger and I use (and is not available because it needs to be configured on our server).
I can just imagine if the government started clamping down on cars the way they do with cigarettes ... after all, cars: bad for your health, bad for other people's health, bad for the environment. One of today's greatest dangers, in fact.
Laws that would forbid driving a car except for on specifically designed terrains and for those with an "exception"-permit (disabled etc)? Obligatory warning stickers saying, "driving causes danger to fellow travellers and earth climate", with vivid pictures of traffic accidents ... The outrage ... <grins>
Other side of the line: as a non-smoker, I didnt like one thing about smoking girlfriends: the breath ... nasty, it can be, its true. Makes kissing lot less fun. Never really said anything about it, tho. And same goes for booze.
LRR's list (hair smells "dirty", body smells, breath smells "like feces") strikes me as a wonder of projection, tho. Dunno. Perhaps I'm just not sensitive enough - or it's living in a city of sorts, too many other smells in the way.
I too wish there were some place for smokers. My wife can't light up the entire work day. On her last job she had to go outside and hide, no matter the weather. I recall a concern in CA which forbade emplyees to smoke - ever. They fired a woman when they somehow obtained proof she smoked inside her own home.
"You won't live any longer if you give up strong drink, rich food, fine tobacco, and loose women, but it will seem like it"
W. C. Fields
"I can't understand all the fuss about how hard it is to quit smoking ... I've done it a dozen times"
Groucho Marx
Are we gonna have one of those melees between smokers and non-smokers?
Where are we putting the dope smokers?
Well, bar owners here in Tarana are freaking out. In just 40 minutes the new no smoking by-law comes into effect.
This thread presents me with quite a dilemma: Kill somebody or let the cigarette do it? Until now, I never realised I was expected to choose.
Hey, pick on the smokers, not the dope smokers!
(er, never mind.)
I am not radical anti smoker. I had a friend who was, (dead now). His idea was that 1) smokers ought to be refused treatment for heart disease, lung disorder and stroke, all of which have been linked strongly to smoking unless they had paid health insurance premiums that were six to eight times higher then the going rate for a minimum of ten years before onset of symptoms. (Smokers have a sixty percent higher occurrence of disease) 2) That any person over the age of fifty who continued to smoke would be refused all treatment for any disease, insured or otherwise, so that they would die faster and save us a lot of medical funds needed for people not too stupid to try and poison themselves twenty times a day.
Just a thought from my now dead friend Jim. (tumor in leg, spread to the lungs. Over pretty quick.)
Joe
Joe
There's a lot of other measurements on healthy living, too. Did you ever do sports or were you a couch potato all your life? Did you ever do coke, speed, XTC? Did you shop at the biological store or did you eat junk food? All of these indicators will make someone much more or much less likely to end up needing serious health care.
But there are no such "tests" on one's sins when it comes to providing health care or old-age benefits here. We usually consider each human being to deserve being cared for. (Well, I wont mention the mass of American uninsured or the homeless people ... but in general in the developed world we consider each person to deserve his old age care, no matter what his sins may have been. Didn't we?)
These people (in the OAP home) have worked all their life, paid taxes all their life, and lived tough, eventful, long lives. They grew up at a time when smoking was as normal a thing as driving a car is now. Why can't they just be left at peace to enjoy whatever they've got left of their lives the way they're comfortable with? They already did their share of struggles - why impose this next one on them? The cigs they'll still get to smoke won't "cost" us all that much in taxes anymore ...
Oy, such denial. One of the single most beneficial things that any smoker could do for him/herself is to quit. Period. Excersize is magnificent as well.
I don't have any problem with designated smoking places, in fact, I'm sure someone will try to cash in on that idea soon.
littlek wrote:Oy, such denial. One of the single most beneficial things that any smoker could do for him/herself is to quit. Period. Excersize is magnificent as well.
I don't smoke myself, never have, so no denial here ...
I just dont like to see old people pestered into a choice that should be their own. That goes for anyone, really, of course - but for old people, who dont have a home of their own to retreat to - I mean, fer Chrissakes, just let 'em be ... .
Smoking lounges?
Already been done, I believe - a long time ago.
Off you go, Kicky - where there's a niche, there's a buck.
But quick - get 'em while they're still alive....
Well, with the laws the way they are in New York, I was thinking more like a smoking Winnebago. I could pick people up, charge a one-time cover of fifty bucks each, and we could drive around the city in my fully-booze-stocked, smoker-friendly magic bus.
I'm sure there's some damn law against that too though.
