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During the late 1970s, I was in my teens, and I had some rather immature and selfish views on the world.
By that time, I knew that drinking, smoking, and drugs were bad. I was also a health freak, so fatties and even thin couch potatoes were on my hit list as well. I erroneously thought that campaigns to end smoking weren’t enough, and that everybody that engaged in unhealthy lifestyles that fell short of Olympic training should be subjected to intensive measures the likes of films, having workbooks to complete, and even trips to see the real damage all of the aforementioned things do. Then, they should be shown the opposite.
While this nation has come a long way at robbing individuals of Constitutional Rights, we still fall short of blatantly conscripting people into programs designed to make them good little healthy citizens to serve our all might government.
I think it’s a bad idea, and I further think that we should heavily deregulate everything I’ve touched on. People have their own lives to live, and they should feel free to do so.
Moderator cut: Discuss the topic not the poster.
I'm against any further regulations on cigarettes.
The problem is no man is an island. Our (bad) choices affect other people. Smokers wanna be like Christopher Hitchens and develop a mighty esophageal tumour? Who pays for your chemotherapy? Your neighbour, that's who. Same goes for everyone who wants to pour booze down his throat until his liver is cirrhotic.
I would say that you're entitled to your opinion, but by adding the last two words in that sentence, you're attempting to define everyone else's opinion, too. That, I cannot agree with. You are wrong.
I did, until Obama raised the tax on loose cigarette tobacco by over 2,000%, which more than tripled the retail cost. With the stroke of a pen, he effectively eliminated an entire niche of a very large industry.
It's an industry that shouldn't exist in the first place. So-called "rational people" are not so rational as to forgeo the use of deadly and addictive carnicogens. Why?
Nicotine as a prescription drug? Nicotine is one of the deadlier poisons known to man!
The problem is no man is an island. Our (bad) choices affect other people. Smokers wanna be like Christopher Hitchens and develop a mighty esophageal tumour? Who pays for your chemotherapy? Your neighbour, that's who. Same goes for everyone who wants to pour booze down his throat until his liver is cirrhotic.
Who pays for it? The same person who pays for some fat dude's triple bypass...that's who. You can't pick your pet sins. Obesity is causing more health problems at earlier ages and across the entire American population than smoking has even thought of. Fewer people smoke now than ever, yet it is the target of people and a government on a crusade. Yet, a lot of these same people who have a 50/50 chance of being a sedentary gigantosaur will scream oppression when they hear Michelle Obama suggesting that the government go after fat foods and sugary sodas. Hypocrisy.
Hey wanna die of stroke, disease or cancer? Go for it, I say. BTW, it takes smoking a lot longer to do that than being overweight and sedentary will. But if there are people who insist on having their government destroy one pet sin, they better be prepared for the bureaucrats to sooner or later go after their pet sin. Funny how people in this country are always ready for the government to go after something they don't like, but when the same government comes after one of their things, well, that's just tyranny!!!!
I say it again...all or nothing!
Last edited by Fullback32; 08-21-2011 at 09:36 PM..
What are your thoughts on this? I think that forcing a company to display graphic pictures on there packaging is wrong. Yes cigarettes are bad for you they can cause cancer. So is a lot of other things. Some say that the Cigarette Companies have it coming. The lied and added things to their products to addict people to them. Ok. What about chip makers, makers of fast food products and the like? They add sugars, salts, other chemicals to make their product taste better than if it was just natural. The FDA is over stepping a touch on this one.
Graphic images have been on cigarette packets in Australia for around a decade.
I believe that there was a sharp influx of smokers contacting the quit line to quit once these ads (on TV as well as images on packets)
I also believe that the number of smokers in Australia has been decreasing.
I know nothing about this, but why cant they make cig's without the poisons? They smoked in the old days without them, why not now? Another poster mentioned raw loose tobacco being sold, so I assume folks roll their own safer cig.s...it seems like a smart company would make them and maybe some of this War on smoking could calm down. I think this country has bigger fights to engage in than smokers.
Ah, the Nanny State rears its ugly head. In other words, "We, the State, know better than you how to live your life. Therefore we are going to take all personal responsibility out of your hands. While we're at it, we're going to also ban the following items...
Alcohol
Beef, chicken, and pork
Airplane glue
Cough syrup
Pornography
Casinos, lotteries, and playing cards
Chocolate
What's more, we're going to require the following of the citizenry:
Morning calisthenics
The reading of an improving book once a week
Attendance at weekly meetings that encourage you to live better lives
Filling out weekly diet reports so that we can monitor your health
Hey, I don't smoke. And I don't want to smell cigarette smoke in my office, an elevator, a movie theater or a restaurant. But if somebody wants to fire up in their own home or vehicle or open area, it's just not my damned business. And it's not yours, either.
What is wrong with being made aware of what you're putting in your body?
So you're okay with some laws, that protect your health but not of others that are to make one aware of the damage they're potentially doing?
I don't believe smoking is outlawed in personal space.
What is wrong with being made aware of what you're putting in your body?
So you're okay with some laws, that protect your health but not of others that are to make one aware of the damage they're potentially doing?
I don't believe smoking is outlawed in personal space.
The operative word is awareness. I have no problem at all with government making me aware of potential risks. I have a big problem with the government deciding what is good for me and banning the rest.
I’ve got to ask this of non-smokers: What part don’t you think smokers aren’t getting? No add campaign, packaging, and additional information will stop people that smoke from smoking.
As a small boy in the early 70s, I remember numerous clips from 1940s/1950s films that had lines of script telling about the ills of cigarette smoking. It’s common knowledge that cigarette smoking is bad for one’s health. Moreover, during the 70s, I remember seeing photos of what drinking and cigarettes did to the body during biology class.
The bottom line is that people that smoke want to smoke. It’s their right to smoke just as it’s your right to abstain. When will anti-smokers realize that forcing their beliefs on other people is very wrong?
I’ve got to ask this of non-smokers: What part don’t you think smokers aren’t getting? No add campaign, packaging, and additional information will stop people that smoke from smoking.
As a small boy in the early 70s, I remember numerous clips from 1940s/1950s films that had lines of script telling about the ills of cigarette smoking. It’s common knowledge that cigarette smoking is bad for one’s health. Moreover, during the 70s, I remember seeing photos of what drinking and cigarettes did to the body during biology class.
The bottom line is that people that smoke want to smoke. It’s their right to smoke just as it’s your right to abstain. When will anti-smokers realize that forcing their beliefs on other people is very wrong?
I feel urged to turn the question back onto the smokers, what is it they don't understand?
Though stopping people from smoking, which costs the community millions every year, is an amiable goal, I believe the primary goal of ramping up the campaigns against smoking is predominantly to stop others, mostly teenagers and kids, from beginning.
As much as the knowledge that smoking is bad for your health is there, just like the knowledge that a high fat, high sugar diet is very dangerous, people disregard it and "plays down" the danger, "it can't be that bad", "I smoke but at least I work out", "others might get it but my grandma smoked and she was fine" etc.
What campaigns as this do is instead of showing you text that warns against smoking (easily admissible as propaganda), it shows pictures of the actual result. It might not stop all that many smokers from beginning, but hopefully (and it's had promising results elsewhere) it might deter non smokers from picking up the habit, and I don't think I've ever met a smoker that doesn't think it's foolish to pick up the habit.
In any case, adding pictures on the cigarette packs does not force anyone to stop smoking, smokers are free to buy cigarettes when they please, the packaging will simply be different, if the smoker is upset by the photo, put a piece of duct tape over it or move the cigarettes into a different holder, surely it's worth the extra 30 seconds that will take, if it keeps future generations from killing themselves and costing society so many millions?
Some argue that smokers are unfairly singled out, and to an extent I can agree with that. Not nearly enough is done to fight obesity and unhealthy eating for instance, but to me that only means that the focus on that should increase, not that the focus on cigarettes should diminish.
As for the last part of your post, When will anti-smokers realize that forcing their beliefs on other people is very wrong?
In any form of democracy, there will always be an element of force, though I don't think that's the ideal word to use. Majority rule always means that there's a minority that have opinions or legislation "forced" upon them, the remedy for that is elections, if a large enough group of people reject or oppose what's being done, there will be change through elections.
As an example, you might feel forced to live with legislation or the will of people like me, when it comes to smoking, but I'm sure there are instances where you agree with something I feel "forced" to live under as well, it's both of ours responsibility as members of a society to engage in what be believe to be the best and the right way of doing things.
Look i am all for it, I have a great reason for the way i think, My father was a grade a ass, i complained about the smoke in the house and the smell and that it hurt my throat and he slapped me put it between my lips and told me to inhale and then i could breath, strange story huh, but guess what it is true. He did that too me when i was seven and i smoked for 28 yrs and just quite last november and i still have problems breathing. There are too many uneducated and ignorant people in this country that need pitures like that to understand that they kill. I am dying because of those damm things. I have NHL and i regreat ever smoking, but my parents smoked in my face , while she was pregant with me and five of my half siblings are dead from lung cancer , my father died of it, grandad, grandma and three uncles, three aunts and one stupid friend of my dads.I can say that maybe just maybe it will change some minds out there. They are not lying when they say it kills. My hole damm family was smokers and now there is only three of us left. I regret everyday i wake up that i let my dad do that too me. I would have gotten the cancer anyway just from breathing air in that house. Let them put the new lables on and lets see how many people put them down for good. let them try to make up for there lies and deceit after all those year. . My grandfather could not read or write , he was just another farmer from the depression that didn't know anything and if a piture could of told him how bad it was maybe he would not of suffered the horrible , painful death he did, his wife my grandmother i never got to meet because she died at 39 yrs old in 1950 with cancer. So tell me what am i too say. Let us see if it will work and maybe it will help with bringing down the cost of insurance because less people will smoke.
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