Smoking

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Persecuting smoking and smokers is a modern witch hunt among the left, as proven by the intolerance of progressive areas (California, Oregon, Washington, NY, Mass., etc). Of course that's anti-Science. While smoking isn't healthy it's not as unhealthy as a bad genes, not exercising, bad diet, or bad attitude (stress) -- if you can regulate smoking based on public health claims then the state could regulate all those others (and some are trying. Many of the studies were fraudulent to get the laws, doubly so for the second hand smoke scares, or the false (unsupported) claims that it increases healthcare costs (they die quicker so it saves money). It was all flim-flam to allow the anti-liberty fascists to tell us what to do with our bodies, in our property, "for our own good".


Smoking laws are about one thing: one group making an excuse to oppress another, under the false flag of it being, "for their own good". It feeds the virtue signalers their red meat, as hating on the villain of the week (some minority group like smokers) is their key to happiness. In California smokers were being treated like antebellum blacks; with being barred from establishments, insults and attacks, special fees and areas to exclude them, and so on. From segregation to apartheid, with smokers areas being mandated under law and/or we just outlaw smokers from whole categories of establishments, building, public places, and so on. All in the name of the greater good. If that's done by free will of the establishment owners? That's freedom. When it's done by the will of the state? That's tyranny.

🗒️ NOTE:
Personally:
  • I don't like smoking. I try to convince people to stop.
  • I don't like second-hand smoke. I ask/encourage people to not smoke around me.
  • I avoid frequenting places where there is a lot of smoking, and am more likely to frequent a smoke-free business, or work at a smoke-free job.

But as much as I don't like those things, I like tyranny and abuse of power even less. I also value doing things the right way, rather than taking shortcuts and doing them the wrong way. The process is as important (or more important) than the goal. Education, encouragement, tolerance (but dissatisfaction) is the right way. Govt. guns to rob people of life, liberty or property because they are doing something you don't like is the wrong way! Especially if you are trying to teach people to respect themselves (and others), take responsibility for their own actions, and make the world a better place. It is even more wrong if you are trying to teach people to belong to a society, instead of feeling isolated and resentful towards it. So while I dislike smoking, you're only free if you can choose to make bad choices. And their habit is less foul than the view of those who would oppress them. Most of the oppressors rationalizations are complete bullshit and hypocrisy. And both of those are far worse than smoking.



Smoking : 12 items


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Anti-smokers - One of the thing that helps the pro-smoking argument was the dishonesty of the anti-Smokers:
  1. You shouldn't be able to harm others. False. The science for second hand smoke risks were faked.
  2. You must be against government or regulation if you oppose smoking laws. False. I'm against using government to encroach on others rights without cause.
  3. We can ban smoking and help people. Sure, if you ignore the people hurt in the process. Think Eric Garner.
    • Everyone that voted for smoking taxes, raised the incentives for Eric and others to sell them illegally. Eventually that will lead to confrontations that end lives. Every tax/law/regulation is the point where you're willing to ruin someone else's life, or have them killed. Then the hypocrites that support the bad laws in the first place, whine about the consequences of enforcing them, and deny responsibility for it. Death seems like a harsh penalty for committing the capital offense of non-compliance with a hate-tax against a minority (smokers). But Democrats will pay it with others lives.
  4. Smoking is a high risk endeavor. False. It's well down the threat list.
    • Do you know what kills more people than smoking? The idea that you should be able to tell others what to do for their own good, or for your personal likes/dislikes, that's lead to almost every war and conflict in human history, and has killed many, many more people.
  5. It is about caring for the people who don't like smoking. False. It's about those people bullying those they don't agree with.
  6. It's about addiction. False. Or they would more regulate addicting behaviors: sex/pleasure, pain, eating, caffeine, coffee, alcohol, gambling, working, playing, etc.
  7. Many people that died smoked, or were married to smokers, so smoking did it. False. They also ate bananas, did bananas cause it too?
  8. But smoking is annoying? If we should ban annoying then what about Gardening (attracting bugs they might be allergic to), Apiculture, Parties, talking too loud (or not loud enough), home-improvement, working on cars, cooking, canning, candle-making, BBQ/smoking, and so on. Humans annoy other humans. Unless the other person can't easily mitigate it, it's more a recipient problem than the donor.

Eric Garner -
EricGarner.jpg
Media meme: Innocent, generous, congenial, "neighborhood peacemaker", father of six children (grandfather of three), was attacked, choked out, and killed by the evil NYPD for the crime of walking while black as part of "stop and frisk".

Truth: Stop and frisk was ended long ago because it was too effective. Tobacco smuggler (selling illegal untaxed cigarettes), and repeat violent felon (30 arrests including assault and grand larceny), was in poor health and resisting arrest. He was on bail for smuggling and illegal selling, driving without a license, marijuana possession, identity theft/fraud (false impersonation), and that's what the cops were taking him in for. He didn't die of Daniel Pantaleo's chokehold, he died in the ambulance that the police called for him, after had a heart attack violently fighting with the cops. Either his life was given up over his own stupidity, or over the lefts war on tobacco. The race baiters blamed a racist system, instead of admitting any truth or culpability by Eric Garner, or the law they supported that empowered the cops to arrest him in the fist place.

Moral busybodies -
❝ Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies (progressives). The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. ❞




Secondhand Smoke - Since the left's war on smokers wasn't working fast enough (despite exaggerations and fear mongering), and they had used Junk Science against smoking, they could also use Junk Science (the EPA's now debunked "study" on secondhand smoke) to warn the public about the dangers of Secondhand Smoke. (Later, the fakers seriously tried adding 3rd hand smoke -- that if you touched residue in a smokers house, you could die). I don't like smoking, first or second hand, but remember Japan? Japanese men are some of the heaviest smokers in the world (with some of the longest life expectancies), and since they live in smaller dwelling than most, their wives and daughters are subjected to secondhand smoke in more frequency and intensity. The results? They have the best life expectancy of any Women in the world. Diet, lifestyle, and genes matter far more. So stop the rationalizations -- some people don't like smoking, and so are making junk-science excuses for their attacks and hatred. We know this because places that banned it for years/decades had no difference in death or disease rates: so the issue of public health has been debunked.

Smoke is pollution - Seriously. This was another argument made as an excuse to intrude on smokers liberty. And it's true that if you're in an enclosed place and have asthma or COPD or something that it's not good. Heck, if I owned a business, I wouldn't allow smoking in it. But that's not what we're talking about: we're talking about should the government say that it's so polluting that they have a right to regulate that businesses can't allow it. Do you drive a car, mow your lawn, blow leaves (or have someone else do it), or fart? Then shut up on this whole bullshit argument. Conservation is becoming more an excuse to persecute others than about the environment. A smoker in his lifetime will not put out as many toxins as your car does in a week. The same for airplanes, buses or trains. Stop being a hypocrite. You want to fix pollution, there are a million more effective ways. Govt. force against smokers, in the name of pollution, is so stupid it is insulting. Cow farts (methane) are far more polluting -- stop eating burgers! If you're a model citizen, maybe you have a point -- but I've yet to meet one of the whiners who was. You want to fix the problems, try education -- not legislation!

Smoking and Healthcare costs - An argument used to justify anti-smoking laws was that smoking increases healthcare costs -- as if that meant that it was OK for the government to then tell you what you can do with your body as a cost savings measure. Yea, exterminating people at 30 saves healthcare dollars as well, so what? We don't need Logan's Run. On top of that, the whole idea was faked. Canada did a study that found that the lifetime costs of smokers healthcare was far less than the average, which makes sense to the non-mouth breathers.
  1. Most healthcare costs are in the last few years of life.
  2. Smokers die quicker (on average) -- meaning they cost less over their lives!

That means the justification used to ban smoking should be used to encourage it, and we should charge smokers LESS for healthcare, and start giving kickbacks for skydivers and stunt pilots. If you really want to save healthcare costs, ban leftist know-nothing idiots from interfering with others lives: imagine how much that de-stresser will save society.

Smoking arrest - I was pulling in to gas station and as I got out of my car I noticed the cop watching a woman smoking a cigarette while gassing up her car. I saw her and thought, what an idiot. I actually had to look twice, it looked like someone I knew, but thankfully it wasn't. I went inside to grab a bottle of water and while I was checking out I heard a woman screaming. I looked out and it was the woman who was smoking, her arm was on fire and she was waving her arm around and screaming hysterically. I ran outside and by then the cop had her on the ground and had put the fire out with an extinguisher. As I watched as he started cuffing her while opening the back of the squad car.

I wondered what he was arresting her for, thinking that having her arm catch on fire would be punishment enough. So I asked.... the cop looked right at me and said ... 'for waving a firearm'!!!

Smoking in Hawaii - To show how absurd it is, Hawaii attempted to raise the age for smoking tobacco to 100. You can't reductio ad absurdum the left, because they've already gone there. Now they haven't actually done it, but that they would think about it and not fire everyone who suggested it, tells you all you need to know about their attitudes on freedom/tolerance.

Smoking is liberty - I don't smoke, and I don't like it. I'm not trying to glorify it. But Smoking is liberty. It is someone doing something I don't like or support personally, but in a free country, it means people get to do things I don't like (as long as it doesn't endanger anyone else). And if we are informed, we know that Secondhand Smoke risks are bullshit and exaggerated. It doesn't hurt anyone but themselves, and they should have the choice over their bodies.
  • Private businesses should be allowed to decide what market they want to cater to (without govt. control). So while I prefer it if they offer smoking and non-smoking sections (with good ventilation.... I hate smoke as well, and I have pretty bad allergies to it), it is the owners choice: not governments.
  • Nobody is ever forced to breathe anyone else's second hand smoke. Some people have a choice to leave where there is smoking or not, but that's not the same thing. If people are loud, too crowded, or too drunk, I sometimes have the same choice and have to leave. Suck it up buttercup -- you can control your own behavior and be a good person. But when you try to control others, you're a dick.
  • While smoking is annoying (I don't like the smell), I don't like people who don't bathe, wear too much perfume, dress with their pants hanging down, and a dozen other things that are their business. Just because I don't like something, doesn't mean I get to regulate it. To those who say otherwise, I say "grow the fuck up". Do you want to live in a society where people micromanage everything they don't like? If not, lead by example and suck it up.
  • Most anti-smokers are ruder than most smokers I know. Smokers seem to feel a little shame and try to do it away from others and are not dicks. Many vocal anti-smokers are willing to get into other people's face to tell them what to do, or lecture them. If I had to support a group or think which is better for society, it is the smokers more than the fascists.

So there are two groups: (a) those that support liberty and (b) those that support smoking bans. Everything else is just the latter group trying to rationalize their benevolent fascism.

Smoking is unhealthy - Yes, smoking is unhealthy -- but not as unhealthy as most other things in our society (your life). The point being not that smoking is good for you, but that there are many other factors that are a far bigger influence on your health -- especially your diet, exercise, genes or your attitude. So attacking smoking for health reasons, is just a rationalization. And if society can rationalize intrusion on such a minor health impact, they should be able to (and eventually will) do it for more pressing issues. Remember the following things have greater impacts:
  1. Genetics: we know some people are going to die of lung cancer with or without smoking, others won't die of it, no matter how much they smoke. The same with fatty foods and a dozen other behaviors. Genetics matter. If you care about public health then let's have government breeding programs making humanity better and avoiding those weaklings that are predisposed to cancers, obesity or sickle cell anemia. (Where have we heard that before?)
  2. Exercise: we know this is one the largest contributors to health and healthcare costs behind genetics. You stay fit, you live longer and cost less. So government mandated fitness would have a bigger impact on public health than smoking laws.
  3. Diet: next in importance is diet. If you think smoking is bad, you should see what too much cheesecake and bacon can do. We have to start legislating the publics diet. Lets outlaw meat. (I'm mostly vegetarian, and my wife is complete -- it'd be no sweat off my brow). That single act would save dozens of times as many lives as outlawing smoking.
  4. Stress: if we're playing nanny-state that cares about the public, lets require people to take meditation, stress management classes or see counselors (especially if they are know-it-all busy-bodies, trying to regulate others lives). That too would have a bigger impact on public health than smoking laws!
  5. Japanese men have the highest smoking rates in the world, and the BEST life expectancy of any country. They smoke something like twice the world average (or more), and have for generation. They also live longer than countries where they smoke far less (or none at all). Tell me again how smoking is a large risk factor?

Smoking is way down the list of your biggest health impacts, but we NEED the health police, along with the fashion police! Of course, that was meant as satire -- even if some are trying to make it a reality. If you believe in freedom, then perhaps it is right for us to allow people to do what is wrong and that we don't approve of. We should encourage others to make better choices, but lets leave the government guns (laws and other tools of force) at home. Lets also stop the hypocrisy that we care about health. We don't, or else McDonald's would have been outlawed a generation ago. This argument is an excuse for persecuting other people's vices -- while usually ignoring our own.

Smoking on a plane -
I remember coming back from my one freezing semester at an Illinois College in 1982. Back then spoke-and-hub meant it was cheaper to fly from Chicago to L.A. via NYC's JFK airport (no direct flights for you). So I'm on a 747, in the middle of its 3-4-3 seating, and the girl next to me sparks up a doobie in honor of Nancy's "just say 'no' to drugs campaign", and we start passing it around like it was a Willie Nelson concert. But alas, they started outlawing smoking on planes after that. What's America become that you can't get lit on a trans-continental flight?

Smoking pot hypocrisy - While California (and liberal places) hate smokers with a blind, seething, "we know better than you" passion... they make an exception for slackers and pot-smokers. Those are OK, so get a special exemption from harassment. Which shows the hypocrisy of their position. They don't care about smoking, they want to tell you what to do. Cigarettes they don't like, so bad. Pot they do like, so OK. Any one with moral convictions against smoking would ban both. (Eat the weed). Those who support the exemption are hypocrites. (Or bay area Democrats, which is the same thing).

Conclusion

These laws don't really seem to work. They keep making laws, and people keep figuring ways around them. They outlawed smoking in restaurants -- so now many truck stops are "private dining clubs", where you have to pay $.05 to join, and then there is smoking inside. People got killed for breaking the smoking laws and taxes. And the trend? Well it has dropped from 23% to 16% since enacted in 1998 or so (30% drop). On the other hand, smoking had dropped from 36% to 23% over the prior couple decades (36% drop). And from 45% the couple decades before that (26% drop). In other words, the rate of change didn't get better, it actually seemed to get worse. While teen smoking appears to have gone down, that unless you consider vaping the same thing, then it is way up.

So the laws failed to significantly decrease smoking (over the trend), they made people more contemptuous of the laws, lawmakers, and resentful of each other. Those who bully them for smoking or making laws are madder. Those who want to bully hate the people who get around the laws. This is a liberal win: everyone hates each other more.

Think of what these laws really say;

  • You are not free to do what you want with your own body. If the masses don't approve, they will get you! No respect for your privacy or liberty. Screw you. The pleasure-Nazi's will cram their views of what is acceptable enjoyment down your throat.
  • You are not free to do what you want with your own business. You can't cater to your customers and make your own choices. The masses get to decide how you are to run your business and your life.
  • Customers aren't free to leave an establishment that they don't approve of. Workers aren't free to choose their place of employment. Market forces don't work (despite proof to the contrary). We really need the government to do for them what they can't do for themselves. (That ought to teach individual responsibility).
  • The masses should be free to tyrannize whomever they don't agree with at the time.
  • Majority rules (group-think)! Conformity becomes more important than freedom.
  • The means aren't important -- only the ends (and don't think too hard, 'cause the ends won't be that great either).
  • Deep pockets, special interests, and self-righteous, judgmental, over-emotion, know-it-all pricks will prevail over reason, tolerance, and freedom.

I know that sounds a bit histrionic, but this nation was founded on freedom, not bullying.

I warned in the 1990's that this was the first step towards the nanny-state micromanaging our diet, exercise, healthcare and breeding was this anti-smoking crusade. I wasn't wrong, as the cry-bullies have come after those other things too. Once you give the bullies what they want in one area (smoking laws), it doesn't assuage them, it emboldens them to encroach on the next area even more. They have a recipe to divide us and conquer our freedom... they will rinse and repeat, until we make them stop.

So I do believe in encouraging people to do what is right, and I would encourage people to stop smoking. You want to make rules about your property, fine, I am all for it. Don't allow people to smoke in YOUR house, or YOUR car, or YOUR business; I don't. You want to deal with others in our society like they are humans, and ask them to stop smoking around you, great! I do that too. But anti-smoking laws are just about oppression. This is about a vocal few, oppressing others, and too many standing by and letting it happen. And it led to the next predictable step towards the tyrannical dystopia of group think.

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📚 References


Written 1994.06.12 Edited: 1998.04.02, 2019.07.22