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...

To go into our local tube station in the morning you have to take a huge breath of air so your lungs are filled before you reach the station and hold that breath in until you are well inside if you want to avoid breathing in the smoke. I do that every time I go into that station. i don't think the smokers outside actually realise what most of us, the majority, (most people don't smoke) endure. That is very different from the very very occasional time I sit next to someone on a train who smells bad. I would say the smokers cause about 1000x more of a smell problem and also we know that breathing in someone's body odour will not damage our health, whereas passive smoking does.

Plenty perhaps internet forums with searchable archives are not the place for you then.

To go into our local tube station in the morning you have to take a huge breath of air so your lungs are filled before you reach the station and hold that breath in until you are well inside if you want to avoid breathing in the smoke.

Really, greengrow? With those skills you could always re-train as a pearl diver. I hear the weather is much nicer in the south Pacific.

whereas passive smoking does

I remember when the World Health Organisation released the report on passive smoking. The tabloids said it proved passive smoking was fatal, but the report said it was so borderline it couldn't be proved. There were indications that it might have an effect over a long term (like working in enclosed spaces for 30 years or being married to a smoker)

And now 'everyone knows' that you can be killed if you touch a coat that hung next to another coat that belonged to someone who sat near a smoker 3 months ago.

I cba to join the argument. but have been immensely cheered by reading the best MN comment in simply ages:
I think you've hoiked your judgey knickers up so far, they must be blocking oxygen to your brain

Thank you, WorraLiberty ..... almost choked on my smoke

Actually I am all for smoking in pubs. Just not all pubs. There should be pubs that are allocated to smoking, and if you don't like it you don't go in them. But unfortunately what would happen is that all publicans would opt to go for smoking because they see the market is there, and then non-smokers would be back to square one.

Perhaps there should be a limit of smoking establishments per square mile or whatever, that might work.

limited remember when I said upthread

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.'

well your comment to Greengrow about pearl diving has just demonstrated perfectly what I was driving at.

I clear my throat constantly - it's really irritating.

HelloItsMeFell Can we discuss how annoying that might be to others?

Hope you don't mind me searching to find that remark btw. If you find it objectionable (or completely ridiculous) then perhaps internet forums with searchable archives are not the place for you

Plenty perhaps internet forums with searchable archives are not the place for you then.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's not shitty behaviour. Perhaps public streets with smokers using a legal product are not the place for you.

I don't mind in the least, you sad act. How old are you? Is this the best you can do? If it worried me I wouldn't have put it on a public forum in the first place.

What does it have to do with this anyway?

Michael Siegel is very good on second hand smoke.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's not shitty behaviour.

You took the words right out of my mouth plenty

I hate smokers and smoking. Both my parents died of smoking-related cancers. MY DM watched my DF die an agonising death, and still couldn't give up for us. As I nurse, I watch smokers drag themselves off the ward, compromising wounds, to get some smoke into their lungs. I have nursed people who had to have both legs amputated, just because they would not give up smoking. I have watched women die of cervical cancer because they would not give up the death sticks. Smokers are selfish, stupid and ignorant.

Excellent link, Plenty, which shows yet again just how bankrupt some of this "research" can be; time and again findings are pre-decided to suit a particular agenda

To be fair this cuts both ways with the pro-tobacco lobby being just as guilty as the antis, but it underlines once again the importance of asking not just what reports say, but what the motivation/funding behind them might be

Windchime I'm sorry to hear about your parents and very sorry that you hate them. That's no way to go through life.

I do think that you're in the wrong job however and should not be allowed anywhere near patients with those attitudes. You won't be doing either them or yourself any good.

Very sorry to hear you lost both parents to smoking related illnesses windchime

I do however think that anyone who can hate a large portion of society based on a single aspect of who they are should not be in a caring profession.

I like the second/third hand smoke things, but I can't tell the difference between spoof articles and real ones.

30 seconds of secondhand smoke is as bad as a lifetime of active smoking in terms of coronary artery function.

YABU

Think of all the tax on cigarettes and what the smokers are probably subsidizing for you and your family by buying them (provided these are proper UK cigarettes and not smuggled in/fake).

If everyone quit what else would you like taxed instead?

New clothes? your child's shoes? medicines? Thought not.

Car fumes are also disgusting, but I don't hate people driving unnecessary journeys. How many people here take a huge Jeep on the school run?

Get bicycles and set your kids a good example for healthy living/caring about the environment.

Incidentally, how do you feel about bonfires/fireworks/barbecues?

Bonfires and barbecues are not the same thing at all. No comparison.

For a start they are relatively rare and tend to only happen in certain places at certain times, which you can usually anticipate and avoid if you dislike them. And besides, wood smoke can smell lovely sometimes.

There is something particularly revolting and offensive about the smell of cigarette smoke, or having to sit near a full ashtray that makes me heave.
I can't even stand the sickly cloying smell of an unlit cigarette and find it hard to even touch one. I remember the horror I felt as a child when my mum would be smoking and need both her hands for something and say 'here, hold this a sec will you?' Uuuurrggh.

And as for the tax argument, we all earn and spend a finite amount of money. If smokers were banned then smokers would have that money to spend on other things which would rake in VAT via a different route, I have no doubt.

There is already a HUGE problem with cigarettes on the black market anyway.

The other thing worth mentioning is that it is well known that smoking dulls your appetite and your sense of taste and smell, so perhaps smokers are not the best placed people to tell non-smokers that it really doesn't smell that bad and they should stop making such a dramatic fuss.

This probably goes some way to explaining why ex-smokers are often the ones who make the most fuss. Once their senses have returned to normal levels they start to experience just how unpleasant passive smoking is and they do all that very ostentatious arm flapping and face pulling. Whereas we lifelong non-smokers are just so accustomed to it we no longer bother making a public fuss. We just stoically soldier on through your noxious smog because we've been conditioned over the years not to be difficult and confrontational about it, or to embarrass our smoker friends, and in the past our smoker colleagues as well.

If you say 'do you mind if I smoke?' to a friend or somebody sitting nearby it takes some balls for them to be able to say 'yes,actually, I really do.' Especially if they like and respect you and want you to like them. And frankly, you'd be a bit pissed off and think worse of them for it. So it suits you to think when they say they don't mind, they really mean they don't mind. But both parties know we are just going though the motions, you with you faux concern for our comfort and us with our polite assurance that it's all fine.

It doesn't mean we aren't privately hating every minute of it. But if we honestly said what we thought/felt the whole time we'd be labelled as some sort of confrontational weirdo. I know - I've had a lifetime of it. That's why I let rip on smoking threads on MN instead. I don;t care if you lot hate me.

Cloud of death? Ffs get a grip.

Hello are you honestly under the impression that the same amount of tax would be generated if smokers spent their cig money on other things?

Well I imagine it would come close in the long run, yes, unless you are all planning on saving it and never spending it anything, never mind on on foreign holidays, bigger houses, newer cars etc. If you take away the costs to the state of smoking then you are looking at the difference, which will go back into the economy and the tax pot one way or another.

But it's a pointless argument anyway because it will never happen.

My personal preference would be for smoking to be banned and instead the use of e cigarettes to be used. But I have never liked the smell of smoke and at the moment it makes me sick (pregnant) when I do smell it.

No Hello it wouldn't come close. Because the vast majority of things aren't taxed at even nearly the rate that cigarettes are. A 20 a day habit at £8 a packet generates £2253.27 in tax. The same amount spent on anything that's taxed at the usual 20% rate (so not food and several other notable exceptions) generates £584. Per smoker. ie, 20% roughly of the population, the vast majority of which don't buy on the black market. And the cost of treating smoking related illness won't just go away...even if nobody switched to black market cigarettes, the effects of smoking haven't just immediately gone away because people don't smoke.