= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't smoke, but I rather like a touch of freedom and non-persecution to go with my broccoli. 
about someone doing something nice for another.
Lovely gesture.
In another century houses has "smoking rooms". 
As a smoker, I've never felt or seen that... or even pretended to out of a sense of duty to melodrama. 
The only place I have ever seen real hatred of smokers is DU.. The vitriol on here gets crazy sometimes. But out in the real world I am careful that my habit doesn't bother anyone else and I almost never have any problems..
The only place I ever have issues is when I'm on a loading dock. You stand there with half a dozen 18 wheelers running, 4 or 5 forklifts spewing propane and man if you try to smoke the dockmaster will likely pull your head off for ruining his health...
I read it in his bio. He wanted to do two things when he arrived here in Washington -- get Americans to quit smoking and to quit drinking. He was pretty successful with getting a start on the first, on the second -- not so much. Apparently, the liquor lobby has a lot more influence than the tobacco lobby.
So with this slight background in mind, whenever someone criticizes you for smoking, just tell them you don't inhale.
Sam
There are people who are targets of hate. Entire groups of people who are abused, assaulted, violated, and maligned. men and women who have been murdered, been beaten, mutilated, and jailed simply because they are members of these groups and no other reason. Entire communities who have been driven from their homes on the basis of hatred against them, and who can't even turn to the law becuase the law is set against them as well.
For HockeyMom, or Th1onein, or whoever else, to claim that their smoking habit places them in this category, much less supplants these victims of hatred ("we're the new target of hate!"
is in fact an effort to belittle and lessen the very real discrimination and hatred directed at numerous groups in the country and around the world. There's a poster claiming smokers are treated worse than lepers, for fuck's sake, when was the last time smokers were torn from their families and communities and thrown onto a deserted island to suffer and die alone? And why are we comparing a disease of privilege and choice, to a disease tied to poverty that no one chooses, anyway?
So yes, I am angry that a number of douchebags are pretending to be Anne Frank or Solomon Northup or Leonard Peltier or something, because they can't light up in someone else's place of business.
I asked for pasta with it. Tiramisu and Espresso with Sambucca for dessert.
And I hope you took your espresso to the comfortable patio for a postprandial smoke.
With all the other diseases there is still a genetic factor that will vary the risk.
There is always more risk than non-smoking.
Quality of life, at least in my opinion, is more important than length of life (although I'd like to live a long life of quality!)
That said, if one gets much enjoyment from something such as smoking, they have to weigh this in the quality of life equation, and it is different for each person.
A higher risk than smoking, obesity, etc..is stress.
but that would be another topic
and I thank myself every day for giving up cigarettes.
Thank you for sharing the positive benefits of being an ex-smoker. Maybe it won't help this poster, but it could resonate with somebody else and trigger a new kind of craving -- the craving to improve their health.
and "house parties" (around here anyway) are now back in vogue.. Many people (smokers) who used to waste money at bars for sporting events, now order them on tv and have BYOB get-togethers..
Now, if we could only get congress/municipal/state legislatures to get heavy with big-time polluters ....cars/trucks/factories
I didn't know you had posted this when I posted my missive below!
BTW, I'm wearing an orange Tennessee sweatshirt at the moment.
country that allow smoking in Over 21 establishments. My state is one of them.
And business DID drop for restaurants and other establishments that no longer could allow smoking. Before the ban, many people would stay at the restaurants after dinner and drink and smoke at the bar. After the ban, patrons moved to Over 21 clubs where they could smoke, so the restaurant missed out on all that high-dollar alcohol revenue. So, yes, it did happen. I can no longer find the article since it was published back in 2008, but it did happen. It wasn't bullshit and many restaurants opted to go "Over 21" on the weekends to side-step the law.
The most popular bars here are also those that allow smoking.
The reason "bars are still packed" in other parts of the country is, quite simply, that people still drink, BUT, if most of the rest of the country had options that a handful of states do regarding whether the OWNER wants to allow smoking or not in Over 21 clubs, I'm willing to bet that the smoking ones would be more popular, as they are here.
In fact, a quick search of local nightclubs who DO NOT allow smoking netted only two, plus a comedy club and, LOL, the local strip joint.
You're so mad you forgot how to read.
Like I said, slave to the southern Republican tobacco executives. Sad, really.
You're owned.
Ah the memories: my parents would flip their still-smoldering butts out the car windows, and at night they'd leave a pretty trail of red-gold sparks as they flew away down the freeway. They were polite: unlike some, they always ground out their butts on the floor or sidewalk when shopping in town, instead of leaving them still smoldering.
on smoking related illnesses, by such methods as withholding correct prescriptions from babies and falsifying death certificates.
Too many nannies out there anyway - not enough nice. And nice, respectful of others circumstances and experiences, will change more behavior than judgmental ever will.
Just an aside from someone who smoked cigs for 42 years, I recently shelled out $75 for an e-cig (ego-cc from cignot.com, and some juice, though there are a LOT of choices out there. I have just learned to trust the women who run that site).
At first it didn't seem to be all that different, but I found that I had gotten too little nicotine in the e-juice. Went into another store where they sold me tobacco flavored 36 mg strength in a 30 ml bottle, and I mixed that with some Mango flavored 24 mg).
After that my pack laid on the table for a week, never even thought about it.
So I got a safer alternative and have ended the practice of sucking on carbon monoxide and the tars, and got a lower temp for the chemical that is in there. It is in a suspension of vegetable glycerin (kinda like the oil we cook with) and propylene glycol, which is in cosmetics food, is given you by your doctor to drink b4 a colonoscopy (shudder <G>
. It's also used as pet-safe anti-freeze, so it is in the exhaust that many cars spew out into the air anyway (though most use the more harmful ethylene glycol and spew that out instead. I have already found that I can taper down the amount of nicotine, so I have a lcear path ahead.
Back in the early years b4 all the anti-smoking people decided that being jack-booted thugs about the whole thing was the proper way to address it, there was a lot of talk about finding safer alternatives, and that has been proposed by everyone from the American Cancer Society to Surgeon Generals. But a lot of people would rather see people die than start changing what they can, so we don't hear about it as much.
Good article here that addresses some of that - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/opinion/the-case-for-tolerating-e-cigarettes.html?_r=0
(Phooey on 'em, btw. It's about you, and they really, really don't care about anyone but themselves anyway. All that "it's about you, it's about the children, it's about..." junk is just a dodge. For the vast majority of them it's about there own ego that they care about the most).
In any event, I know you didn't ask, but it has been my experience that many smokers try and fail to quit (they don't tell you just how bad the rates are for the various programs - people making too much money). This is just something to tuck away in your thinking if you decide that you want to do something different.
Thank you for the post.
Never mind eating meat, using batteries, electronics, plastics, etc, etc, etc.
you and Maria can get a daily double special price on coffins. And for the record, nobody cares if you choose to kill yourself smoking. You are a big girl and can make your own choices. But you shouldn't put down those who choose a different lifestyle.
And veal is just plain fucking evil, btw.
I had quit for 10 years then started again when my husband died. After smoking again for 8 years, I quit again when I remarried (we quit together), and now I'm smoke-free for almost 3 years. I used the lozenges, he used the patch-- I tried the patch, but had an allergic reaction. I'm not really a health nut, but honestly, if you have people in your life that want you to quit-- give it a try, out of respect and love for them and yourself. If you have a buddy to quit with, it's a little easier. End of lecture. Take care.
What a hoot, a couple hundred posts in and knows it all.
...(over 13 years ago now), is the social aspect. Particularly in the workplace, where the smokers are relegated to one or two outside doorways, and since the smokers come from all echelons in most companies, that's where you get in on all the gossip and underground news.
Oh well, nice story! Good for you. It's nice to turn the tables once in awhile. Although I'd still suggest you quit...
I do have to say that a close friend of mine quit after many years. He said if smoking just shortened his life, he would have continued. But when he saw the, sometimes long drawn out, terrible deaths that some smokers suffered, he decided to quit.
And I am not very sympathetic of smokers having to take their smoke outside. I remember many years of having to take my young family to restaurants that were smoke bongs. I remember one time we asked for non-smoking and the waitress walked to a table in the smoking section and removed the temporary "smoking" sign that was sitting on the table. Also, I remember standing with a crowd of other non-smokers waiting for an opening in the small non-smoking section while the larger smoking section was half filled. Honest, I am not bitter. Just sayin.
(note: Santa is yellow)
Waiters don't smoke, they are always offended by the smell of smoke, and all smokers blow their smoke into people's faces. 
I do not understand the level of hatred people express toward smokers. I never minded the smell. To this dad, it reminds me of mom and dad.
The slef righteousness can be a little over the top sometimes.
Oh well, some things drive me nuts that nobody else understands.
But that I know bullshit when I see it.
Funny, because most of the pot smokers that I know happen to be white.
I found something I didn't know about McCarthy while researching Anslinger.
Harry Anslinger later claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict that were silenced only by a boy returning from a pharmacist to supply the addict with more morphine. Anslinger was appalled that the drug was so powerful and that children had ready access to such drugs. (However, the experience did not stop Anslinger, while acting as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, from authorizing a druggist near the White House to fill a morphine prescription for an addicted Senator Joseph McCarthy) as part of an effort to help the Senator end his heroin addiction.
No flaming, but I have always hated cigarettes. I don't think that I could live with a smoker. The stench gets on everything, clothing, hair, furniture, etc. I was a happy person when they banned smoking in most public places.
- But I refuse to be an asshole about it! Smoke 'em if you got 'em is what I always say!!!
K&R
See you this Friday, where you can join hundreds in the Friday Holiday Poker tournament.
I'll keep my health and hang with the "uncool" kids inside.
Edit: If I saw the owner of the restaurant smoking outside while I was walking in, I would have turned around and left. That's just gross. I've done that when I saw waiters smoking outside before.
How Wonderful! And I know all about the TREATMENT Too!
No disrespect, but it's no ones's business but hers, really, as long as she's not subjecting others to it, and I'm one of those who thinks this really is a story more about compassion and empathy than anything else.
Glad to see you back, btw.
Since I lived it.
It is empathy and compassion, but also it is this attitude among addicts (to substance here) that this is not going to happen to them.
As to back, somewhat.
Some have warm wraps / blankets too.
Response to HockeyMom (Original post)
Funny how a thread on how you were treated nicely turned into the hate fest that everyone claims doesn't exist.
Here are some of the words used in this thread to describe smokers, who at this point aren't even allowed near anyone to smoke:
Assholes, Selfish, Disgusting, Slave, Sucker, Addict... and all of those things were said with great love because they just "love the sinner but hate the sin".
One day, I'm going to meet all these terrible smokers. You know, the ones who light up inside, who walk around blowing their smoke right in everyones face, who use their habit to hurt others. They must exist, this thread speaks of them often..
Have a great holiday HM!
Now you can go be embarrassed elsewhere...