Dragandeewhy said
Are you saying that every “stink” or smell is harmful for you?
As you will see, I am not saying anything of the kind. Cigarette smoke is known to cause cancer and other diseases, even among passive smokers. The USA’s Surgeon General says that living with a smoker increases your chances of contracting lung cancer by 30 percent.
Harm minimisation or positive discrimination how ever you call it still gives the right to the morally superior once to openly hate the addicts.
“Positive discrimination” has nothing to do with it. I don’t hate the addicts – I just hate the attitude that I have to risk my health and my peaceful enjoyment of my home so they can kill themselves in theirs.
In the north of Sydney they are openly hated while going more to the west or south the tolerance towards smokers increases.
And look at the cancer and heart disease rates there. Only six percent of people in Northern Sydney smoke compared to 14 to 16 percent in Western and South-Western Sydney. That’s peer group pressure for you but even out west it’s still a tiny minority inflicting their filthy habits on others.
While visiting Europe or other continents the whole discomfort around smoking miraculously disappears.
According to you … it used to be the same in New York and L.A. – try lighting up in a restaurant or bar there now, or in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries. According to this website “currently, 17 EU countries have comprehensive smoke-free laws in place. Among these, Ireland, the UK, Greece, Bulgaria, Malta, Spain and Hungary have the strictest smoke-free provisions with a complete ban on smoking in enclosed public places, on public transport and in workplaces, with only limited exceptions allowed.”
And if you look at this report you will see that the areas of the world that were late to take up the non-smoking banner (Europe and North America) had the highest cancer rates.
This is what I was talking about with “mass physiology”.
So it’s “mass physiology” now is it? Isn’t than a fun run or a pump class at the gym?
A push biker will openly show discomfort in the presence of a person who smokes while he or she inhales with the full capacity of his her lungs the fumes of peak hour traffic, thinking that he is living a healthy life style. Etc etc etc.
That is a pathetic argument. Flip it and you have the cyclist deciding not to ride in traffic because the idiot downstairs from them is filling his flat with cigarette smoke, so what’s the point in trying to be healthy? FYI, governments all around the world have made huge inroads into the level of pollutants from cars and other vehicle. Tried to buy petrol that isn’t lead-free recently?
This is an all-too-common bleat against a healthy lifestyle because it might affect others’ “rights” to pollute the air breathed by the people around them. Two of the five recommended ways to lower your risk of cancer, according to this easy to follow document are to avoid smoking and to exercise regularly. Where does that leave your passive smoking cyclist?
How do you feel about the “right” to go out at night, get paralytic drunk then punch the crap out of some unsuspecting innocent stranger. “Ooooh … but it’s my addiction … I’m the victim here … what about my civil rights?”
If the “Nanny State” exists – and I’m not sure it does – it’s not because some people can’t be trusted to look after themselves, it’s because they are happy to take other people to Hell with them in the same handcart.