3 ms·
However, there is social pressure. The social pressure that makes that given your social level and how smart you are, you are much more akin to fall into drugs
by tajen 10y ago
However, there is social pressure. The social pressure that makes that given your social level and how smart you are, you are much more akin to fall into drugs (tobacco, alcohol) if it's allowed.
Take it this way: It's incredibly hard, today, in France, to explain someone smoking at a bar outdoors that he's reducing your life expectancy. It's incredibly hard to find bars to go to. It's incredibly hard in my city (Lyon), to walk on the sidewalk and avoid smokers. It's impossible to run around our park without being under the smoke of smokers - and that's the only place where asthmatists can go running.
Smokers don't even think of smoking as harmful in practice, even if they admit it in theory.
While I'm unhappy with the war on drugs and the class domination it represents (jailing the poorer and the political opponents), I'm incredibly happy that I don't have to explain my friends that they can't come to work with drugs or that we don't have to explain children that drugs are legal but shouldn't be bought. The law makes things clear: It's forbidden because it's bad.
And I'm happy that I'm not proposed drugs during cocktails, while I'm insistently proposed cigarettes and alcohol.
- munificent 10y agoSmoking is legal in the US, but smoking in bars and restaurants is illegal in many places now. I think that strikes a good balance between giving smokers the freedom to smoke while giving non-smokers the freedom to inhale clean air in most places. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to move from a city that allowed smoking in bars to one that didn't. I used to play in a band and coming home from every show reeking of smoke was awful. The first time I went out in my new city and came home not needing a shower was amazing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Smoking is legal in the US, but smoking in bars and restaurants is illegal in many places now. I think that strikes a good balance between giving smokers the freedom to smoke while giving non-smokers the freedom to inhale clean air in most places. Note that in most places, those bans aren't justified primarily on protection of non-smoking customers, but were instead removal of exception in existing workplace smoking bans that had excluded bars and restaurants, to protect people working in those places.
- collyw 10y agoIt would be hard to convince me too that my secondhand smoke is reducing your life expectancy having seen this study: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/05/jnci.djt365.extract http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/05/jnci...
- tajen 10y agoThat's for lung cancer. You're missing asthma. You're missing all other diseases: people who don't die but lose a limb or get handcuffed to an oxygen bottle. In France, 5000 non-smokers die every year of various diseases caused by second-hand smoking. 75,000 smokers die too. That's not counting people who are harmed and still alive. That's not counting people who die from quitting sports because they can't take pleasure running. We're 70M people in France, do the math: Non-smoking is a problem.