This is the answer to all our problems.

Why can't everyone that uses smoked tobacco (cigarettes, pipes, cigars) switch to snuff or chewing tobacco?

This way, both sides get what they want. You retain your right to tobacco; I retain air free from secondhand smoke.

This way, I maintain my stance that I don't care about your health, just my own. And those that use the product have no beef with me (nor should they with anyone else).

I'd stop bitching about smoking bans because I won't get lung cancer from sitting next to it (not even a .00000001% chance).

How bout it, folks?

quote:

Originally posted by NicoNazi:
This is the answer to all our problems.

Why can't everyone that uses smoked tobacco (cigarettes, pipes, cigars) switch to snuff or chewing tobacco?

I tried it. Didn't like it. There wasn't any smoke.

Here's a better solution: If you don't like tobacco smoke, don't go where there is tobacco smoke. Very simple. I could get behind a law that mandates that all privately-owned business establishments post a sign at their entrance saying whether or not smoking is permitted inside. THAT would be fair to everyone and permit everyone to have free choice and permit business owners to set their own smoking policies inside their own establishments.

As for your chances of getting lung cancer from social settings (restaurants, bars, casinos, e.g.), they are nil. The figure you cite above is roughly the absolute risk for someone who lives his or her entire adult life with a smoking spouse--and that's according to the higher estimates and doesn't include those that show no risk. The home is the source of greatest exposure.

So you mean that to suit your own personal preferences ALL restaurant, bar, club, and casino owners should be prohibited from permitting smoking in their establishments--even if they are establishments where you never have and never will set foot? Wow.

Squeezer, I love you, man!

I can't see NicoNazi being happy very long if all smokers switched to chew and returned to the good old days. I can hear him complaining about being "compelled" to be around all those nasty spittoons. He would be the first person ... passing out Camel's.]


"How we came to the 'us against phlegm' situation

"The World Series! Baseball fans know what that means: a showcase for top-notch pitching, fielding and batting.

Oh, and there's one more skill. The Fall Classic, which began Saturday, is the nation's foremost display of a habit that was once as American as Mom, apple pie and the split-finger fastball, but is now regarded as a vulgar, unhygienic, bad habit.

Spitting ain't what it used to be.

It's no longer a national obsession. A century ago, Oscar Wilde could aim his dry wit at this wet subject. "America," he snipped, "is one long expectoration."

He was joking. Right?

"I remember in my youth a lot of spitting on the New York subways," said Alma Koch, a public health professor at SDSU who spent her childhood in the Manhattan of the 1940s. "I think people did it as a matter of course, in the streets or on the subway."

Western cities were even more generously stocked with spittoons and spit-ees. Despite a tough anti-spitting ordinance, San Diego police found many scofflaws in a 1916 sweep. "The sidewalks," an enforcer noted, "had become a depository for tobacco users as well as those persons affected with T.B. and other diseases of the throat and lungs."

Why so many Americans stopped hawking and hoicking is a tale of epidemics, ambition and pre-rolled smokes. One of the great successes of the nation's public health agencies, this victory was so complete and one-sided that it is almost forgotten.

But if that campaign had not been fought and won, flu seasons would be even deadlier than they are today. "Influenza," Koch noted, "can be spread by droplets."

Outside of the national pastime, in the United States spitting is no longer a socially acceptable pastime. It's decline began in the mid-19th century, when scientists first slipped sputum samples under a microscope and found them rich in bacteria. By 1873, roughly 130 cities had enacted laws prohibiting public spitting. Many more followed a decade later, when a German biologist found TB in an infected patient's phlegm.

Worse, the tuberculosis bacilli is hardy, able to survive in sunlight for two hours and in dried sputum for six to eight months.
"Saliva is not a problem," said Mary Jo Clark, professor of community health nursing at the University of San Diego. "Coughing, hacking, spitting up is a problem."

During the TB epidemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though, all moisture was suspect. Spittoons were adopted as public health devices, some filled with antibacterial fluids.

Cuspidors were common in saloons and many public buildings. Victor Walsh, a historian at Old Town State Historic Parks, admits that no one has done the definitive study on this topic. (But you can imagine the titles: "Sagebrush Sprayers," "The Good, the Bad and the Juicy," "The Cuspidor Kid.") But he believes that spittoons were common in courthouses, jails and even in Old Town's tiendas.

Walsh's guess is based on the fact that currency was scarce on the frontier. In many markets, buyers and sellers bartered. Often, one or both parties was chewing tobacco.

"They could be in there for quite a long time," Walsh noted.

Spittoons were considered a polite alternative to splashing tobacco juice at your feet – or someone else's. As one popular turn-of-the-century barroom sign advised:
"If you expect to rate as a gentleman,
"Do not expectorate on the floor."
Branded as boorish and low-class, spitting was abandoned by the well-bred and the ambitious. "A lot of people were trying to move into polite society," said SDSU's Alma Koch. "The immigration of the 19th century was on the wane; World War I was still in the future. People were trying to be more upwardly mobile."

In 1913, class-conscious tobacco users embraced Camel, the first mass-produced, pre-rolled blended cigarette. Chewing tobacco, which the National Cancer Institute estimates represented almost 55 percent of all U.S. tobacco sales in 1890, has never recovered.

Shunned by social climbers, spitting's disreputable aura has made it irresistible to rebels. In the 1970s, the Sex Pistols and other punk bands often performed in a mist of their fans' making. Joe Strummer, the Clash's lead singer, blamed a case of hepatitis on a fan's free-flowing, bacteria-laden stream.

Punkers weren't the first to literally spit out a social/political statement. JoAnn Brown, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, notes that 19th century anti-spitting posters showed health inspectors shielding white children from "germs" that resembled swarthy immigrants.

But fears that flu, TB and other diseases are broadcast by flying spittle are not limited to any one racial or ethnic group. Hong Kong, trying to halt the outbreak of new viruses such as SARS, fines offenders $600 "per spit." In India, where chewing tobacco and pan masala – a mixture of tobacco and betel leaf – are popular, Rotary International and the national railways now promote a nontobacco chew.
The Indian campaign's charming title: "Safer and Healthier Alternatives in Oral Gratification."

While spitting's high-water mark came more than 100 years ago, this is still a universal experience. We all seek oral gratification – or, conversely, to expel from our mouths some ungratifying substance.

"It's part of the culture," said Peter Post, the great-grandson of manners expert Emily Post. "And that is part of the problem."

SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE

This message has been edited. Last edited by: John L,

John, thank you for the story.

Folks could do what they do now... carry an empty beer can to spit into. None of the chew tobacco users I know object to carrying it.

quote:

Originally posted by NicoNazi:
Folks could do what they do now... carry an empty beer can to spit into. None of the chew tobacco users I know object to carrying it.

They'd be fined for carrying an "open container" in public. That would be considered advertising by the evil alcohol industry to children in order to create 5000 more alcoholics daily to replace those lost by an industry that regularly kills its customers.

How am I doing on reciting anti-everything propaganda?

Oh, I forgot. Money needs to be "donated" by the industry and used to conduct more of our research and fund anti-alcohol industry and anti-alcoholic marketing campaigns.

I shouldn't have to smell alcohol everywhere I go in public.

well.......

Then carry an empty can of Pepsi, bottled water, or turpentine- that isn't the point.

Find me an Anti that is against seeing a can of Pepsi with spit in it. Yeah, it's gross, but it's also accommodation.

note: A much healthier accomodation than SHS (or the .0000000001% chance of getting it per Wanda).

quote:

Yeah, it's gross, but it's also accommodation.

Thanks, you have just proven once and for all that you can't be either Larry or Ginny. That word "accommodation" isn't in their vocabulary. They are both 100% control freaks.

Now that said, why can't you be accommodating towards smokers. After all, at least 20% of the population over smokes. If there were five bars in your home town, why would you need an all inclusive ban?

quote:

Originally posted by lockjaw02:
Now that said, why can't you be accommodating towards smokers. After all, at least 20% of the population over smokes. If there were five bars in your home town, why would you need an all inclusive ban?

I feel smokers ARE accommodated- in a way that under-accommodates, if that is a word, the other 80% of the population.

If there were 5 bars in my town, and let's say 2 offered completely smoke free amenities, the others would most likely draw more money.

Should we force bar owners to decide between their health (and the health of their employees and patrons) or profits?

quote:

If there were 5 bars in my town, and let's say 2 offered completely smoke free amenities, the others would most likely draw more money.

That kind of statement is not sanctioned by the anti-smoker hierarchy. It's only allowed to be said that bans are good for business and increase profits for all excepted decrepit cess pits that were on the brink of bankruptcy anyway.

Wow, there's hope for you yet.

quote:

Originally posted by lockjaw02:
Wow, there's hope for you yet.

Maybe so! You might be the only one to believe it here, though.

Let's just say that I don't hold ANY collection of statistics close to my heart...every person (or person financing the study) has some type of foregone conclusion in mind.

I still do wonder how the bars' bottom lines are affected once they all have to go smoke free. Where would all the barflies go? Smoke alone at home??

Nah.

quote:

Originally posted by NicoNazi:
If there were 5 bars in my town, and let's say 2 offered completely smoke free amenities, the others would most likely draw more money.

Should we force bar owners to decide between their health (and the health of their employees and patrons) or profits?

Force them? No. Leave it up to them? Yes.

I think you and Lockjaw are using the wrong percentage. Far more bar patrons smoke than the population in general.

"Professor Sir Richard Doll, the first scientist to publish research that suggested a correlation between lung cancer and primary smoking, commented: 'The effects of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me."

NicoNazi, take a hint from the scientist that started it all ... enjoy your life, and quit worrying about a risk with a bunch of zero's in front of it.

I didn't realize you were married to a smoker, NicoNazi. That's where the very low absolute risk figure (and that's only if you accept the notion that ETS exposure at high and prolonged levels carries any risk at all) pertains, not to social exposure.

If you're really so very, very afraid of a bit of tobacco smoke, you shouldn't go where there IS tobacco smoke.

And it's your contention that there can't exist even one bar or restaurant in your town that permits smoking because that one bar or restaurant will draw off too much business from all the other bars/restaurants, right? Then it must be true that most non-smokers don't really give a crap about ETS, since there are so many of them and they could ALL choose to go only to non-smoking venues.

After all, I don't demand that privately-owned businesses all permit me to smoke and don't advocate a law that would FORCE them to permit smoking. I recognize the business owner's right to prohibit smoking if he or she chooses. It's then my choice not to patronize that business if I don't like it. That's the rational approach.

quote:

I still do wonder how the bars' bottom lines are affected once they all have to go smoke free. Where would all the barflies go? Smoke alone at home??

Nah.

Yah. That's exactly where everyone is going around our area. Not alone though. They are building extensive "Smoke-Easy's" in their garages, basements and barns. Quite hi-tech, with video games, pool tables, large screen TV's, pot luck suppers, create a new drink contests and so on.

NY figures have shown beer consumption down, alcohol sales up. They don't tell you alcohol sales are lumped together with those from restuarant, bars, and outlet stores. The outlet stores have had the biggest increase. They like to quote how hotels are still at full capacity while ignoring the fact that many hotels have lowered the amount of rooms they have available (making many into rental apartments). The ban has done nothing but harm in NY state.

and....who are you to say who should have profits lowered!!!! These are private property owners trying to make a living (many without employees) and raise their families. Would you like a 50% cut in your yearly income?

quote:

Originally posted by Wanda Hamilton:
Squeezer, I love you, man!

Ummm, you probably say that to all the guys. TRAMP!

quote:

Originally posted by NicoNazi:
Maybe so! You might be the only one to believe it here, though.

Let's just say that I don't hold ANY collection of statistics close to my heart...every person (or person financing the study) has some type of foregone conclusion in mind.

Well, consider me an optimist. I don't think you do hold a particular collection of statistics close to your heart. I do think you've been sitting in the jury box of public opinion and have been hearing the prosecution's case blaring for years out of every mainstream media outlet and you just haven't been exposed to the other side for consideration yet.

quote:

I still do wonder how the bars' bottom lines are affected once they all have to go smoke free. Where would all the barflies go? Smoke alone at home??

Nah.

Well, you'll just have to go to a state with a ban to find out. Lizzie already gave you a good synopsis of most of what's happening in New York. There's more however. I was recently up there and stopped in a small town bar where I grew up that I used to hang out in over twenty years ago. Back then, the bar used to be packed with at least some 40 to 50 regulars floating in and out on a typical Friday night. This particular Friday night, there were about eight people were out in front smoking (including the bartender and myself) and one person left inside at the bar. We couldn't bring our drinks out, so we all drank a lot less. Normally we'd be inside shooting pool, smoking and drinking, but the ban ended that.

I was there until closing and didn't see more than a total of 15 people the entire night. The owner told me that business dropped over 65% in the first month after the ban was imposed and recovered to only being down some 50% when I stopped in that evening. After more than 25 years in the same location, he doesn't know how much longer he can hang on. BTW, the population of the town has increased, but there was one less bar in town than there were twenty-five years ago and all were doing less business.

So some are staying home and hanging out with friends in speakeasies as Lizzie pointed out. Some of us barflies do continue to go out, but there are fewer of us and we're not as lucrative customers anymore since being forced outside. This scenario is being played out in small towns all across the state.

quote:

Originally posted by lockjaw02:
I do think you've been sitting in the jury box of public opinion and have been hearing the prosecution's case blaring for years out of every mainstream media outlet and you just haven't been exposed to the other side for consideration yet.

L-J, I appreciate the way you talk with me vs. the method used by many of the others here. I am more inclined to actually read a post if the first 3 words aren't a personal insult directed at myself (Redliner & squeezer could learn much about public discourse from LJ).

Now, I'd like to share something. I am one of the few (yet very proud) of the people committed to muting virtually everything I see on TV. Commercials are rarely seen- and never heard. I don't listen to commercial radio anymore and pop-ups are blocked via Zone Alarm on the net (thank you Al Gore).

With that, you'd have to be a genius to get a message across to me via popular media. I couldn't even tell you a single detail about this BTK fella, how much Kirsti Alley weighs, or the latest in the Kobe Bryant crap.

I rely very heavily on my own information- specifically smoking. When I go to a bar and leave feeling nauseous without taking a sip of booze, something's wrong with the air!

When I heard that a ban could get voted down due to all sorts of potential business closings or thwarted civil right accounts, I then sought out arguments from both sides of the coin. I find it is hard to swallow MOST of the stuff coming from the pro-tobby crowd!

quote:

Originally posted by NicoNazi:

L-J, I appreciate the way you talk with me vs. the method used by many of the others here. I am more inclined to actually read a post if the first 3 words aren't a personal insult directed at myself (Redliner & squeezer could learn much about public discourse from LJ).[/QUOTE]

In your first post here you wrote:

Greetings folks.

The MN House and Senate are both poised to vote on a comprehensive ban on all smoking within public buildings.

Why should this ban fail?
Will all our bars go out of business?
Where will the bowlers and bingo players go?

Nick wrote:
When CA became the first state to enact such a ban, I figured well, its CA, they're a bit freakish out there and it never gets that cold...If the ban passes in MN - which Im sure it is likely to do, given the effort and $$$ anti lobbying groups like the ACS, ALF, AHA etc., are pouring into these bans and the general stupidity and ignorance of politicians and the media. I wonder how many bar owners are going to force their customers into -40 temperatures during the MN winter to light up?

You wrote:
I think the tobacco industry itself has more to lose than bar owners.

"Smoking bans are the biggest challenge we have ever faced. Quit rate goes from 5% to 21% when smokers work in nonsmoking environments." (Handwritten Philip Morris 1994 memo ETS World Conference Bates Number 2054893642)

Didn't tobacco lobbyists argue that if airlines, buses, and subways went smokefree, smokers would quit using them too?

Something doesn't wash here, folks.


I wrote:
What doesn't wash? That you can pollute the public air with planes, trains, and automobiles, but you can't pollute the air inside a PRIVATE business with the owner's permission? Yeah, that doesn't wash.

As far as business losses go, they're real. Too many to list.



You wrote:
I think you mean "That wewe can pollute the public air with planes, etc...
That has nothing to do with an indoor smoking ban. If you are a true environmentalist, you would want to ban all automobiles, planes, trains, buses, and smoking!!

I lived in California for twenty years. I have been back in Minnesota for six now. I must tell you that nothing but good came of California's No Smoking laws. Businesses made more money because more people went out to eat since they didn't have to put up with other people's smoke.

Everyone that I knew quit smoking! When I left California I no longer had a single friend that smoked. Even Ruth who was 72 and had smoked for 50 some years quit. Rather than try to smoke around the laws, people quit and they were healthier for it.

Bring on the No Smoking laws, we all will benefit. [Emphasis mine]

Redliner wrote:
In Nazi Germany, the Government tried to convince the public that they would live in a Healthier Environment if everyone would just turn in Jews. It was amazing, but even 72 year old "Christian" women turned them over, rather then try to protect them from the law

Funny, when the Government pokes it's nose into where it doesn't belong, how these things smell alike.


You wrote:
Is this some sort of twisted cult? Are you really this brainwashed?

Someone, please tell me what 72 year old German women turning Jews over to the SS has to do with an indoor smoking ban?!?!?!?!?

I joined this site to try and gain perspective from the pro-smoker camp.
What I'm hearing from some folks is just ridiculous.


Redliner wrote: Am I brainwashed. What? You looking in the mirror when you posted?

You joined this site to gain perspective? What kind of crap is that?

"(Redliner & squeezer could learn much about public discourse from LJ)"

Yeah, Redliner and I could learn a lot. Like...you're a liar?

Squeezer:

In a different post tonight I wrote an example that was meant to show how differently people can think given a situation:

The example was a Man who buys a ladder to paint a house. The ladder has a warning sign on it that says that, if the sign is ignored, injury could occur.

The man ignored the sign and was injured.

You and I, if we were that man would blame nobody but ourselve's, An anti would blame the ladder company.

It does not get any plainer then this simple fact.

Self determination and Self relience are dying concepts these days.

In a debate in which everyone claims to have the facts straight, this is the saddest of them all.