to hate smokers

[onemiddlefinger]

I don't actually hate the people (well, not all of them anyway), but I find it so disgusting walking though someone's cloud of smoke. There was just a woman having a cigarette next to the door of my office building and there is no way for me to enter the building other than though hercloud of death! And that happens frequently. Would IBU to bring this up with our office manager and ask for this to be banned?
Actually I wish all smoking in public could be banned, or at least in all bus stops and doorways that have people coming in and out of. In fact they should have designated areas only and those areas should be easily avoidable by others. But I don't suppose this will happen anytime soon...

But they do know they, certainly asthma, allergies, CAN be and exactly my point - in stats how could they differentiate. Without a load of estimated. And up to date knowledge of peoples smoking habits/ who they live with.
Since both me and dSis have these conditions seems an incredible coincidence.

Plus being unmedicated for asthma since moving out of home. Because clearly there must be also some genetic element/ predisposition.
They know smoking affects thyroid function - probably resulting in some of the weight gain of ex smokers.

I hate ignorant people, whether they're smokers or non smokers.

Sorry I haven't read past page one, couldn't be bothered.

Yes it's hard to get accurate figures when smoking is a risk factor rather than a direct cause for so many illnesses.

However, it's highly fashionable within public health to blame everything on smoking that can possibly be blamed on it, even when the evidence is somewhat flimsy (e.g. asthma rates have skyrocketed over the same timescale that smoking rates have fallen but still the PH consensus is that asthma is caused by smoking) I would therefore trust organisations such as ASH and the NHS to not underestimate the cost of smoking in healthcare terms.

You may not like the fact that smokers raise 6x the amount they cost in health terms but those are the best figures we have.

naty1 the number of people with "cause of death = smoking" on the certificate is zero. It is always a contributory factor. So yes they have estimates for all those things and that's how they can say smoking causes any deaths at all.

When the NHS came up with figures it wasn't part of an anti-smoking campaign. It was just part of their normal business of studying these things.

Whether they are a little high or a little low can't be known. Certainly someone in the street can't say "ha! it's really higher/lower". That would be daft as only the NHS knows what they spend and how many of each disease they deal with.

I don't argue with their figures. I only argue sometimes with what the tabloids & politicians say because they grab numbers out of context.

"I detest having to sit in the line of a plume of cigarette smoke or to have to walk past it /through it in the street. It makes my eyes water, by throat sting, it makes me cough and splutter it smells hideous and makes me nauseous."

You WALK PAST a smoker and all this happens? And you're not being dramatic?

Serenity The list of things described happens when someone sits so that their smoke is drifting towards me, or if I am trapped in a room with several smokers, yes. There have been many times over the years (thankfully not so much these days) when the smoke in a room has been so overwhelming that I have been forced to leave or spend long chunks of time sitting outside, away from the party just to be able to breath properly and to give my stinging eyes a chance to recover.

Walking past/through it in the street obviously I am not there long enough for all of those things to happen, but it does make me cough and splutter and feel nauseous for that brief period, yes absolutely.

You may not smoke now but I see from doing an AV that you were once very, very addicted and by your own admission were 'obsessed' with smoking and finding opportunities to smoke and that you prioritised it above all else. It appeared to dominate your life, in fact. Obviously you cannot possibly be expected to understand my point of view about how offensive I find it when you have been so in love with the disgusting, filthy, foul smelling stuff yourself.

This was no surprise to me; I find you can always identify someone who is a smoker (or has been) by the dismissive and minimising language they use and by the way they sneerily accuse others of over-reacting or being puritanical fusspots. Why would we over-react? I am aware that others are addicted to other substances like booze, drugs, food, but I don't go around 'over-reacting' about those things because I haven't the last 48 years being directly affected by them or made to feel any real physical discomfort on a regular basis. Other people's smoking does that to me, and always has.

'Hysterical' and 'dramatic' would be if I ran around screaming and crying and shouting at people about it, and behaving disproportionately over it, which I don't, nor have I ever done. I manage to be wearily stoic, tolerant and polite in public and around friends who smoke even though I resent it and find it disgusting and anti-social.

But don't tell me how I should or should not be feeling thanks very much.

I have to disagree entirely. Indeed it is a well known saying that there is nothing worse than an ex smoker when it comes to criticising smokers. I don't think your caricature is the norm at all.

Anyway just popped in to say a general...we hate hate you too

Well it's always worth taking old posts out of context to score points I suppose.

Ex smokers are generally known to be the worst anti smokers.
I don't support smoking however my experience is non smokers often exaggerate its affects.
A pp made the point about hand waving and spluttering whilst she was vamping which is a perfect example

I don't support smoking however my experience is non smokers often exaggerate its affects. A pp made the point about hand waving and spluttering whilst she was vamping which is a perfect example

Yes, that was me - it was also me who got told that vaping should be banned because of the mental damage it causes to folk who think they're being damaged

FWIW, as one of those dreaded ex-smokers, I'm another who dislikes the smell now and can't believe I smoked for so long. But - and this is the big but - I will never windmill my arms around, cough, splutter and all the rest because, quite frankly, I think there are worse things to worry about than a legal habit which causes, at most, passing inconvenience to non-smokers these days

SHAME ON YOU Serenity

Tbh, I would probably say that advanced searching people's oooold posts and describing their 'love for the disgusting, filthy, foul smelling stuff' as proof that they are not to be trusted a teensy bit edging towards dramatic territory!

There are carcinogens in diesel fumes. I hope all your cigarette smoke haters don't buy diesel cars.

There are poisons sprayed on to lettuce and strawberries twice a day, every day.
But that's ok because you can't taste, smell or see it so people happily eat them.

Roundup, the weedkiller, is carcinogenic, but people happily buy and spray it round their gardens.

Cigarette smoke is an easy target because it smells.

When car fumes are mentioned usually you get someone post to say "ah but I can be against two things and the smoking is in addition to car fumes"

But it doesn't really hold up because they are not reacting in that dramatic way when a car passes by. They don't ask people to park further from their house because of the fumes or any of that.

In Japan people wear those masks/filters to protect them from the fumes. Do any of the anti-smokers wear those or give them to their children?

I doubt it because it's not really the danger they are worried about.

I don't hate them, I just think they're stupid. Anyone who spends their own money to kill themselves has to be pretty brainless.

Do you despise racing drivers, people who ski, those people who climb mountains each year and have to be rescued when they get in trouble?

If not why not?

The trouble is that anti-smoking zealots Simply Don't Realise how bad their attitudes stink.

In Japan people wear those masks/filters to protect them from the fumes. Do any of the anti-smokers wear those or give them to their children?

I doubt it because it's not really the danger they are worried about.

Cigarette smoke is an easy target because it smells.

Well yes, that is the whole point. It smells and we shouldn't have tolerate it when there is absolutely no benefit to us, or to anyone else. I know there are all sorts of toxins in our environment but generally they come with an upside as well as a downside to society, so banning them isn't always practical or reasonable. Although they may be ever present in the air we breath we are not always consciously aware of them because (unless we are standing right behind a spluttering diesel truck for example) we cannot smell/taste them in any concentrated quantity. We know they are there, but they aren't necessarily making our lives unpleasant in any obvious way.

Smoking isn't something I want/need/use and it has no benefit whatsoever to me or to society in general, unlike pesticides or petrol fumes, yet I have spent my life being reluctantly being made to share other people's cigarette smoke unless I care to remove myself from the public space. Can't you see the difference?

Obviously I don't like being around concentrated traffic fumes either, but it is not realistic to expect people to stop driving is it? Whereas I think it's totally realistic and reasonable to expect that I should be able to move around freely in public places without being assaulted by other people's cigarette smoke. It doesn't need to happen, it has no upside for anyone.

It constitutes causing a public nuisance as far as I'm concerned.

assaulted by other people's cigarette smoke I've heard it all now

We could push for all new cars to have hybrid engines. I think that would be reasonable and realistic and of far greater benefit to public health than pushing smokers into smaller and smaller bits of the great outdoors.

So really Hello your problem is the smell. You're under the impression that you should never encounter an unpleasant smell while out in public.

Well I have to disagree with you there. I am sure the bigger benefit to public health by far would be to push smokers into smaller and smaller bits of the great outdoors until eventually it is so difficult to smoke anywhere that most of them give up.

Now that would be of enormous benefit to public health.

The smokers saying they don't inconvenience others when they smoke in public are deluding themselves. I don't want to breath in that awful smell and why should? If they think that positioning the cigarette in front of them as they go along means the smoke is not then there are just wrong. One smoker and 30 people walking by put out - utterly unfair. Disgusting.

I dont think its exactly the smell. As i have no sense due to living with smoker. Its awful walking behind one with it all trailing toward you.

Not really...Because the amount of money smoking generates actually does benefit society. Please look through the previous posts for the figures but off the top of my head, smoking generates £12billion but treating smoking related diseases is costing the NHS just £2billion. don't quote me on that...I'm on the app and it's a pain to look back for things

There's no need for some people to reek of BO but they do. I shouldn't have to walk past them and catch a whiff as it makes me physically heave, so much so that I nearly pass out, arms flailing in all directions and have the local ambulance on speedial for that very reason. Should they have a separate lane you think?

I hate walking by smokers, and I hate it when smokers try to minimize how unpleasant it is for non-smokers to walk through enormous plumes of smoke (because they have nowhere else to walk apart from the street).

YANBU, really.

No Jolleigh I am not under the impression that I should never encounter a bad smell while out in public. It will happen from time to time, usually by accident.

But I do object to it happening virtually daily as the result of someone else's selfishness and lack of manners or personal boundaries.

I would feel exactly the same way if someone sat close doing really toxic farts for 10 minutes at a time, without any thought to whether it might be unpleasant for me. What's the difference? In both cases someone is choosing to pollute my immediate environment and cause me discomfort.