to think that people have the right to smoke without being villified as if they were using cocaine?

[stitch]

i'm a non smoker. make that a never smoker, apart form one incident when i was 13 and had a huge coughing fit.
i am really really shocked at how people are reacting towards people smoking. it is not the worst thing in the world, and i just feel really uncomfortable athow they are making smokers out to be pariahs.

I love you talking on the subject of drugs. Is what I meant

"cocaine is a class A drug.

cigarettes aren't.

for very good reasons. "

d be very interested to hear these "very good reasons" as i personally can't see them.

**meant to read "i'd be very...."

Pruni, I feel exactly the same about MIL. She still does it, smoking and smoking in her tiny flat, although FIL has had bronchitis several times recently, although she has a cough you shudder to hear, even though she knows she would get to see dses a lot more often if she didn't (and she lives for her grandchildren). And this is what dh (who is perfectly healthy but has a horrid note in his cough whenever he coughs that he doesn't notice ut for me spells trouble haead, maybe not for 20 or 30 years but still ahead ) says: 'it's an addiction'. A part of her is thick, tbh, and very very weak.

"In the meantime because it's an addiction I get to see my mother killing herself (and those around her?), like all her family have done, and she knows she's doing it - come on, there has to be part of her that is just plain thick".

Pruni, I agree. I smoked for a long time.
But once we started a family, it was time to stop smoking, because the children were more important that the addiction.

I wanted to be around for them for as long as possible, and I didn't want them to grow up around a mother who smoked.

Either from a passive smoking point of view, or from seeing me smoke and thinking that it is an OK thing to do.

It was very, very hard to stop smoking, and sometimes I still get almost overwhelming cravings, years after I have given up.

I also know that I can never, ever have just one more cigarette, as I have an addictive personality, and would want to start smoking regularly again.

If I can give up, anyone can - you just have to think something else is more important than that next cigarette.

Giving up smoking is bloody hard to do, but the alternatives are even more grim.

trouble ahead

expat is right.

cocaine has devastated many a small country throughout latin america.

colombia, bolivia, peru have had their political structure and environment permanently altered by cocaine. but it is the lives of simple people in the country and the cities who live in a squalor brought on by addiction of one or two parents.

cocaine babies anyone?

all along the trade routes leading toward north america and europe, small states have also suffered. once you become a transshipment point, (planes refuelling at clandestine airstrips) you become a consumer because the locals are paid partly in cocaine which they sell to the local populations.

i have seen the devastation wrought at home in the 80's and 90's when the cocaine boom happened in the US. before that people were happy to smoke the local weed as they had done for generations.

But smoking affects ME. HERE. NOW.THIS EVENING. Heroin doesnt. Drink driving doesnt. Coke doesnt>>

The important word in there being 'ME' I guess.

Since I can't smoke I think I'll go out and get pissed and run over a few kids. No one will mind as long as my breath is fresh.

oh FFS greyriverside.

then just start praying that one day coke doesn't make an appearance into the life of one who is close to 'you'.

ffs indeed.

And cocaine only causes these problems because it is illegal. Legalisation would put an instant end to all that.

Most of the smokers I know wouldn't say no to a bit of cocaine, either. They don't blow it in my face, though it turns them into arrogant pricks often enough.
I used to smoke, I'm not habitually surrounded by it anymore, so sitting outside with my friend of an evening whilst she has a fag doesn't bother me at all.

Veyr rambly incomprehensible post, sory. I a bit tired.I hope you got the gist of what I meant.

agree with everything pruni said.

You know, no matter how virtuous and self-denying you are, no matter how much you tut and fuss and poke your nose into other people's business, no matter how organic your vegetable box, how recylced your underwear and how tedious your whining....
You're going to fucking die in the end. So is everyone you care about.
SO you might as well stop whining and enjoy life while it lasts.

"The important word in there being 'ME' I guess.

Since I can't smoke I think I'll go out and get pissed and run over a few kids. No one will mind as long as my breath is fresh. "

Oh how clever you are GRS to quote me back as though i am just interested in myself. Walk in my shoes at the moment when your 12 year old almost wets herself with crying as she she her dad with a 15 inch scar, stapled from ear to breastbone after his op, his voice barely a whisper as he tries to comfort her but she just wants to get out of the hospital room as she hates herself for feel ill at the sight of him .
I have 5 dcs. That is just one of the situations i have had to cope with due to his unfair cruel throat cancer this month - as i said to quote the doctors, possibly due to passive smoking.

Feeling clever? Well done you

Madamez...

Ah yes cali, the shopping mall guantlet of fire, as it were......

I should add that I also dont find myself around cocaine users often, however, I do judge them as equally as smokers. And drinkers for that matter. [flippant yet meaningful]

You judge cocaine users, drinkers and smokers?

Why?

UC

Stop whining?

Why cant folk just stop smoking instead? No good comes from it, after all. They'd enjoy life a whole lot more if they gave up.

I'd enjoy life if I didnt have to endure other peoples dirty, stinking, life-threatening habits. So, if other peoples enjoyment (ha!) impedes on mine, I'll exercise my right to turn my nose up, make snidey comments and complain as loudly as I like about it, thank you very much.

All done in my own, inimitable British manner.

Message withdrawn

Okay. Smoking has been banned in public places now, so there is no longer the direct threat of being harmed by passive smoking.

And VVVQV - trust me - I would not enjoy life more if I did not smoke. I enjoy smoking.