5 ms·

Well, secondhand smoke is not an issue when one smokes only outside away from others or only in the company of other smokers, and I think a significant portion

Well, secondhand smoke is not an issue when one smokes only outside away from others or only in the company of other smokers, and I think a significant portion of people who try to quit smoking do so because of the potentially overstated risk pointed out in the comment you're responding to, or the artificially inflated cost due to sin tax imposed and justified by that potentially overstated risk. Would those people try to quit if they calculated the cost more accurately? That said, I'm an ex smoker, and I'm glad I quit, and I will never touch a cigarette again. To me it was not so much the risk of very early death as it was the impact on my health for however many years I will remain alive, the financial cost (imposed by governments) and the fact that I came to hate smoking cigarettes and got no pleasure from it whatsoever (which is not the case with nicotine in general or other forms of tobacco such as cigars, which I do enjoy once or twice a year).

Talanes 5y ago
I imagine there's also some false positives from people who know that "wanting to quit" is the more socially acceptable answer.
version_five 5y ago
I think the second hand smoke thing was largely overblown to make it an "us vs them" thing rather than letting smoking be a personal choice. Smoking is a terrible habit, I hate being around people who are smoking, but I really think that modern anti smoking campaigns were less about health and more about puritan values, and not being able to stand the idea of someone else enjoying themselves in ways you disagree with. We see this regularly but it usually doesn't get enough traction to matter. The "dangers of second hand smoke" happened to be what finally stuck. From what I understand, anti smoking campaigns have actually had a positive impact on life expectancy in western countries. On that metric, this is a positive thing. Personally I don't believe it outweighs the ills of allowing others to tell you what to do in the name of your health. I actually think all of the covid craziness can trace itself back to some extent to when we gave in and banner indoor smoking in most places. You start letting people make rules "for your safety" (and try to spin it so it's really about others) and next thing you know we've got the current hysteria as a popular thing. Edit, because everyone that's replied so far has missed the point. I dont mean second hand smoke is pleasant. The rhetoric used to make allowing or disallowing smoking not a business decision but a state mandate, is that it was killing people. This was overblown, and is a completely different bar than "it smells bad and gives me a headache" - I agree with that, but its unreasonable to argue the state should be telling people what they can't do because of it. I'd sooner see Axe body spray outlawed on those grounds, but again, it's not the states business.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Indoor smoking bans are about others. Other non smokers who do not want to smell disgusting cigarette smoke. It has tar in it and sticks to all surfaces and never goes away.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    So let establishments dictate whether or not to allow smokers. And smoking sections were generally well isolated from non smoking sections.
    - acdha 5y ago
      > And smoking sections were generally well isolated from non smoking sections. This definitely does not match my memory. If businesses had to meet air quality standards that’d be one thing but usually they just pretended that a 4 foot gap was an airlock.
    - saiya-jin 5y ago
      That's simply not true. I've practically never witnessed properly air-gapped section for smokers and the rest. Whatever you do, you come home smelling like shit and so does every single thing on you, usually also 1 layer below. I find it so annoying that even in 2021 smokers and apologists even here tend to marginalize this issue which directly affects everyone else, and dismiss literally everybody telling them in the face how seriously fucked up that is. When mankind has this mentality, how can we tackle bigger issues like slowly collapsing environment, when we can't handle something so trivial and provably bad on all possible levels.
      - version_five 5y ago
        > When mankind has this mentality, how can we tackle bigger issues like slowly collapsing environment, when we can't handle something so trivial and provably bad on all possible levels. How is this different from just saying you don't like it when people have different priorities than you?

Talanes 5y ago

I imagine there's also some false positives from people who know that "wanting to quit" is the more socially acceptable answer.

version_five 5y ago

I think the second hand smoke thing was largely overblown to make it an "us vs them" thing rather than letting smoking be a personal choice. Smoking is a terrible habit, I hate being around people who are smoking, but I really think that modern anti smoking campaigns were less about health and more about puritan values, and not being able to stand the idea of someone else enjoying themselves in ways you disagree with. We see this regularly but it usually doesn't get enough traction to matter. The "dangers of second hand smoke" happened to be what finally stuck. From what I understand, anti smoking campaigns have actually had a positive impact on life expectancy in western countries. On that metric, this is a positive thing. Personally I don't believe it outweighs the ills of allowing others to tell you what to do in the name of your health. I actually think all of the covid craziness can trace itself back to some extent to when we gave in and banner indoor smoking in most places. You start letting people make rules "for your safety" (and try to spin it so it's really about others) and next thing you know we've got the current hysteria as a popular thing. Edit, because everyone that's replied so far has missed the point. I dont mean second hand smoke is pleasant. The rhetoric used to make allowing or disallowing smoking not a business decision but a state mandate, is that it was killing people. This was overblown, and is a completely different bar than "it smells bad and gives me a headache" - I agree with that, but its unreasonable to argue the state should be telling people what they can't do because of it. I'd sooner see Axe body spray outlawed on those grounds, but again, it's not the states business.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Indoor smoking bans are about others. Other non smokers who do not want to smell disgusting cigarette smoke. It has tar in it and sticks to all surfaces and never goes away.
- twofornone 5y ago
  So let establishments dictate whether or not to allow smokers. And smoking sections were generally well isolated from non smoking sections.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > And smoking sections were generally well isolated from non smoking sections. This definitely does not match my memory. If businesses had to meet air quality standards that’d be one thing but usually they just pretended that a 4 foot gap was an airlock.
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    That's simply not true. I've practically never witnessed properly air-gapped section for smokers and the rest. Whatever you do, you come home smelling like shit and so does every single thing on you, usually also 1 layer below. I find it so annoying that even in 2021 smokers and apologists even here tend to marginalize this issue which directly affects everyone else, and dismiss literally everybody telling them in the face how seriously fucked up that is. When mankind has this mentality, how can we tackle bigger issues like slowly collapsing environment, when we can't handle something so trivial and provably bad on all possible levels.
    - version_five 5y ago
      > When mankind has this mentality, how can we tackle bigger issues like slowly collapsing environment, when we can't handle something so trivial and provably bad on all possible levels. How is this different from just saying you don't like it when people have different priorities than you?