Dear Smokers,
You're a bunch of fucking idiots. By banning smoking we're trying to help you break your addiction to a drug that kills 30-50% of people who use it. Stop whining.
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Or, in a longer form:
OMG SMOKERS NOW STAY AT HOME AND DON'T CREATE JOBS IN PUBS - well, jobs aren't intrinsically valuable, are they? I mean, no-one actually wants a job, right? That's why it's called "work". If people wanted to do it, it would be called "fun" and they wouldn't pay you to do it.
No-one complains now about how we're not all subsistence farmers doing 12-hour days of backbreaking labour to put food on the table, instead we rejoice that automation has saved people from a life of drudgery.
OMG SMOKERS BUY CHEAP BEER FROM THE SUPERMARKETS - how terrible. You mean they're getting a substitute product for substantially less money? Well, that's good. Efficient. It means that they can spend the fucking money they saved on something else, like a Sky subscription or a flatscreen TV. Guess what? That's keeping people in jobs, innit?
OMG BANNING SMOKING STOPS ME DOING WHAT I WANT - what you want is idiotic. Stop it. Look, if you must be physiologically addicted to a drug, at least try something that's a bit less crap than nicotine. At least coke gives you a rush!
OMG BAR STAFF SIGN UP FOR PASSIVE SMOKING - fuck off. Who checks the box that says "yes please, I'd like an early death due to other people who can't stop themselves being disgusting"? It might come as news to you but bar staff make minimum wage. How many of them actually have a real choice, between "taking this job and feeding my kids" and "not", hmm?
11 comments:
As opposed to not smoking, that kills 100% of people who try it, eh?
Dear authoritarian anti-smokers,
Its not your place to tell people how they should live or help them stop doing something you consider to be bad for them (yes, smoking harms your health, but people gain pleasure from it - who are you to say what they should do?)
Just let people be.
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Your other points:
Agree with points 1 and 2.
Point 3: you are stopping people doing what they want - it does not matter whether they are addicted or not or whether you approve, ITS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Point 4:
This is an artifact of the unfree market - in a freed market wage slavery would not be a factor - then people who work in pubs would fully choose to do so.
As it stands, I still believe that this is not the place of government - there are many far more dangerous jobs which people do - you don't ban them, but that's because they're not associated with what you disapprove of.
Just leave people alone. Get off your moral high horse and let people live their own lives - you don't like smoking? Don't do it! Simple. Don't try to force your preferences upon others - its not liberal and is just plain wrong.
The point about bar staff is convincing (although my personal way round it would be to have a class of jobs that didn't count as determining benefit ability - i.e. it'd be legal to employ someone to work in a smoking pub/brothel/etc, but you couldn't lose your dole money by turning such an offer down).
But, assuming you're not religious and therefore don't assume our bodies all belong to God to honour and venerate, where the *fuck* do you get off on telling other people that their lifestyle choices should be banned cos they're stupid? It's their choice (and they save you money by choosing it); what possibly moral basis do you have for denying them it?
It'd be better for me, objectively, if I was working on my current freelance project so I don't annoy my editor and risk missing the deadline, rather than ranting on your blog. Should that be legally compulsory too...?
I thought I followed a link from a liberal aggregate - must have been mistaken!
Live and let live, eh?
"By banning smoking we're trying to help you"
This on "Fortress Freedom".
The only just reason for restricting a person's liberty is to prevent harm to another person; his own good is not a sufficient warrant...
Is the point about bar staff convincing, when the leading authority on epidemiological statistics in this area, Sir Richard Peto, said that it cannot be shown that the smoking ban would alter anybody's health outcomes *unless* they were already smokers who decided to give up.
That's right, the statistical evidence for so called passive smoking affecting anyone else's health does not convince the one time research assistant of the guy who discovered the link between smoking and cancer, Sir Richard Doll.
It may be unpleasant (many jobs are - probably especially minimum wage ones).
We smokers net contribute to the economy - we pay extra tax, and whilst while we are alive we may cause extra money to be spent on health care, in dying earlier we reduce your pension liabilities and longer term health costs.
Coke does nothing for me - a double shot of Hot Lava Java coffee does more, frankly. It costs a lot more than tobacco. It is a waste of good money. And I'm also a diabetic, so I can't really put my dope into high sugar hash brownies now can I?
I don't want your help (or anyone else's for that matter). **Reaches for a Marlboro red**
I presume the "Fortress Freedom" strapline is irony.
I presume the "Fortress Freedom" strapline is irony.
Heart attacks are less likely for non-smokers as compared to the smokers. According to WHO, individuals who quit smoking decrease their risk of CAD one year later by 50 %. If you have quit smoking, for 15 years, your risk of dying from CAD is almost as low as a life time non-smoker. http://www.chantixhome.com/
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