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Rob Philpott wrote: f you want to smoke, that's your business and not for others to tell you whether you can or can't (as long as you do it such that if affects no-one else),
... provided you sign a waiver that you will not be treated in any hospital paid by my tax dollars by any doctor affiliated with a public health system funded by me.
In general, I see it as a continuum between a society that has very few rules and provides very few services and a society with lots of rules but also lots of services. Different cultures sit/stood in different places going from the Old Testament where the 10 commandments were quite enough but, if something bad happened to you, you had only your immediate family to count on. Nowadays in complicated social-democratic countries with tons of rules there are also myriad support systems from social services to ambulances, police, coast guard and whatnot.
Unfortunately you cannot have one without the other: if you want to be free to do whatever you want, don't ask for public services to come help you when things go south. Looks like most people would rather have a social safety net and are willing to accept certain limitations in their lifestyle (like not smoking in public places). As most social compromises, this is a pendulum that might well swing the other way.
Mircea
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I mostly agree with view 1, but maybe view 2 is necessary for some people. E.g. my neighbour will smoke even when he's sick and I hear him nearly coughing his lungs out every day. I understand it's an addiction and maybe some people need to be forced to quit, for their own health.
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This is what smokers get to look forward too: Emphysema[^].
As a lifetime asthmatic, I can tell you, from experience, that not being able to breathe is no fun at all. So my choice is not to breathe second hand smoke. That is my personal right. I am not interested in emphysema on top of my asthma.
Graeme
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks one time, but I fear the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times!" - Bruce Lee
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There's bad habits ... and then there are enablers of bad habits; creating addictions.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Get reminded of this person.
He outlived all the doctors who advised him to quit smoking.
Looks like one in a billion possibility, though.
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 Yeah, you have to love the world's oldest man spends his days 'eating and smoking'!
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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My wife is allergic to cigarette and cigar smoke. She does her best to avoid smokers as a result and we won't go places where we have reason to believe there will be smokers, but when someone lights up in areas that are posted as no smoking they are now impacting her health.
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Rob Philpott wrote: They were also free to use physical violence in the case of bad behaviour
Corporal punishment in schools is still legal in the United States. Especially in private schools.
United Kingdom fully outlawed it in 1997.
Rob Philpott wrote: like the teachers who used to smoke in my classrooms
Sex also should not be banned. But that shouldn't be happening in the classroom either.
Rob Philpott wrote: The problem is, to my mind, these mutually exclusive ideas about smoking are both valid and worth defending to the hilt,
Where I am night clubs
1. Allow drinking alcohol.
2. Don't allow marijuana.
3. Don't allow tobacco.
4. Don't allow sex.
5. Don't allow heroin.
6. Don't allow one to beat the wife.
Of those 4 out of the 6 are allowed when one is at home.
Might note that in the past the last was at least tolerated at home.
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If people want to smoke and they do it out of harms way to others, that is fine with me.
On the other hand, smokers should not be covered by insurance for any illness that is a result of their smoking, which such costs are passed on to non-smokers such as myself.
Smoking is a deadly habit in which the carcinogens attack every organ in the body. Back in the days when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, smoking was far more prevalent but not as dangerous since it wasn't until a little later when cigarette companies began filling their cigarettes with all sorts of chemicals making them far more addictive and dangerous to one's health. This is not to say that smoking wasn't dangerous but back then many men died more from heart attacks from eating too much meat and drinking than cancer.
One would think that an intelligent society would ban such substances as tobacco use.
But most societies on Earth have yet to reach a level of intelligence where people do not need to indulge in such dangerous habits...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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My first experiment with smoking was cough cough not so smooth
A pack of Cigarettes was 0.65 cents and a candy bar was 0.05 cents to 0.10 cents
either way I could have 6 to 10 candy bars it was a no brainier.
Fast forward to my job working for a pharmaceutical company CIBA
The company had this bright idea each rep should spend a day with a physician.
The fellow I choose said meet me at the hospital at 6 AM Great
running late breakfast was a doughnut and glass of milk.
My Physician explained we were going to observe a autopsy on a patient who had died last night
did I have any issues NOPE.
This patient had been a smoker and a coal miner YEP Black Lung
When they removed the one lung it was the size of a small child's hand
and the other lung was intact and much larger.
Besides almost loosing my breakfast I knew I was never going to work in a coal mine
and smoking was never ever going to be a part of my life
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I saw all that and more after I graduated high school in 1968 and attended a summer seminar in cancer research...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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There is a problem between these 1 and 2: "(as long as you do it such that if affects no-one else)". Many smokers do not realize how their smoke affects others.
1. I used to work in an office outside of which was a smoking area. The smoke was drawn in through two sets of doors then into my office, or somehow came in through my closed window or gaps in the outside brickwork.
2. Smoking causes illness, increasing the insurance premiums for all of us to treat those expensive to treat illnesses.
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Personal responsibility, the "Why can't I do what I want if I don't harm anyone" argument was never a thing. The personal responsibility argument is all about doing something destructive, self-destructive or foolish. No one ever deployed the personal responsibility argument in favor of doing something positive. No one ever said "Why can't I cure cancer as long as I don't harm anyone. This asymmetry ought to be the first clue that the argument is fallacious.
The personal responsibility argument is all about defining "harm" narrowly to avoid inconvenient costs. The smoker who says he isn't hurting anyone doesn't count the harm to himself, doesn't consider the negative health effects of his smoke-cloud, doesn't think of his dependents left alone when he dies.
If you think human beings are lonely apex predators, like lions, then it's understandable why you'd want to leave the weakest lions to choke to death on their smoke. But many people regard genus homo as a social animal. We are, by this definition, our brothers' keepers. Society has an interest in helping a smoker to quit for the same reason they would stop a depressed person from killing themselves or stop a drug addict from shooting up. We're just better when we don't throw lives away. Plus there are those externalized costs of smoking (or suicide, or drug use) which is why we are better when lives are preserved.
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I have to say I thought todays answer was six letters - anyone agree ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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It looks odd, but it's right at 5.
You can use 6, but frankly that looks even odder! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Depends if you drink whisky or whiskey.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Not English speakers. 
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Same... Wasn't even sure it was a real word when I tried it.
Jeremy Falcon
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Easy one for a Monday
Support loser ? (6)
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I think you are up tomorrow - I still got nothing!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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As I set one yesterday ( Devon cider  ) will tomorrow count as my third strike ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Nah, that one doesn't count!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Peanuts: Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?
No, never. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Write a book about it
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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