Talk Elections

option 1 (normal)

FF

SUPER COOL - one of the coolest things about Obama, if not the coolest, is that he smokes.

Option one in opinion but option two in practice out of respect for others.

Let's not even discuss what happens nationwide if there were no tobacco taxes collected.........can you say collapse?

I love(d) tobacco, so I also hate it.

Yeah, this.

Option 2.

Similarly, not everyone drinks, but I want to be able to.

To each his own.

I should also add that even when I smoked like a nicotine-addicted chimney I thought the 'smoking ban is fascism!!1' stuff was stupid.

Options 2 and 3.

Never smoked, but if I ever did, it would be a pipe like my dad did.

I would ban smoking.

Smoking is healthier than fascism.

Hookah is awesome and a great social tool, but cigarettes and cigars are pretty disgusting. I've never been able to finish a non-menthol cigarette.

They're nasty as hell. I strongly approve of the TN ban on smoking in restaurants. I hate people who toss their butts from their car windows and I especially resent my coworkers who frequently go outside to smoke. And I would never, ever date anybody who smokes. All that said, what people smoke on the own time on their own property is their own business. I would hope we've learned from the "War on Drugs" enough not to ban it outright.

aspects of all three - I am a former user.  as with any other drug of abuse, it poses a public health problem and should be treated as such: through social-educational spending, regulation, and if you particularly hate poors, demand management through taxation.

Definitely healthier than fascism.

Somewhere between 2 and 3.

Option 1. If you want to smoke something, smoke weed instead.

Tobacco products are nasty and users tend to be assholes about their habits.  If you want to smoke on your property, then fine, but I sure as hell don't want to breathe the toxins coming out of the end of those sticks.  And don't get me started on chewing tobacco...

As a former 13 year smoker, I could care less what people do. If you want to smoke, than smoke. 

Option 2. Don't really smoke anymore and even before I only smoked when I was drunk or everyone went for a smoke after a sesh.

Anti-tobacco types are usually pretentious assholes. No one likes a prude. It would be fairly easy for people to stop bitching and go breathe somewhere else if they are really that uncomfortable.

I think people should be free to smoke in public, but the common practice of throwing butts on the ground is pretty annoying.  But I agree - the people who are strongly anti-tobacco tend to be more obnoxious than smokers.

I LOATHE smoking... pure, unadulterated hatred, lol.

But as long as it's legal, and due consideration is given to those of us who lose their appetite by being around it... eh.

People who litter ought to be recognized as a different group from people who smoke. Ash trays are usually full so its obvious that not all smokers disrespect the environment. I'm not claiming that you are someone who makes this mistake but I feel it is a point worth making.

"Recovering" alcoholics aren't this way, oddly.  I think it's because if I quit drinking, you can still drink in front of me without affecting my CNS.  If I quit smoking, and you smoke in front of me, I'm still getting second-hand, which affects my CNS and the addiction kicks in.  Sure, they're assholes, but not pretentious, because the dependence is physical. 

I hate cigs but love the occasional cigar.

I smoke, just not tobacco!

I've never smoked and think it's stupid, but who am I to stop adults doing stupid things? I was even against banning smoking in pubs, restaurants, etc, though the ban seems to have worked well.

Tobacco is a fine thing, much like porn, booze and most forms of drugs. It gives people pleasure, like hookers, fast food, sleep and meth. This country and the puritanical do-gooders that make up the 51% of voters are waging a war on pleasure. Sleep makes us happy, TAKE IT AWAY! Hookers give us pleasure, TAKE THEM AWAY! Fast Food gives us pleasure, TAKE THAT AWAY! Smoking causes pleasure, TAKE IT AWAY! The war on pleasure is a real downer it is the reason why the USA has such high divorce, rape, domestic violence rates and sky high prescription drug use. I am not a smoker but I like tobacco products and I say god bless those who produce them.

(Patrick Stewart: "You are quite the powerful speaker, sir, wonder you don't go into Parliament?")

Tobacco is, objectively speaking, a crap.

But it's my crap, so bug off.

How is throwing down a cigarette butt 'littering'?  Its biodegradings.

It's not binary. Everything biodegrades eventually. But aside from making a trashy landscape, the butts accumulate and eventually can strain a local drainage system. And so they have to be cleaned up and it gets expensive.
http://www.wmctv.com/story/4406414/cigarette-butts-may-cause-storm-water-drainage-problems?redirected=true

Perhaps, but no doubt the tight-ass non-smokers throw down a lot of other things which clog the drains.  Anti-smoking prudery.

I smoke pipe tobacco occasionally (mostly without inhaling) and I smoke primetimes occasionally. FF, I guess?

Maybe for the pre-Columbian Cherokee.  A few thousand men living on a piece of land the size of Virginia, toking a little peace pipe now and then to seal a deal.  But once the English came into the picture and got a little taste of the plant, it was a thing of greed.  Let's be honest:  You had entrepreneurs investing their life savings into plantations, soon importing millions of strapping young bucks, all snatched from their West African coastal villages, just to work the fields without compensation and without a choice.  You had monocrops, without rotation, devastating the Atlantic Coastal Plains topsoil.  By the 20th century, using modern chemical physical methods, we find Phillip Morris and Company leaching out every bit of colored compound (cellulose, tannic acid, gallic acids, etc.) in big vats, till there's nothing except a mess of white cellulose pulp, then going back in and delivering careful doses of tannins and nicotine--nicotine in much higher concentrations than would naturally occur in the wild plant, in order to guarantee repeat business!  And, of course, Joe Camel marketing his permanent hack to misspent, leather-clad youth.

Still, I'd agree that smoking is definitely healthier than fascism, no matter how you slice it.

Asshole.

I feel that if smoking marijuana is illegal, then so too should smoking tobacco.

Point proven. :)

Right - not everyone does it, but many (especially younger smokers) do.

Everything biodegrades eventually.  Littering is simply disposing of a waste product improperly.  If you take a crap in the middle of the street, that's technically littering, even though it biodegrades.

I prefer the contrapositive statement.  (or is it the inverse?  I think it's the contrapositive:  If cigarettes are legal, then marijuana should be as well.)

I'm all for smoking being legal, but I don't think you should be allowed to smoke if you have children in your house. I don't care if the research on second hand smoke is unclear, it obviously isn't good to be breathing it in. Not to mention the fact that it drains money away from families.

Is the research really unclear?  Are there studies out there that say that second hand smoke may not be harmful?

There is really no ambiguity about the dangers of second hand smoke, which is why I have trouble reconciling my position on smoking with my personal actions (I readily admit this as a weakness - living in a municipality with a 'voluntary' public smoking ban, I generally attend establishments that allow it, which is unfortunate, as it increases my opportunities to smoke.  Of course I am here referring to smoking outdoors in areas where there are employees and other patrons, as indoor smoking is disgusting not to mention an obvious fire hazard.)  Tobacco is one of the more blatant illustrations of how supposedly 'personal' habits can have a detrimental impact on wider society.

Anyway, I smoke, but I definitely don't litter butts.  What an eyesore.

Yes, that's the contrapositive (spent three months studying that nonsense to get into law school). And yeah, that's probably a much preferable statement. :P