The anti-smoking conspiracy.

Originally posted by Skyfloating Smoking is officially known to enhance concentration and prevent alzheimers, parkinsons and dozens of other diseases related to becoming more senile.

I'm guessing that would be a matter of nicotine being a stimulant...as well as a poison. That's achievable using the patch, but by all means, fill your boots.

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck

Originally posted by Skyfloating Smoking is officially known to enhance concentration and prevent alzheimers, parkinsons and dozens of other diseases related to becoming more senile.

I'm guessing that would be a matter of nicotine being a stimulant...as well as a poison. That's achievable using the patch, but by all means, fill your boots.

Nicotine itself is an addictive narcotic, and it can put a serious hurt on you if you overdo it, but like many narcotics it definitely has its good points.

Nicotine has the peculiar ability to bring people up when they're down and down when they're wired. If somebody could figure out a cheap way for people to get their nicotine fix without bothering other people with it (some little device the size of a juice box you could stick a cigarette in and slowly suck out the nicotine with no one else involved, for instance), then there wouldn't be a problem. It's the junk in the smoke that actually causes most of the real problems.

But the government doesn't want people to have easy access to potentially large doses of unprescribed narcotics. They're funny that way. Bunch of spoilsports.

Originally posted by Nohup
If somebody could figure out a cheap way for people to get their nicotine fix without bothering other people with it

There's the patch, there's gum, there's even a smokeless cigarette thing that just dispenses a dose as you haul on it...just to settle that digital/oral thing. But it ain't the same....

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck

Originally posted by Nohup
If somebody could figure out a cheap way for people to get their nicotine fix without bothering other people with it

There's the patch, there's gum, there's even a smokeless cigarette thing that just dispenses a dose as you haul on it...just to settle that digital/oral thing. But it ain't the same....

Yeah, pretty hard to look tough and cool and pick up chicks if you were leaning up against your pickup truck, sucking on something that looked like a juice box.

Originally posted by Nohup
But like I said, nobody's stopping you from smoking. Puff all you want. They're just stopping you from smoking wherever you feel like it. Nobody's stopping you from masturbating, either. But there's no good reason to expose other people to it, is there?

I don't have issue with establishments banning smoking. As a matter of fact, as a smoker, I don't allow cigarette smoking in my house. It makes the place smell bad. My qualms arise when the power is taken out of the hands of private establishments and put into the hands of government agencies.

If I owned a restaurant, I'd probably ban smoking in it. If I owned a bar, I'd probably allow it. But now, I have no choice, and my patrons have no choice. And it's all based on false facts put into evidence.

Originally posted by Nohup
There are emissions laws. More all the time. Smoking is a choice, though, not an unfortunate byproduct of something necessary, like a car or a plane...

Hogwash! Take a bike! You CHOOSE to drive, you CHOOSE to use mass transportation. And lastly...

My cigarette DOES NOT produce as much SMOKE as the emission controlled vehicles/machines.

Again I say HOGWASH!

For me I have had severe asthma since I was born.

When people smoke around me, I can't breath. I have trouble breathing normal 'clean' air that we all breath every day and have ended up in the hospital countless times as a kid.

While my asthma is better now as an adult (less hospital stays), smoke from a cigarette is something I can smell from a city block away, and it will trigger and asthma attack almost instantly.

To me, when smokers smoke, they are effecting me. That's when I have a problem with it. I feel I have a right to breath clean air (and I need clean air) as much as possible so I can get through the day without strain on my lungs, chest and lack of oxygen to my brain.

As a child I built up a huge resentment against any smokers. I would see one and instantly think they were the filth of the earth. Clearly it goes right to my childhood and trouble I had breathing. I resented the fact they could smoke and fill up the air with stuff that )@#)ed my lungs up, making me be the one that had to leave whatever public place I was at.

I've since gotten much better and don't resent smokers, but it still bothers me and triggers my asthma and I'll leave the room. It sucks yeah, but that's what I got to do in order to breath.

As a life-time asthmatic, I can only hope that the number of aws continue to increase against smoking.

Originally posted by r32adt3db
As a life-time asthmatic, I can only hope that the number of aws continue to increase against smoking.

How would you feel if "they" enacted laws that made it so you could not go outside because of your asthma?

I'm sorry you do not have a healthy respiratory system, but that does not give you the right to take my rights away from me.

I wonder, do you drive a car? If so, doesn't that stir up an asthmatic response? Maybe you should lobby for the removal of all smoke producing equipment so you can breath easier? Since smokers are not the only things producing smoke.

I know this makes me seem uncaring, which most likely I am. But it seems to me that your asthmatic response to smokers stems from a psychological standpoint versus a real aversion to smoke. Otherwise when a car passed you. you would have the same response.

Originally posted by adigregorio
But it seems to me that your asthmatic response to smokers stems from a psychological standpoint versus a real aversion to smoke. Otherwise when a car passed you. you would have the same response.

Now that's a clever trick...practising both internal medicine andpsychiatry over a web forum. Those California schools must really be something!

But if you have kids, I suggest you leave them behind on your next trip to Ontario, cuz those nasty anti-smoking Nazis have a new trick up their sleeves:

SECONDHAND SMOKE: PROTECTING CHILDREN
McGuinty will introduce law to control in-car smoking

March 6, 2008

TORONTO -- Ontario plans to ban smokers from lighting up in the car when children are present, joining a growing number of jurisdictions that are cracking down on one of the last bastions where people are not forced to butt out.www.theglobeandmail.com...

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Actually I have quit taking my brother and sister places with me because of a similar law here in California.

Guess what, they are just as upset as I am! They feel it is THEIR CHOICE, and now they do not get a choice, and I get to go places "fun" without them.

Originally posted by adigregorio
Actually I have quit taking my brother and sister places with me because of a similar law here in California.

Guess what, they are just as upset as I am! They feel it is THEIR CHOICE, and now they do not get a choice, and I get to go places "fun" without them.

I guess part of being a mature adult is making those difficult decisions on their behalf. Now there's further word about second-hand smoke coming down the pipes in Ontario...

A new study is one of the first to show that smoking in a car poses a potentially serious health hazard to occupants, particularly children. The University of Waterloo study also shows that ventilation does not eliminate the hazard.

news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca... 080320

The current anti-smoking campaign has never made a lot of sense to me. The gub'mint gets a ton of money off tabacco taxes, plus smokers don't collect pensions/social security as long because they die younger. So why is there a war against smokers? A couple of theories:

1) Eventually make tobacco totally illegal, so they can make even more money off its black market potential.

2) Use past tobacco use as an excuse to deny you health care under the coming socialized-run medical system. (Of course, you'll still have to PAY for the system out of your taxes.) (And they will eventually deny you care because of past 'excessive' alcohol use, too much fat in your diet(you'll notice a parallel campaign against obese people is also starting up), etc... )

3) Give police yet another reason to get involved in your life, i.e., fines, arrests, court costs, etc. (Here in San Diego County they were even advertising an anonymous snitch telephone number to report someone throwing a butt out of their car window.)

4) Control. Perhaps the real reason for all this. Get the public used to gub'mint having control over every aspect of your life. And fear. Get the public used to looking over their shoulder all the time, afraid of being busted.



[edit on 20-3-2008 by starviego]

While my asthma is better now as an adult (less hospital stays), smoke from a cigarette is something I can smell from a city block away, and it will trigger and asthma attack almost instantly

reply to post by r32adt3db


There is no logical reason why smoke from far away like that with origin from a small rolled up tobacco stick should trigger some physical effect. In terms of parts per billion of particulate matter in the air, you are breathing a hole lot of other stuff besides tobacco. It sounds more like the smell is triggering a psychological response.

There is a lot of data linking asthma and psychological processes. Hypnosis and therapy with someone qualified who is willing to help you loose what sounds like a conditioned response. Taking the cure, would allow you to smell a tiny lit ciggarette (producing a lot less polution than the vehicles driving down the street) from a block away and not have that disruptive attack.

How does the exaust from a city bus two lanes over effect you? Howabout exaust from the friers at the neighborhood bar & grill? Did that 78 Chevy Scottsdale that just whent by cause you to have an asthma attack? If so, you can be possibly cured with some therapy even with these much heavier polution sources. Something worth checking into.

Originally posted by skyshow
There is no logical reason why smoke from far away like that with origin from a small rolled up tobacco stick should trigger some physical effect. If so, you can be possibly cured with some therapy even with these much heavier polution sources. Something worth checking into.

You going to say that to somebody dying of anaphylactic schock because they smell a peanut? Personally, I think you should identify a mere opinion as such, and not deign to inform people that their own medical observations are irrelevent to you.

It's funny, but no one ever talks of the health benefits from smoking. What's that? I'm crazy, you say? If only. There are numerous benefits to smoking, including, as someone pointed out earlier, you are WAY less likely to get alzheimers or parkinsons. Children who have parents who smoke at least 15 cigs a day are something like 200% less likely to have asthma/respiratory problems. If you do not believe me, look it up for yourself. The studies are in major medical journals.

The problem with tobacco isn't what you think it is. When you smoke most commercial cigarettes, you aren't really smoking tobacco. You are smoking "reconstituted tobacco". What that means is they take tobacco, turn it into this slurry, add a ton of chemicals, bake it on giant "cookie sheets", then chop it up to look like tobacco. That is what you are smoking. Switch to an "all natural" brand of cigarette (i.e., not utilizing reconstituted tobacco), and watch how it affects you.

If you believe in evolution, you HAVE to believe that our bodies have learned how to deal with excess smoke (from cooking fires, for example), as we have had fires around humans since time immemorial.

To sum up: There *ARE* health benefits to smoking, though no one wants to acknowledge them, and what you are smoking isn't real tobacco.

Carry on.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


What's with the histrionics? and Whatever, you're putting words in my mouth, and besides the poster said it was a smell from "far away". Nobody except for you brought up peanuts. What gives? Denial of sorts???

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Tobacco has some anti-viral properties. It also has been shown to prevent jet lag.

Originally posted by skyshow
reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

What's with the histrionics?

Because the mods probably won't let me refer to your dismissal of somebody else's medical complaint as stoopid, at best. Hope this helps.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


I didn't mean for it to come off as a "dismisal"...rather, I meant there is therapy for that unusual behavioral related reaction to smelling tobacco smoke from more than a block away...who's being unrational here?

So much propaganda & lies re: smoking!

Why would you think quitting smoking would protect you from cancer, when the statistical chances aren't changed one iota? Guess tell a big lie often enough and people will believe it? The statistical odds reported for cancer, be it 1-in-5 in Europe, or 1-in-3 in the U.S. is a constant for smokers and non-smokers alike... oops, now what? ...oh, it must be the "second hand smoke", huh? LOL

FACT: Smokers & Non-Smokers alike have the same identical odds of getting cancer!

The propaganda is in the "half-truths". Sure, smokers get somewhat more of certain types like respiratory related cancers than non-smokers, but then again non-smokers get somewhat more of certain types like pancreatic cancer, etc. It's a statistical wash when you consider the _whole truth_ instead of the agenda driven _half truths_. But the Propaganda just doesn't want you to consider that... but with such a drop percentage wise in smokers, without the drop of cancer rates... oops, well I guess they had to come up with the propaganda about that second-hand-smoke. LOL

Fact is, if you're health is weakened to the point of being susceptible to cancer... it usually sets up house at the weakest point. Smoking can not be proven to cause cancer, if it could it would have already been banned on the basis of such _proof_, duh!

There is a big difference between the "accepted" claims and proven facts.

What about the FACT that women who quit smoking _after_ menopause have statistically a much shorter life span than those women who don't quit after menopause? What about the Fact that a _small_ amount of smoke is actually beneficial to asthmatics because it dilates the air passages? ...yet the propagandists would have you believe second-hand-smoke causes asthma! LOL. How come there was far less asthma back when the numbers of smokers were the greatest percentage wise? Now people try to blame their smoking neighbor for their dogs asthma, and in court for gosh sakes! ...you know, "second-hand-smoke"!! LOL. How come Big Pharma is the biggest bankroller in the world funding the "anti-smoking propaganda"...golly, could it be they want the monopoly of being sole nicotine dealer? duh. And let's not forget Alzheimer's (pun noted) is a "non-smokers" scourge, and not even a problem statistically for "smokers". Oops! Smoking a preventative for Alzheimer's? LOL, now that's a statistical reality you won't hear reported on the NEWS between all the Big Pharma commercials!

You got a brain, use if for something other than hat rack and a tape recorder, with propaganda in and propaganda out!