I couldn't come up with a better title for this post.
My friend's father went under the knife to plug a leaky valve in his heart.
The surgery was a success but they discovered a curious thing. As a lifetime, hard smoker, his lungs were basically "normal."
My father on the other hand, had turned yellow, black.
Smoking affects people differently. Even if the body of evidence suggests its strongly linked to various diseases, one size fits all laws against it are interesting.
Smoking is a foul addiction. But it's not illegal. Until then, stop treating people who smoke like second-class citizens. "Be like the rest of us or else..."
Alcoholics, in the meantime, can easily get behind the wheel of a car and directly have an observational impact by killing someone. Besides, I'm pretty sure the government still makes a killing off taxing tobacco companies. That's why they don't ban it. If it's such a public menace do it.
Well, my POV: other people's smoke makes me sick -- starting with my father's which regularly erased my voice in childhood.
ReplyDeleteAs such, it's just a "lite" form of careless alcohol use -- won't kill me all at once if someone else does it, but can do anything from set me up for a nasty bronchitis to merely making a public place (or a semiprivate one like someone's backyard barbeque) impossible for me to enjoy.
On the whole, so long as we instituted something like breathalyzer tests in everyone's car ignition, I'd prefer that other people drank to excess than smoked. Up to the point they actually upchuck, or drop quarters down my front like a couple of PR guys from Lufthansa at a German choral festival once upon a time (long story), it doesn't invade my space as much.
Sitting around drinking booze, even to the point of passing out, isn't going to give someone who doesn't drink a disease that leads to a horrible, agonizing death. Smoking will do that.
ReplyDeleteWe now understand the dangers of second-hand smoke and the way to avoid that danger is to require smokers to keep their smoking away from others, even if that means going outside on the porch on a cold winter's night, or the blazing heat of a tropical day. It means requiring smokers to refrain from smoking around people who do not want second hand smoke about their persons.
Don't disagree with the logic. Although I injested quite a bit of second hand smoke in my life. I still remember the cloud of smoke in the car on our drive to Florida - from Montreal. Do the math.
ReplyDeleteStill. So far no issues.
Smoking is annoying no doubt about it and we got on my father's case. I just find it weird how we've declared war on this vice when alcoholism and its consequences can be devastating as well.
Welcome, sledpress.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your comments.
Hope this blog can keep you intrigued.
By the way, I belatedly offered a thought on one of your comments on MOR's recent post.
ReplyDeleteCaught you over at MOR, just was stumped for much of an answer.
ReplyDeleteRe smoking, it goes beyond "annoying"when you lose your voice for days, your raw throat gets sore and you get bronchitis, or you actually develop asthma (I escaped that, but it happens to some people who have to live in smoking homes). The young gentleman I'm walking out with at the moment is about as sensitive to cigarette smoke as I am; during the year that someone in his group house smoked, before moving out, he was constantly catching colds (gave me one), sniffling, and hacking up glop. It's just a mean thing to do to anyone around you, even if you can point to people who tolerate it without apparent ill effect. I do grasp that it is a very stubborn addiction and sympathize with anyone who is trying to get the better of it.
I keep spelling it slepdress.
ReplyDeleteAnyway.
I know that happens.
Yet, we were four kids and none of us have any of those symptoms. Same with my cousins and my buddies. All grew up in smoke-infested homes.
Odd.